Coach Lori Cooper instructs an Azalea basketball player. The Pilot/Lorna Rodriguez

Azalea Middle School Physical Education teacher Lori Cooper entered the teaching profession because she loves to coach.

“My dream  was always to help a team win a championship – league or state,” Cooper said.

In addition to her physical education duties during school hours, Cooper serves as coach or assistant coach for two high school teams and one middle school team.

 Those extra-curricular jobs means extra money in her pocket – nearly $11,000 – thanks to something called an “extra-duty contract.” Cooper is one of 70 Brookings Harbor School District employees and community members awarded such contracts to oversee activities such as school sports, music, Knowledge Bowl, tutoring and drama. 

During the 2010-2011 school year, the district spent   nearly $197,000 on extra duty contracts. That amount is about 1.2 percent of the district’s $20 million budget, according to the school district’s Business Manager Don Sweeney.

Not all of the contracts come out of the district’s general fund, Sweeney said.  Twenty positions are paid for entirely through grants, and 37 are partially funded by parents through the “Pay to Play” program.

Of the $197,000, about $135,000 came from the general fund, $31,000 came from gate receipts and Pay to Play (students pay $85 to play a sport), $27,000 from grants and $2,700 from student fees.

The district spent about $122,500 on athletic coaches, nearly $19,000 on tutoring and behavior incentive programs, nearly $20,000 on academic programs (Knowledge Bowl, robotics, Leadership and yearbook), nearly $7,000 on class advisors and about $13,000 on music and drama. 

A varsity head coach is paid $4,801, an assistant coach is paid $2,857 or $3,429 and a music advisor or yearbook advisor makes $4,801.

There are 12 assistant coaches at Brookings-Harbor High School. Together, the assistant coaches make $40,576. 

At the monthly school board meetings, the board typically approves a handful of these contracts as needed.

The money for such contracts have already been accounted for, Brookings-Harbor School Board member Bob Horel said. 

“The contracts are built into the budget,” Horel said. “When I pick up my (board meeting) packet it will have the amount. The amounts are budgeted. The budget specifies what we think we’ll spend in this area.”

All of the contracts are allocated for when the budget committee meets to formulate the district’s budget except for grants, Sweeney said.

The district doesn’t know how much it will receive from grants until after the school year starts, Sweeney added.

“Every single item that’s spent in the school district has a budget,” Sweeney said. “Unless a position is created when the budget is done, it won’t happen that year.”

The board’s responsibility in regard to the contracts is to approve or not approve the contracts.

“But generally given the superintendent’s recommendation, we would approve them,” Horel said. “All of them have to be approved by the board. The superintendent has a responsibility of running the schools. We oversee that. We’re looking at things generally at a policy level.”

Horel said that the board does not ask a lot of questions about the contracts during the board meetings because “it’s preferable to ask those questions before we get to the meeting. It’s only if you’re not really pleased with the answer, that’s when you would ask it in the session.”

One extra duty contract is not a huge issue for the district, Horel said.

“But if it appears to be strange somehow, or different, then of course we’d want to talk about it,” he said. “But if it’s normal ... if it’s what has historically been done, there shouldn’t be a whole lot of discussion about it.

“We want the district to be as frugal as it can be with our own funds. We’ve made it clear we want an open process. We want the contracts going based on who would be the best to do it.” 

The number of approved extra-duty contracts has dropped in recent years as funding for extracurricular activities such as speech and debate, cross-country, golf and bowling was eliminated because of budget cuts. Teachers once paid to oversee those activities either do so voluntarily or not at all.

If Cooper wasn’t paid to coach, she said she probably wouldn’t continue because it takes a lot of time away from her family.

“I don’t want to take away from them if they’re not getting the same benefit,” Cooper said.

Except for a two-month break, Cooper coaches year- round. In addition to coaching the three sports at Brookings-Harbor and Azalea, Cooper said she is also expected to run club teams and summer camps.

When the teams travel, she puts in up to 14 hours. 

She puts in so much time and effort that she ends up making about $.25 an hour, she said. 

Extra duty contracts are given when district employees go “above and beyond the normal contract,” Brookings-Harbor School District Superintendent Brian Hodge said.

“If people do extra work, they should be paid for the extra work they do,” he said.

The pay scale for the contracts is determined based on a percentage of the district employee salary schedule, according to a handout the district gave the Curry Coastal Pilot.

It is also based on a percentage of hours, Sweeney said.

