Lewisville ISD’s Aquatic Center in The Colony cost $13 million to build, and opened in January of 2007. The facility serves Hebron and The Colony high schools as well as aiding swimming programs at elementary schools, and serving as a place to hold swim meets, and seats up to 800 spectators. When the facility is not being used by the district’s student athletes, its lanes are rented out to private swimming clubs catering to some of the same student athletes.
One such team is Lakeside Aquatic Club (LAC), which charges a $175 annual family fee, and $56 registration fee, a $50 - $75 “escrow fee” as well as a $60 - $140 per month fee per swimmer for an 11 month period. LAC has use of the aquatic center from 4 PM – 7 PM on weekdays and from 8:30 AM – 11 AM on Saturdays, according to a recent schedule posted on their website.
In December, we were contacted by Michael Lawrence, president of the Frisco-based non-profit 501(c)(3) swim team Frisco Aquatics (FA), who asked us to look into a conflict of interest by LISD Aquatic Director Donovan Coskey. Coach Coskey is listed on LAC’s website as their “Senior Assistant Coach – The Colony”, even including his LISD email address as his contact.
FA’s Lawrence alleges that Coskey, who formerly coached for FA on the side, left FA in March of 2009 to coach for LAC, then used his authority as the Aquatic Center director to terminate FA’s rental contract with the district. Both FA and LAC clubs had been renting swim lanes at the Aquatic Center, but according to a letter that former FA president Jeff Allen sent to LISD Superintendent Dr. Jerry Roy on July 16th, 2009, Coskey terminated the use of the Aquatic Center for FA, effective the end of July. Lawrence quotes an email from Coskey stating “I would be doing a disservice to my team (LAC) by limiting the space and time that is needed to build this program by giving needed space and time to another team.”
Lawrence goes on to allege that Coskey uses his position as a coach at both the Colony and Hebron high schools to encourage his athletes to join LAC for afternoon training sessions, and that LAC is giving Coskey financial incentives to grow the size of the LAC group at the Aquatic Center. Of the facility’s swimming lanes, FA was renting 6, and LAC was renting the rest. (We’re not sure the number of lanes, but we’ve heard 20)
A letter from LISD Athletic Director Randy Mayes on July 23rd to FA admitted that all LISD coaches are also involved with clubs, but characterized the contract termination as FA “opted out of their contract”, a statement denied by Lawrence:
“This is not true, when Donovan was the acting Head Coach of Frisco Aquatics, he (we) chose to take less lanes for April and May (due to a coach quitting at that facility) with the express indication that, with our new head coach (Dan McDonough) we would be renting all lanes as normal starting in June and July, which we did. During this time we also turned in two years worth of rental contracts to rent lanes from September 2009 - July 2011 which were never responded to. We rented throughout the summer and paid all of our bills and then were notified by Donovan at the end of July that we would not be allowed to rent from HIS facility any longer because his LAC team needs the space.”
Mayes denied that Coskey is receiving an incentive to recruit LISD students into the LAC program, and said that the decision to rent lanes to LAC was based on LAC having more LISD students than FA. “As a district, it seems more prudent to allow Lakeside Aquatics the pool time at the Aquatic Center, with only four LISD students in Frisco Aquatics.”
According to Lawrence, Coskey’s last day at FA was March 15th, but he turned in the request to rent fewer lanes for FA on March 13th, a request that Lawrence understood to be temporary in nature. Lawrence estimated that FA would have used 6 of the facility’s lanes, 3 hours per day, 23 days per month, at $5 per lane hour, which would have provided the district with $2070 per month in revenue.
We emailed Coskey on December 17th to get his side of the story, but he has not responded to our inquiry. Lawrence provided an email from Coskey to FA’s former President Jeff Allen dated July 11th in which Coskey stated:
“… The team has double [sic] since last year and we added over 50 swimmers within the past four month, and these swimmers don’t have parents that are officials. Whether you believe me or not, it was not an easy decision to make, but what I feel was in the best interest for my team”
(emphasis ours).
We also provided a copy of the FA letter to Dr. Roy to LISD Information Officer Karen Permetti, and asked her to look into the matter to see what she could find out about the issue. The next morning, Permetti offered this response, which appeared to be based on the Mayes letter:
“On Friday, March 13, 2009 Frisco Aquatics asked to be released from the facility agreement contract. The district granted this request. After Frisco Aquatics was released from the contract, Lakeside Aquatic Club modified its contract to absorb the practice lanes that Frisco Aquatics previously rented.
