Should Easton Coaches Have Access to Grades?

Frank Pintabone had planned to bring guests to Tuesday night's board meeting -- former athletes whose lives stalled after graduation.

Some of them had scholarship offers, but their grades just weren't there.

"They did what we asked athletically, but we didn’t do what we should have forced them to do academically," Pintabone told his school board colleagues as he proposed a new policy for student athletes.

It would require all athletes with a C-average or lower to take mandatory tutoring sessions with their coaches -- if those coaches are teachers -- after school. It would also allow those coaches to access players' grades.

That's a practice the district used to allow, but has since dropped out of confidentiality concerns, Pintabone said. He thinks reintroducing it would allow coaches to keep track of how their students were performing in the classroom.

In the past, students needed to be passing four major subjects to stay on their teams, said Athletic Director James Pokrivsak. With the high school changing to , officials are looking at new standards.

Still, Pokrivsak said it's not as if coaches are ignoring academics. Students can still be removed from teams if their grades aren't good enough.

"Our coaches work with those kids. We can’t baby-sit them," he told the board.

He also said there could be privacy concerns, since not every coach is a district employee. Pintabone countered that in those cases, an assistant coach who does work for the district could have access to the grades.

High school Principal Michael Koch said the issue is a problem, but asked Pintabone to come up with a more concrete plan.