County Sports Administrators Urge Englewood Not to Cut AD

A group of 39 athletic directors from Bergen County’s Big North Conference called on Englewood’s Superintendent of Schools in a letter sent Friday not to let the district’s athletic director go, calling the role a “vital necessity,” NorthJersey.com reported.

With five votes needed to dismiss Yvonne Sheard, who has served as AD since 2009, and two school board members not in attendance at a special meeting on Aug. 16, Superintendent Donald Carlisle, who recommended Sheard’s contract not be renewed, to cut her position.

The board did however eliminate the positions of seven staff members—a middle school Language Arts and Literacy teacher, a school security resources officer, two social workers, a healthcare assistant, a licensed practical nurse and a grants administrator—and voted not to renew the contract of a middle school Math teacher for the upcoming school year.

Carlisle had urged the board to vote to let Sheard and the others go, a move some school officials believe would help close a $4 million projected shortfall in the budget, and told board members that there were a number of options for covering the AD’s duties, including making it a part-time position or assigning those duties to other administrators in the district, whether or not they have an athletic background.

“Administration is administration,” Carlisle said at the Aug. 16 meeting. “In the meantime, I will handle the athletic program until we find a resolution. There are multiple models we can find to work that out.”

But the athletic directors said in part that you can’t effectively run a sports program in a district like Englewood without a full-time AD, according to the NorthJersey.com report, which quoted their letter as saying that eliminating the position or trying “to package it with another administrator” who’s not familiar with the job “could have a long-lasting, detrimental impact.”

The Englewood Public School District Board of Education will meet Thursday at 8 p.m. in the cafeteria, but it’ unclear whether Sheard’s contract will be on the agenda.

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