Should Del Norte coach be fired for DUI?

The head football coach at Del Norte High School was arrested for DUI, link. There will be calls for his termination; most will point to "role modeling" as the justification.

The possibility raises many questions, not the least of which is, should someone lose their job over something they did when they were not at work? APS has, for as long as I remember, insisted that it has a right to hold people accountable for things they do off school grounds.

The aspect that will grate most on me is the disparate expectations and consequences for APS employees. The last super administrator caught driving drunk, APS Assoc Supt Michael Vigil, got a bunch of paid leave and $162K, link; a football coach will not likely see so sweet a settlement.

The leadership of the APS will not talk about role modeling. They haven't since the night they removed the role modeling clause from their own standards of conduct, the one which used to read;

In no case shall the standards of conduct for an adult,
be lower than the standards of conduct for students.

The leadership of the APS will use the words "role modeling" in a context that makes APS look good, but not in a context where their hypocrisy can be challenged.

The APS School Board, and in particular APS Board Member David Peercy, have kept the discussion of administrative and executive role modeling of the student standards of conduct; the Pillars of Character Counts!, off the table in their Policy Committee for years, link.

Should a coach be fired over a DUI? Long before we have that discussion, we need to discuss standards and accountability for all APS employees and students, openly and honestly. When that is resolved, we can talk about firing folks over their failure to meet those standards.