However, the district did work with Frisco Aquatics through the summer months as this organization needed assistance. After the summer, Frisco Aquatics wanted to reinstall its contact. This wasn't granted due to another organization absorbing the area that was previously rented.”
LISD staff members were on holiday for two weeks over Christmas and New Years break, so we wanted to give them time to research the matter and review whether any policies were broken. We spoke again with Permetti this last Friday, and she dismisses the accusations, saying that they’ve been investigated by the University Interscholastic League (UIL), Mayes, and LISD Human Resources, including Superintendent, Dr. Jerry Roy. Permetti said that FA’s former president, Jeff Allen was out to get Donovan Coskey fired because of their business dispute, and that they have lost all credibility with the district.
Permetti acknowledged that club sports such as this are big business and that most coaches are part of at least one club. By renting district facilities to clubs and other outside groups, any money collected over and above the extra marginal costs generally goes to the facility owner (school principal or athletic director) for any extras they want to buy. Permetti says that the district usually shoots to break even with non-profits, or make a small profit if renting to a for-profit.
We asked additional questions of Permetti though, based on what we perceive to be a strong appearance of a conflict-of-interest on Coskey’s part:
1) Is Coskey in a position to determine who can rent LISD facilities, and if so, would it be a conflict because in his capacity as a coach for LAC, he then benefits financially from those resources.
LISD Says: Permetti says that under district policy Coskey would have had to make a written disclosure to his supervisor, Randy Mayes, because of the potential conflict of interest in working for LAC. She states that the Athletic Director has veto power over the rental of any athletic facilities, but that final contracting authority goes through the LISD Purchasing department. (We’ve asked the district to provide these documents)
We Say: Looking at Coskey’s email quote above, in which he states “Whether you believe me or not, it was not an easy decision to make, but what I feel was in the best interest for my team” (emphasis ours), it shows two things: He was claiming the decision was his, and that his decision was based on the best interests of his [LAC] team.
2) Because Coskey is an LISD coach, is he thus is in a position of authority and influence to his students within LISD – presumably making grading decisions and deciding on who gets to participate in the program and its associated competitive events, his LAC interests could cloud his judgment or at the very least present the appearance of impropriety.
LISD Says: Permetti clarified that when Coskey works for LAC, he is not allowed to coach any kids who are in his programs with LISD, or in the feeder schools to those programs. In all cases, another coach would be on duty for those kids, and Coskey’s interactions with them would be limited to enforcing safety rules.
Under district policy, Coskey would not be allowed to mention LAC or in any way push or encourage participation in LAC to his students because it would represent a conflict of interest.
We Say: LISD’s policy against selling to students is good, and we hope it is enforced. There is really no way that we can verify one way or the other that it is being followed in Coskey’s personal interactions with his students. But the nature of the situation creates a temptation.
When we checked LAC’s website on Friday, Coskey’s LISD email address was in use for his contact information. In fact, Coskey was the only coach listed with a school email address.
We asked Permetti if we were to look at Coskey’s emails whether we would find that he had been conducting business for Lakeside. Permetti responded that she would hate to see the district get into that because everyone tends to use email for personal business from time to time, but that if they did so, they would look at a 30 day period most likely, to gauge how much of the conversation was related to his outside employment.
What you would not want to see there are conversations with other LISD employees – specifically with Mayes – discussing the LAC vs. FA rental issue. One would also not want to see any conversation with students or parents that suggest LAC or in any way endorse it.
In Summary
While we certainly don’t begrudge LISD employees their right to take a side job and earn some extra money, there is a big problem with this situation. Whether or not Coskey has authority on paper to rent out the aquatic center, he certainly is its manager, and by nature of his relationship with Mayes, he exercises de-facto control over the facility. He not only works for an outside employer, but one that does business with the district right where he works.
Since the district doesn’t auction off the extra lane hours, but instead has decided to award them all to one vendor at the expense of another, and since Permetti acknowledged to us that the prices are not set based on market rates, but rather on cost plus a profit, there is much room for discretion. We believe that discretion requires our public servants to have absolutely no personal stake in the matter.
If Coskey worked for neither FA nor LAC, nor any competitor of the two, then there would be no problem. Unfortunately, he has worked for both, even while directing the aquatic center. FA might not have had a problem with Coskey working for them while being on LISD payroll, but we do.
The bigger problem with all of this is the general attitude of “all coaches do this” that seems to permeate, regardless of how bad it looks. And although we can appreciate that we have athletic programs for our students, and that we can afford to give them nice facilities, we have to now ask whether the $13 million spent on the facility was a decision made based on the needs of the district, or whether the intent was also to support the club swimming industry.
