And here I was thinking my second summer in West Michigan would be a quiet one.
Hesperia Community Schools has blown that idea out of the water after the controversial removal (or as the coach's camp is putting it, firing - tomato, to-mah-to, I guess) of its most successful team's coach — wrestling's Doug Baird.
Baird, who coached wrestling at Hesperia for 19 seasons, most of them as head coach, had guided the Panthers to the 2008 state title and overall had led the team to five of the previous eight Division 4 state-finals matches, most recently this February, a match the Panthers narrowly lost to five-time champion Hudson. So his removal was an extreme surprise.
As we dug more into the case, including attending a loud June 11 school board meeting at which the removal was addressed and making a Freedom of Information Act request to find out what was going on, it became obvious this was a big issue to many of the folks in Hesperia.
Baird's removal came as the result of two formal reprimands he received in the spring relating to separate incidents. The first incident, in February at the individual wrestling regional tournament in Rogers City, involved a wrestler bringing marijuana to the hotel at which the team stayed, an incident blamed on Baird because the wrestler in question, along with a couple of teammates, were left at the hotel unsupervised while the rest of the team and staff went to McDonald's (one speaker at the June 11 meeting intimated that the boys weren't taken to McD's because they needed to make weight, which seems sensible).
The second one, the more serious one and the one under the most scrutiny in this case, alleged that Baird did not report evidence of child abuse that was supposedly reported to him during a P.E. class in March. The coach had allegedly been informed by a student that he was inappropriately touched off-campus by a former student whose care he may or may not have been in at the time. The people on Baird's side in that case counter the reprimand with questions as to whether he was truly legally obligated to report what he heard, with some suggesting he was trying to get more information before bringing the matter to the school board.
Whatever happened, the board deemed it enough to remove the coach, and it has already begun the process of hiring a new one, with classified ads in our papers the last couple of weeks. However, Baird's supporters haven't gone quietly, petitioning to recall three of the school board members who voted Baird out (the only three that they can legally recall at this time). His supporters, who've formed a group called Concerned Citizens for Total Education, have also said they will petition to recall board president Todd Jacobs once they can do so at the beginning of 2014. The issue has divided the wrestling program and placed just about everyone in the Hesperia district on opposing sides.
The most curious thing to me, and something that hasn't been fully addressed, mostly due to the firestorm surrounding the removal and the recalls, is that Baird hasn't been removed as a teacher, nor has he been removed from his post as the cross-country coach, coincidentally Hesperia's second-most successful sports program, boasting consecutive state championships in 2010 and 2011. It seems unlikely that any answers on that topic are forthcoming, as the board has stated publicly that they will offer no further comment on anything relating to Baird - and true to their word have not responded to phone messages left in the interim. Baird's supporters have pointed out several times that he can't be that deserving of a firing if they only took away 1 of his 2 coaching jobs and left him installed as a teacher. If the accusations leveled against him are true, it seems that they would be fireable offenses all the way around, and not just at the wrestling level.
It's unclear what will happen from here — the board members under recall are appealing the county's acceptance of the petitions, which will almost certainly delay any potential recall election for months. The recall could not proceed in November unless a minimum amount of signatures are collected by Aug. 2, and signatures can't be collected if the petition is under appeal. This makes it pretty much impossible for a recall to take place before next May, so as far as Baird is concerned he is more or less in a holding pattern. He has filed grievances with the teachers' union in regards to both reprimands, grievances that are still in the process of being sorted out. He's maintained he wants to coach wrestling, and he wants to do it at Hesperia - though it seems that if he were offered the ability to coach wrestling elsewhere it would be hard for him to turn it down given the situation in which he finds himself.
There is much to be determined, but one thing's for sure — this is an unfortunate situation for all involved and one that appears ready to drag on for a while.
