Report: St. Charles East athletic department flawed

A new report on the St. Charles East High School athletic department shows a flawed performance review system for athletic staff and coaches, a perplexing web of booster club input and numerous incidents of bullying and hazing across sports programs.

St. Charles Unit District 303 Superintendent Don Schlomann released the findings of the report Friday. The district commissioned the outside review in the wake of community unrest after the removal of Brian Clodi as boys head varsity basketball coach and the subsequent announcement that Athletic Director Jerry Krieg would retire at the end of the school year.

Schlomann said the staff changes are not the result of the report. He said Krieg had considered retiring for at least the past two years before the uproar over Clodi.

“This was not a resignation,” Schlomann said. “I didn't ask for Jerry to resign. In no way am I disappointed with Jerry Krieg and his performance.”

The outside report shows now everyone agrees with Schlomann's evaluation.

“(Krieg's) communication skills, his organizational skills, and his reluctance to appropriately handle tough issues were identified as major concerns,” the report states.

It goes on to say Krieg is perceived to play favorites with the football, baseball and girls basketball programs.

In response, Schlomann said the district will form a committee to explore the appropriate job description for the athletic director, assistants and coaches. There will also be a uniform approach to evaluating coaches that will occur on an annual basis. Such a process does not currently exist at the school.

The report will also spark some reform of the district's booster club system. Most districts have one booster club for the entire athletic department. In District 303, many of the individual sports have their own booster club. That's resulted in a total of 53 booster clubs in the district and multiple administrative headaches for the coaches who deal with them, the report said.

“I know of no other district that has that many booster clubs,” Schlomann said. “Our coaches are being pulled away from their primary focus, which is the instruction of our students. We have people choosing not to be coaches because of the extra stress.”

Schlomann said his goal is to both reduce the number of booster clubs and clean up the amount of interaction coaches have with the booster clubs.

The report also indicates there were “numerous complaints” of “harassment, hazing and battery” among members of the drill team. And, once those complaints were lodged the perception is the manner in which they were handled was both slow and inconsistent with school policy.

That finding may be particularly troubling for district parents who participated in multiple community forums about student suicide and the role bullying plays in student deaths the past few years. Schlomann said the reported incidents “go well beyond the drill team,” but he doesn't see them as a failure of the district's efforts to stem bullying. Instead, Schlomann said, students are now reporting incidents that would've gone unnoticed in years past because of the education they've received about bullying.

“Our kids are starting to realize, ‘Hey, I don't like this,'” Schlomann said of incidents on the field or during practice that would have been chalked up to normal hazing in the past. “We need to go in there and address those issues.”

Schlomann said it will be tricky for coaches and student athletes to recognize the line between pushing and encouraging a teammate to work hard and bullying them. He said the district will have specific training for coaches and athletes on the issue to make the line more clear.

The full report and a written response from Schlomann will be placed on the district's website for the community to review and comment on.