BY ABBY FOX
Vin Varrecchione, the schools’ athletic director, is opening the door to suggest changes in the structure of coaches’ salaries.
The pay scale for both intramural and seasonal coaching is dated 20 years, to 1989, he said, and it’s plainly obvious to him that the average coach’s starting salary is below, sometimes $1,000 or more, the rest of the state’s (see table.)
The track coach, for instance, makes $1,931 in his or her first year, far less than the Barrington coach, who makes more than $4,750, or in North Kingstown, where you can make $3,212, according to his numbers.
But what the district saves in dollars it more than loses in committed, experienced coaches who want to stay here, he said. The coach turnover is so broad-based that it left Varrecchione to conclude that low starting salaries are the primary reason.
Varrecchione has been athletic director for four years and in that time, this has been the coach turnover:
-- Track, boys and girls: three different coaches in four years.
-- Girls’ cross country: three different coaches in four years.
-- Tennis, boys and girls: three coaches in four years.
-- Lacrosse, boys: four coaches in four years. Lacrosse, girls: two coaches in two years.
-- Swimming, girls: three coaches in four years. Boys: four coaches in four years.
“It’s something that needs to change,” he said.
“People know they can make double somewhere else,” he said, so that beginner coaches come here to gain some experience and then move on, while more experienced coaches won’t take a job when they can get a better offer from a town close by, or they won’t bother to apply. “It’s almost getting to the point where we have such a reputation, that coaches don’t apply, because they know East Greenwich doesn’t pay well,” he said.
Of course, he said, not all coaches leave after one or two years. East Greenwich is lucky to still have a “core” coach group, including football and hockey, who “who care about the town and have a connection to the town. They’re East Greenwich people; they’re part of the community,” he said. “Beyond that core is where we’re having difficulty.”
So in a tight budget year, how can Varrecchione persuade the district to increase coaches’ salaries and make them competitive, while still staying within his budget? His idea is to take a hard look at reforming the intramural sports’ salaries, because now an intramural coach, required to do a minimum of twenty-four hours of work during a season, makes almost as much as a seasonal coach, who can work twenty-four hours in just one week. That’s because an intramural sport is worth five “points,” while a varsity coaching sport isn’t worth much more, regardless of the length of the season.
He gave a few examples of how high intramural salaries are, in contrast to coaches’ salaries. A 10-year intramural coach, or “tenth-step,” would make $1,975 at the end of his or her 24-hour season, he said, using his calculator, while an assistant volleyball coach would make $1,875 after ten years. A person working with kids over the course of a season lasting a few months can make less than someone working 24 hours.
Or take an intramural coach with five years of coaching here, who would make $1,328 after a 24-hour time period, he said, while a first-year track coach would make $1,930.
Varrecchione is hopeful the school committee will address this specific issue during upcoming contract negotiations with the East Greenwich Education Association – the union. And he’s hoping it’ll go down well with the taxpayers, too. “It’s not like we’re asking for more money,” he said. “We’re asking for a re-allotment of existing funds.”
The difficulty with waiting for negotiations to straighten the inequality, he said, is that the union hasn’t made an effort to get on board, because most coaches aren’t teachers in East Greenwich: 15 out of the 19 fall coaches aren’t; 17 out of 21 winter coaches aren’t; and 11 out of the 16 spring coaches aren’t, he said, making this a lower-priority union issue, however crucial it may be to the school district as a budgetary issue.
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