Cooper became the head volleyball coach at Brookings-Harbor 14 years ago. 

She received the position so long ago she can’t exactly remember the application process. 

However, when she was hired as the assistant JV softball coach, Cooper didn’t go through an interview, she said. 

The head softball coach asked for her help, she said. 

“Basically it comes down to, if the head coach wants the person,” Cooper said. “If they’re qualified, they’ll get it.”

Hodge said that depending on what the contract is for, the district usually takes application from everybody who is qualified. 

With specific areas such as drama or music, the contracts go to the teachers who teach or specialize in those subjects, he said. 

Grant positions work in a similar fashion. Hodge said the employee who applied for the grant would receive the contract. 

The district accepts contracts from both district employees and community members. However, district employees receive priority, Hodge said.

When drama director Art Dingle applied for the position, he said it wasn’t much of a process.

He unofficially helped the  director until she retired, and then took over the position.

“No one else wanted it. I did,” Dingle said.

Dingle has been in charge of the program for 14 years.

Most of the time, the positions are advertised in the district office, the school buildings and in the Curry Coastal Pilot, Hodge said. 

Both new and returning employees have an opportunity to pick up a contract if they’re interested.

Hodge offered Azalea Middle School Assistant Football Coach Eric Sullivan as an example of a new teacher who picked up a contract. 

Extra duty contracts are year-long. At the end of each school year, the contract holders are evaluated. 

Technically people have to reapply for the positions, but it is not unusual for the contracts to roll over into the next school year, Hodge said.

“If things are going fine, we leave them that way,” he said. 

Individuals who have held a position for a number of years are able to do so because they are doing well, Hodge said.

For Dingle, the benefits of extra duty contracts are: “money, doing something I’m passionate about and working with kids in a different context,” he said. “It’s a little bit of money every month that helps.”

Dingle said the theater director is paid the equivalent to a head varsity coach, but the drama program does two plays a year; it’s not just one season.

Dingle said for 12 weeks, he puts in 15 hours a week, and for four weeks out of the year he puts in 30 hours a week.

“The money makes a difference, but it varies quite a bit,” he said.

Extra duty contracts are still being awarded in spite of the recent budget cuts because the programs are valuable for students, Hodge said. 

“That’s why hard decisions are being made when we have budget cuts,” Hodge said. “We look at what can we give, what can we not live without ... continuing the integrity of our programs and things that enhance the reasons for coming to school. What would high school be like without sports?”

Hodge said that last year the board and district gave the community a survey, and talked to a lot of people to see what programs people really valued, and didn’t want to see go.  

Kalmiopsis Elementary School Principal Helena Chirinian receives an extra duty contract as well for her work as the Title I coordinator. 

She is in charge of the $400,000 Title I budget. 

As part of her duties, Chirinian writes grants and a budget narrative, keeps track of the budget, uses some of the grant funds to pay for staff members, funds full day kindergarten through the grant and submits the budget to the Oregon Department of Education (ODE) for approval.

She spends about 200 hours a year on the Title program.

“It’s over and above my regular contract,” Chirinian said. “Most districts have a separate employee who does those. We could pay someone as much as $40,000 a year to do that work. So I get a very small extra duty contract to take care of that.”

Chirinian was paid $6,000  in 2010-2011.

Chirinian receives the contract because an administrator has traditionally been in charge of Title funds, she said. 

Chirinian added that Title funds are concentrated at Kalmiopsis.

Certain areas, such as athletics, receive more funding because more students are involved in those areas than drama or music, for example, Hodge said. 

Similarly, the high school football team has one head coach and four assistant coaches because of a high safety need, Hodge said. 

“The main gauge is safety, need and numbers,” Hodge said. “For instance, it seems like we have more coaches for football, but the number- one reason for that is safety. When it’s a high contact sport you want to make sure that you have the coaches to teach students the right way to do it.”

A lot of money goes toward the football program, but football and basketball are the biggest community draws, Hodge said. 

The five football coaches are paid a combined salary of $17,945. The two boys basketball and two girls basketball coaches are paid a combined salary of $16,460.

The district charges to get into the games, and the revenue goes back into the athletic accounts toward funding the sports programs, Hodge said.

Hodge said that if the district doesn’t have the funds for the extra duty contracts, they would be eliminated.

For example, a few years ago, the cross country and golf teams became club sports.

“It really does allow people to choose to do extra things, and get a bit of extra money for it,” Chirinian said of the extra duty contracts. “I think they’re a valuable tool for the district.”