What's The Secret?

There’s a small group of people who know why John Czartosieski wasn’t brought back to be the Westhampton Beach head tennis coach this year.

He’s not among them. And the rest of the community is left to wonder as well.

In what seems to be par for the course for the Westhampton Beach School Board, the final decision on the matter seems to be shrouded in secrecy, leaving people to wonder why the 22-year varsity coach isn’t being brought back — and jumping to unfair conclusions about why.

Following a protracted School Board meeting on August 23 in which a handful of the coach’s former students and friends urged the board to keep “Coach Ski,” the board met in a private “executive session” following the meeting and approved the resolution, essentially dumping him in favor of a new coach, Matt Reed, who has never coached varsity before.

To be fair, the School Board did not “fire” Coach Ski. They just didn’t ask him back to coach for another season. But doing so in private, only moments after a public outcry, is bad form. With school starting next week, the board certainly had to make decisions about its coaching staff, but perhaps they could have left the tennis position off the final resolution, if only to consider the statements made by Coach Ski’s supporters in the meeting.

At the same time, the coach was never given an explanation for the change, even though he asked repeatedly. Administrators and board members have not offered any explanations to the public, either, hiding behind the classic refrain that they don’t comment on personnel matters. While they may be prevented from talking about certain personnel decisions, there is no reason why they couldn’t say that there were no offenses, disciplinary issues or other reasons that would prevent him from coaching, if that’s the case.

Coach Ski retired from teaching at the end of the last school year, and scuttlebutt in the district is that it was simply a matter of wanting to award the plum of coaching the team to a current teacher. If that is the reasoning, they should simply say so. That wouldn’t be a personnel matter, but one of district policy — one that has been adopted by other districts — and would remove the specter of him having done something wrong.

Except that doesn’t seem to be the actual policy in the district, or at least not one enforced across the board. Cross country and track coach John Broich, who retired from teaching in 2016, is still leading the girls teams in the fall, winter and spring. He’s been coaching since 1986.

If a policy change is behind Coach Ski’s unceremonious departure, the School Board should say so — publicly — and stand behind it. Otherwise it just looks like they have something to hide. It’s time the district realized that closed door — and closed mouths — only lead to hard feelings.