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Niles superintendent looking into parental interference allegations
By Jordan Cohen
NILES
Superintendent Ann Marie Thigpen disclosed Tuesday that allegations of parental interference that may have led to the resignation of the varsity girls basketball coach “are being looked into.”
Thigpen’s comment after the board of education meeting came in response to a Vindicator question about last week’s sudden resignation of coach Michael Cappuzzello after only five games into the season.
Cappuzzello, hired last April, attributed his decision to ongoing complaints from parents upset over their daughters’ playing time. He described those encounters as “numerous altercations.”
He cited one incident in which the father of one girl berated him for not playing his daughter in the fourth quarter of a game – even though she had played in the previous three quarters.
A vote to accept Cappuzzello’s resignation was on Tuesday’s board agenda. All five board members voted in favor. None of them commented on it before or after the vote.
“We do not discuss personnel [matters] in public meetings,” Thigpen said. “That is the policy.”
The superintendent did not provide further details about the district’s probe into the parents’ conduct.
On Sunday, the coach’s resignation was the subject of a column by Todd Franko, Vindicator editor, in which he criticized what appeared to be “no apparent effort to mediate or temper the parents.” Postings of the column on two Niles social media sites led to a number of negative comments directed against the parents.
Marc Fritz, Niles athletic director, has appointed MaKayla Butler, who had been serving as varsity assistant for the girls basketball team, to interim head coach.
Butler graduated from Niles McKinley High School in 2015.
Girls basketball, however, is not the only school sport affected by the resignation of Cappuzzello, a full-time teacher in the Joseph Badger School District. He also had been hired to coach the girls tennis and softball teams – leaving those two positions currently unfilled.