As an athletic director, your list of demands, responsibilities, and requirements is exhausting. This summer must hire coaches, clear athletes, inform parents, and prepare venues... and those are just a few to-do's on your list.
The time commitment and communication requirements are daunting, but every year you do it. And, education-based athletics will continue to thrive based on the herculean efforts of people like you.
We get it. New national, state, and local guidelines land on your desk every day. Plus, you can't forget all those other issues. Coaches, communication, concussions, clearances, and compliance... yeah, they'll all be issues again too.
Before you unlock the gates, be sure that you have the procedures in place to establish evidence-based records providing support for your reopening decisions. Create a plan that includes a centralized database of evidence to help confirm and justify decisions. Because as you know, every decision will be scrutinized and questioned.
On-site health screenings help prevent exposure to illness and may be required by federal, state, or local guidelines. The question is:
The answer: use a mobile screening solution to...
Watch our 2-Minute Video to learn more
Superintendents, technology directors, and athletic directors awake each morning to a new batch of news from federal, state, and local resources. The news can range from regulations to recommendations surrounding the health and safety of their students, athletes, and communities. At the same time, these school district leaders receive both praise and pressure from their stakeholders.
According to the National School Board Association ("NSBA"), school district leaders should first follow guidance from state educational agencies and public health departments. After ensuring a school district is in compliance with federal, state, and local health protocols, school boards must face the challenge of preparing for both an outbreak and a reopening.
Unfortunately, time is a limited resource. School district leaders must adapt quickly using trusted resources and tools to help increase compliance with policies and procedures in order to create a safe school.
Athletic programs deliver a ton of upsides to communities. They teach the importance of teamwork and hard work, they build camaraderie, and they can even bring an entire community together.
Unfortunately, for a variety of reasons—such as selfish and aggressive parents, coaches that show favoritism, and donor and booster club influences—student athletics can have a dark underbelly. In this blog post, we’ll take a quick look at why bureaucracy happens and provide six tips athletic directors can use for dealing with politics in high school athletics.
One of the primary responsibilities of an Athletic Director is hiring coaches. But finding qualified coaches can be difficult—especially for sports like bowling, lacrosse, and cheerleading.
Being a coach is an important job that comes with public pressures and very little pay. Finding the right person can be tough, but it’s worth the effort.
As an athletic director, you’re tasked with doing everything you can to ensure an optimal athletics experience for all students, parents, coaches, and members of the community. To do that, you need to keep safety and legal issues in high school athletics top of mind. Mitigating risk, ensuring compliance, and preventing negligence are all important pieces of AD job descriptions today. This is in large part because districts across the country face increasing regulations and we live in an increasingly litigious society.
While your staffers may think "forms" when they hear FinalForms, our stats tell us there is an even more popular use for our online registration system: email communication. Staying connected with staff, parents, and students can be an uphill battle. However, in the midst of the current COVID-19 pandemic, email communication is a critical lifeline. Staffers relied on FinalForms' uninterrupted, zero-delay service to send 4.5 million emails last month.
Partnering with the right online school forms provider can transform your district, bringing more efficiency to your processes while making it easier to achieve 100 percent form compliance and reduce liabilities.
Athletic directors know full well how tricky it can be to get the signatures needed from students, parents, physicians, and staff on high school athletic physical forms.
When you rely on paper forms only, additional challenges arise, such as illegible handwriting, misplaced files, and a time-exhaustive data-entry process to transfer the information over to your student information system.
Students can’t participate in sports activities until their physical forms are turned in. To improve the student-athlete experience and ensure that all students who want to play sports are eligible, districts need to do everything they can to optimize the form distribution and collection processes.
With that in mind, here are some tips to enhance those processes and, as a result, ensure a higher percentage of students are eligible for sports when the season begins: