In case you don't know already, the school board unanimously chose not to extend Barry Huckeby's teaching contract into next year. It's the only action they've taken in this case that makes any sense.
Unfortunately, we still have to wait for his trial to find out the real facts of the story.
A brief recap for those who may not know, Barry was hired to be the high school basketball coach at Columbus North. He was also a math teacher and assistant athletic director.
Only a couple of months into the job, Barry was in charge of counting and depositing the proceeds from a football playoff game. Unnamed school officials determined that approximately $3,000 of the gate receipts from that game were missing. In the process, Barry confessed to taking some money from the gate receipts, but reportedly only admitted to taking around $50 to buy supplies for the office printer.
He was placed on paid leave while the investigation took place, and finally his case was brought to the school board, which decided to strip him of his coaching and assistant athletic director duties but allowed him to stay on for the rest of the year as a math teacher.
His supporters claim that some of those unnamed school officials acted on a vendetta against Barry, and that the claim of missing $3,000 was falsely created to that end. Others believe that, for reasons only he knows, he did steal approximately that amount, and made up the story about the printer supplies as a cover.
Unfortunately, no details of the investigation have been made public. We don't know what the police investigators know. All those details are being carefully protected from public disclosure, presumably keeping it safely under wraps until the trial. I have a number of questions that I hope will be answered when the trial gets underway -
How do they know $3,000 is missing? The logical explanation can be one or both of these: Nobody gets in free to playoff games, and they have a headcount at the gate to match against receipts. Doing the math showed that they were $3,000 short. Secondly, the ticket sellers at the gate counted the money before handing it off to Barry, and the total sum they gave him was $3,000 more than what he deposited. The first by itself doesn't necessarily mean Barry stole the money; the second almost certainly does.
What high school athletic department anywhere is stupid enough to put one individual in charge of processing the gate receipts? Making it an absolute requirement that a minimum of two people handle the money at every step through the bank deposit is just common sense. Not just to protect against theft, but also to protect the individual involved from any accusation of theft or mishandling of the funds.
If the evidence was strong enough to convince the school board to remove Barry from his coaching and assistant athletic director positions, why was it not strong enough to remove him from teaching? It seems on its face to represent a double standard: A thief can't be allowed to coach the basketball team, but is OK to teach math? Where's the logic in that?
To accept Barry's story of grabbing a few bucks to buy office supplies, you have to believe that he didn't know any better. Stories say that he's been a teacher and coach for something like 11 years. It stretches all credibility to accept that, given all those years around high school athletic programs, he was ignorant about basic practices in handling of gate receipts and requisitioning office supplies.
As an outside observer who has never met Barry, the information that has been released about his case leads me to the logical conclusion that he is more likely guilty than not guilty. The exact amount is certainly questionable, and unless the ticket sellers have solid evidence of their total gate receipts, it may never be known. But it seems unlikely that 500 people were mis-counted or allowed into the event for free.
The losers in this case are the Columbus North varsity basketball team. They had to survive this turmoil and go through a difficult season with an interim coach. The program has been damaged heavily by this incident, and likely will take years to recover.
Too bad.
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