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Public commenters urge board to reject coach recommendation; co-head basketball motion dies
Summary
Two public speakers asked the board to reject the administration’s recommendation to hire Brian Frner as co-head basketball coach, citing a deferred suspension on the Iowa Board of Educational Examiners website. The administration defended a supervision plan, but a later administrative recommendation to hire Brian (Frezer/Freezer in transcript) and Jim Murray as co-heads failed to advance after no second.
Two public commenters on Monday evening urged the Pocahontas Area Community School District board to reject the administration’s recommendation to hire Brian Frner as a co-head boys basketball coach, citing a deferred suspension that appears on the Iowa Board of Educational Examiners website.
"I would like to ask why it is not mentioned ... that Brian frner has a deferred suspension of his K12 athletic coaching endorsement," said Mon Lander, who told the board she had checked the public licensure website and said the action was related to "inappropriate comments to student athletes during practices causing discomfort among the students." She asked who was identified as the required work-site monitor and whether the monitoring would cover practices, where she said the inappropriate language occurred.
Amy Anderson spoke in support of Lander’s request and asked the board to vote against approving the contract that evening.
Administration responded to concerns in the meeting later when recommending a co-head coaching team — Brian (name spelled variably in the transcript) and Jim Murray — after interviews and committee review. The administration said supervision and quarterly updates to the board would be part of any hiring arrangement and that it had consulted legal counsel and the Attorney General’s office to clarify monitoring expectations.
A motion to approve the administrative recommendation for Brian and Murray as co-head coaches was made but died for lack of a second; the president declared the motion dead. Administrators said they would consult legal counsel and return with a revised recommendation by the end of the week.
The transcript contains inconsistent spellings of the coach’s name (Frner/Freezer/Fr ezer); the public commenters cited the Iowa Board of Educational Examiners entry as the source for the deferred suspension and the meeting record shows no board approval of the recommendation at this session.
