Mr. Stiles

"For what it's worth, when I was really starting to get involved at South football, I went to an East Booster Club meeting and introduced myself to the President, Treasurer, Secretary. This was around 2008-2009. I asked for copies of their By-laws, Articles of Incorporation, etc. I was writing all the Articles/By-Laws for South and thought using East's (since they seemed to have a very active program) would be a great starting place. Seems the Secretary and Treasurer had never been given a copy of either. The President said he didn't have a copy handy (at a meeting!) and would get me one

I can see where the two coaching styles have clashed. The old coach ran things with an iron grip. “Players WILL NOT take vacations with their families, summer practices WILL NOT be missed, Players will dress the way I say, will act the way I say, will train the way I say, will act the way I say….any alterations to the way I say things are to be done will be met with a dismissal from the team.” This works while you are under THAT coach’s influence. I’ve been there and played that game. The problems arise when that kind of control is gone. I saw a good number of players under the old coach f

That was in my original post. The BOE approved, allowing the Booster club to pay for the upgrades and increased size of the field house. It ended up being right at half the cost of the facility. From what was laid out at the last meeting, Neither the School nor the BOE were listed on the loan, As I said earlier. The building belongs to the school outright. The LOAN belongs to the Booster club. The school is in a prime situation. They only had to pay for half the building but they outright own the entire thing. No strings attached. The building CANNOT be foreclosed on nor threatened in any way.

The loans were not made to nor initiated by the school. The booster board did that.

At the last meeting it was announced that the current board DID consult a lawyer. They also said he advised them NOT to sign anything extending the loan out. The people on the board said they wanted to do the right thing but couldn't just make the class of 2045 pay for it.

We weren't around for most of all that but, no. There wasn't an extreme amount of fund raising. There seems to have been a ton of "kicking the can" (money owed) down the road. So now, here we are at the end of the road and owing money that the benefits of my children's. children will never enjoy. The records show that the people in charge at the time NEVER made the payments on the building as the loan was originally set up.

Coaching issues aside, I believe the old coach saw the writing on the wall. New high schools, redistricting, changes in the economy pushed East from being the wealthiest school in the county to the 2nd lowest mean income of the county. Most of the county sponsors now have schools closer to home to sponsor and I have to question the "glory days" of the program when they rolled over teams that still had wet paint on the walls and brand new programs. The old coach was smart to get out when he did. According to the records, income was down during his last season here and the programs at South and

Since no one else seems to want to talk about it and questions need to be answered, I will go ahead and bite the bullet. There was a special meeting called for the East Paulding football booster club a few Sunday’s ago to talk about the budget and the problems with the field house loan and myself and all the other parents are grateful to the current board for actually including us in the discussion, which I have learned wasn’t always the policy, which, I believe has put us in the situation we are in right now. But, since that meeting there hasn’t been a peep from anyone on what’s going on. H