With teachers on the picket line, Tacoma Public Schools classrooms will be empty but its high school playing fields will be full.
“It’s business as usual for sports,” Wilson High athletic director John Portenier said Monday. “We’ll continue to have athletics.”
In addition to regular practices for fall sports teams, a full docket of games will proceed as scheduled today for girls soccer and volleyball and boys tennis.
But there is one hitch after Monday evening’s strike vote and emergency school board meeting: Coaches cannot step onto campuses until 2:30 p.m.
“That’s after our contracted day as teachers,” said Foss High football coach Ken Baker, who also teaches math and wood technology.
All coaches, even those who teach, have contracts with the district that are separate from teaching contracts.
Baker said he was in favor of coaching through the labor unrest.
“Coaches are under a different bargaining agreement,” he said, “so when they told us we could coach, we said ‘Heck, why not?’ We just hoped the district wouldn’t lock us out.”
On Monday afternoon, the district confirmed its intentions.
“The district plans to allow ... sports to continue,” Tacoma Public Schools spokesman Dan Voelpel wrote in an email.
There had been talk that athletes would have to find their own way to games and events, but Portenier said transportation has been arranged.
A special Narrows League athletics directors meeting has been scheduled for this afternoon at Bellarmine Preparatory School to discuss the effects of the strike on league events.
Middle school sports are canceled, Voelpel said.
It’s not uncommon for sports to continue during strikes. When teachers in the Kent School District went on strike to start the 2009-10 school year, athletic events carried on as scheduled.
Doug Pacey: 253-597-8271 doug.pacey@thenewstribune.com
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