Schools to seek full time athletic director

The Sisters School Board decided Wednesday night to actively recruit and hire a full-time athletic director for the Sisters School District. The job could be posted as early as this week with interviews targeted for the first week in April.

Earlier this school year, the school board agreed to budget for and hire a full-time athletic director. In the meantime, the superintendent and the board have been reviewing a variety of creative options using existing staff to avoid a fully loaded $100,000 expense (salary plus benefit package) of adding a new staff member.

Board chair Chris Jones told The Nugget that the board is hopeful that they can hire a qualified candidate for something less than that amount.

The turning point in the decision to hire an additional staff member came as board members discussed the perceived expectations local citizens have for the funds raised through the local option tax. While not all board members agreed that this was the "real" purpose of these additional funds, they did all agree that using a portion of these funds for the enhancement of student athletic programs was a widely held expectation that needs to be honored.

"Clearly athletics is very important to the community; it is not a good use of our administrators' time to have them managing athletics and we need a full-time athletic director to manage athletics and to manage fundraising for athletics. We think it is a very smart investment," Jones later told The Nugget.

Bus transportation is a major expense for a majority of school sports. One idea being considered to reduce transportation costs is the replacement of one or several large buses with smaller 14-passenger busses. With only 14 passengers, the driver (coach) does not need to have a commercial drivers license. The smaller, more economical buses would also be useful on some of the less-populated bus routes.

Sisters Middle School Principal Mark Stewart will be responsible for the coordination of the recruiting effort for the athletic director. Board members Andrew Gorayeb and Cheryl Stewart will be coordinating with Stewart on this effort.

The board will host a public work session focused on Sisters school sports programs on April 16, 7 to 9 p.m. Equity between sports programs will be one of the main topics of discussion.