Former Champion coach sues over district’s refusal to hire him to coach baseball
Staff report
WARREN
The former coach of the Champion High School girls basketball team and Champion boys varsity baseball team has sued the school district over the hiring of someone else to coach the baseball team for last year.
Jeffrey A. Thompson of Champion filed the suit in Trumbull County Common Pleas Court, saying he was head basketball coach continuously from the 1999-2000 school year until the end of last school year.
He also was Champion varsity baseball coach during the 2013-14 school year, having been Bristol baseball coach previously. He was “highly successful as the varsity baseball coach” at Champion, and the athletic director recommended him to be rehired in that job for the 2014-15 school year, the suit said.
But in January 2015, the school board appointed Rick Yauger boys baseball coach for that school year instead of Thompson. Yauger at the time was not a licensed educator and had not been previously employed by the Champion schools, the suit said.
Thompson, meanwhile, has possessed a valid educator license since 1986, and wanted the baseball coaching job, the suit said.
Under Ohio law, a nonlicensed person can be hired to serve as a coach only “after the school district’s board of education adopts a resolution stating that it offered such position to those employees of the district who are licensed individuals and no such employee qualified to fill the position has accepted it.”
The board also must then advertise the position to any qualified, licensed individual who is not employed by the board, the suit says.
Hiring Yauger while refusing to hire Thompson violates Ohio law, the suit says, because the board didn’t pass a resolution saying it had offered the job to licensed employees of the district, nor did it advertise the job to other licensed individuals.
The suit seeks full back pay and benefits for last school year, award of court costs and legal fees and to order the school district to hire Thompson for the position.
Pamela Hood, Champion superintendent, did not return a phone call seeking comment on the suit.