Subjects of Recall attempt issue letter Regarding Firing of Coach

Recently, there has been a lot of public discussion about the removal of James O’Brien, the Arcadia High School cross-country coach who has had a number of very successful seasons over the years.
As a matter of policy, the District does not publicly comment on personnel matters. First we are legally precluded from providing details of private personnel issues. Second, we are true believers in allowing people to maintain their privacy in employment matters.
However, the details of many of the issues that have brought us here have been released by the employee himself. Given this reality and the fact that this issue is creating some intense division in some portions of the Arcadia community, we believe it is appropriate to address it and hopefully put the matter to rest.
As a result of a call from a CIF representative and information from some students and parents, it became clear that Mr. O’Brien had created a pattern of rules violations through his coaching practices, which in some cases seemed to completely disregard CIF rules. Unfortunately, the violations and his refusal to take responsibility for those actions undermined the many good things he was doing for our students. What’s more, if we didn’t take corrective action to address the violations, the CIF may have imposed sanctions that could have kept our students from competing.
We were elected to be education leaders and it’s vital that we model integrity and good sportsmanship for our students. We hold our students to the highest standards of honesty; why would we not hold our coaches to that same standard?
The decision to remove Mr. O’Brien as coach was unfortunate and difficult. The championship trophies that line the Arcadia High School trophy cases are evidence that he was able to pull true talent out of our children.
But as representatives of this community, we made the decision to remove him because we do not believe that a “win at any cost” mentality has a place in our school district. Instead, we believe our students deserve to be taught that honesty and integrity are the most important character traits we can instill and winning should be the result of hard work and strong performance – within the rules.
We are fortunate in Arcadia to have some of the most talented, intellectually curious, and focused students in the state, along with a hardworking instructional team that has developed an academic program that optimizes our students’ capabilities. The evidence of this fact is overwhelming. From our unmatched API of 929, a graduation rate of 98.3%, and 93% of our graduates self-identifying as college bound, this community is proud to produce such strong students.
As a Board of Education, it is our responsibility to make these hard decisions. It is unfortunate that this reassignment had to occur. But it is also unfortunate that this one decision has become the focus of a recall effort. Given the success we consistently see in AUSD, it is our hope that the community at large will understand that while employment matters are difficult and we all like to get trophies and win, the priority must be maintaining and enhancing the strong academic program we have here at AUSD.

Sincerely,

Cung Nguyen, Lori Phillipi, and Kay Kinsler

Nguyen, Phillipi and Kinsler are members of the Arcadia Unified School District who are the subject of a recall effort related to the decision to remove James O’Brien.

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