No Money To Coach Students' Brains

Gary Pounder makes $2,800 a year as assistant coach of the Bothell High School football team.

But he doesn't make a dime for coaching the math team at Seattle's Washington Middle School, where he teaches, even though his team placed first in the state during this year's MATHCOUNTS competition - the only team in the tournament's history to have won four times.

Pounder is not alone. Seattle's academic coaches, along with the vast majority of public- and private-school academic coaches, receive nothing. But athletic coaches are almost always compensated for the work they do.

That leaves Pounder, who lives in Bothell and coaches football there on contract, pondering this question: Why should coaches who drill the body make several thousand dollars a year, but coaches who drill the mind receive nothing?

The practice seems to suggest that, even among educators, after-school displays of physical skill are valued more than feats of academic skill. And that has long bothered academic coaches.

A few districts have made efforts to compensate their math-, science- and knowledge-competition coaches for the hundreds of hours they spend training students for such events as the Math Olympiad, the Science Olympiad, MATHCOUNTS and the Odyssey of the Mind.

With education money scarce, it's unlikely that many other districts will join the short list of those that compensate for academic coaching - something that teachers and teachers unions

alike acknowledge.

"There's not any money - I wish I could say something different," said Bruce Colwell, president of the Seattle Education Association, the Seattle teachers union.

"These are worthy programs, and these teachers should be getting compensation."

Colwell said the issue has been brought to the bargaining table in the past, without success.

"We're struggling each year to find money for resources," said Janet Genther, a representative for the Cascade Council of Uniserv, the teachers union for the Northshore, Shoreline and Edmonds school districts. "The question is, what do you want to get rid of?"

"At some point these teachers are going to say, `We won't do it unless we get paid,' " Genther said. "And I wish they would."

Three area districts are among the few in the state that reimburse academic coaches.

Some Northshore teachers are compensated with special discretionary funds, doled out by principals. The Renton School District's academic coaches also receive discretionary money.

The Stanwood School District includes academic coaches on its stipend schedule, which determines how much teachers make for sports and extracurricular activities. Under Stanwood's schedule, a math- or debate-team coach can receive up to $1,071 a year, and the science-team coach can get up to $1,754 a year.

In contrast, athletic coaches at public schools generally make $1,000 to $4,500 a year, depending on the sport, the district and level of experience. The salaries are set by union contract and based on the number of hours it takes to coach a team through a season.

In Northshore, the academic coaches' pay is "nowhere near relative" to the time he puts in, said Northshore Junior High math coach David Dwyer, who will receive about $600 this year for coaching his school's winning math team. Still, Dwyer said the money serves as recognition of his work.

One problem with setting a stipend schedule for an academic coach is that there's no job description, and the amount of time and effort each coach puts in can vary from school to school, said Kathy Sanford, a Bothell High School English teacher and bargaining chairwoman for Cascade Uniserv. Sanford said the Northshore district has come a long way toward recognizing its academic coaches, but the union wants a more consistent reward.

The situation has developed because academic teams are considered optional - many schools do not have math or science teams at all - and a teacher with a personal love of the subject forms a team on his or her own time.

Pounder, who doesn't get paid for his academic coaching, said he has taken sick days, Sundays and lunch breaks to work with his winning math team.

"Math takes a lot longer to coach, but the practice sessions are shorter," he said.

Coaching a math team involves giving students hundreds of practice work sheets, running through math concepts, teaching students to simplify problems and doing timed drills. Most of the problems involve algebra, geometry and logic, and require high-school- or college-level skills.

Bill Okubo, math coach at Fred Nelsen Middle School in Renton, has written a 480-page math-team notebook for his students.

Pounder uses football-coaching techniques to drill kids in math. "We have the same goals: To improve every day and never give up," he said. "I try to see if I can instill a sense of school pride."

Proof that hard work pays off: Pounder student Paul Dexter came in seventh in the national MATHCOUNTS contest in Washington, D.C., and the state team Pounder coached finished 12th overall.

His successful math students no longer view themselves as "nerds" but as school "studs," in Pounder's words.

Like many other coaches, Pounder reaches into his own pocket to buy students the treats - soft drinks and snacks - that help keep them motivated.

The lack of pay is disheartening enough that some academic coaches don't last for more than a few seasons. If a replacement can't be found, the team is dissolved. And that's too bad, the coaches say, because competitions such as the state Math Olympiad are terrific ways to boost the importance of academics.

This year's Math Olympiad, in Blaine, Whatcom County, drew about 2,000 students in the fifth through eighth grades.

Even if the coaches get nothing, the students win because they learn math skills far above their grade level, Okubo said. Okubo's students have gone on to gain admittance to Stanford and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Bill Wright, a Blaine Elementary School coach who organizes the state Math Olympiad, said the math problems that well-coached students can solve are "unbelievable." He often has to consult with high-school math teachers to keep up with his fifth-grade students.