It is only fair that taxpayers within the district have the right to use district facilities at a reasonable cost or free when they’re not in use for official district activities, but we have to ask now whether this one was over-built.
We think Coskey should step down from one of his jobs - either with the district or with LAC, or transfer locations so that his LISD work is at a location not rented by LAC, and his LAC work is not at a location rented from LISD.
We think that LISD's Board should look at rental policies and specifically address this situation so that in the future, no monopolies are allowed to be formed using district property - rather the swim lanes should be put up for bid with some fair process to assure that no companies are shut out, and that the district maximizes revenue.
LISD's administration needs to void LAC's current rental contract based on the conflict, and should get a 3rd party arbitrator to help settle the dispute. Policy should specifically state that all conflicts of interest and third party employment be made clear not just to the individual supervisor, but should be on file with administration so that administrators drawing up contracts have access to that information. For all we know, LISD purchasing may not have known Coskey worked for both sides of the deal.
Ongoing I have a feeling that after I publish this article, we'll have people decide to step forward and talk to us - either to dispute what's been alleged, or to bring new facts to light. I encourage this, and I encourage interested parties to login with your WhosPlayin account and click the option to be notified when new comments are posted. The object here is to get the truth. Since Donovan Coskey chose not to respond to our inquiry, we don't have his side of the story - just one damning email.
The comments are owned by the poster. We aren't responsible for their content.
Poster
Thread
Anonymous
Posted: 2010/1/12 20:53 Updated: 2010/1/12 21:52
Re: LISD Aquatic Director Conflict of Interest?
Interesting article but incomplete from your posting. Reading the PDFs tells a more complete story. You should have posted the rest of the Coskey email whereby he references threats and insults from J. Allen. There is definitely an agenda to this based on that and the late date you have chosen to run with this. These events occurred six months ago. Makes this reader wonder whose pocket you are in for rehashing yesterday's "news."
"Obviously your [sic] upset, but I would appreciate you keeping your insults and your threats to yourself. I would be concentrating more of your efforts with the FISD Natatorium since they are the one that is giving you the real squeeze."
If I didn't make it clear enough in the story, there was a business disagreement between Coskey and FA. FA felt that Coskey had a conflict of interest and was upset about the outcome. When I read "your threats", I was thinking he was referring to legal threats. If you have information to the contrary, lets hear it. We'd love to hear from Donovan Coskey.
The point of this story though, is not to say that one business should win over the other, but to point out what should be obvious, which is that if you have a public servant working for outside employers doing business with the district, you're going to have conflicts like this.
Although the events happened 6 months ago, the situation is ongoing, and has not been remedied or addressed. In a court, the statute of limitations would certainly be longer than 6 months, so I don't see why we should ignore it. The story only came to our attention in December.
For the record, neither WhosPlayin.com nor myself personally have any financial relationship whatsoever with any party in this story other than LISD, to which we pay property taxes.
Poster
Thread
Anonymous
Posted: 2010/1/13 11:54 Updated: 2010/1/13 17:52
Re: LISD Aquatic Director Conflict of Interest?
Permetti says that under district policy Coskey would have had to make a written disclosure to his supervisor, Randy Mayes, because of the potential conflict of interest in working for LAC….but that final contracting authority goes through the LISD Purchasing department. Would anyone be interested in knowing that when the LISD Purchasing Department was contacted they knew nothing of the Frisco Aquatics situation and were told to contact the Head of Maintenance? When the Head of Maintenance was contacted she said most rental application decisions are made at the pool level (unless there is a conflict of interest). It appears once the pool manager approves an application, the application, if done properly, is sent to the Head of Maintenance who finalizes the contract. The LISD Purchasing department has nothing to do with the process and is far from the final contracting authority. It appears that even the LISD is confused about the chain of command in this tangled web of conflicted interests. When the Head of Maintenance was asked if the Frisco Aquatics rental applications through 2011 were received, the answer was no. So now it appears that after Morgan Peele (pool manager) verbally agreed that space was available for Frisco Aquatics to rent lanes at the LISD facility during the application period, the rental applications never made it by Mr. Coskey to send to the Head of Maintenance. Mr. Coskey apparently squashed the Frisco Aquatics applications so HIS team (LAC) would not have a competing team at HIS pool (as far as I know this is not the Donovan Coskey Aquatic Center, it is the the LISD Aquatic Center). Mr. Coskey didn’t notify the Athletic Director, the Superintendent, the Purchasing Department or the Head of Maintenance of these competing rental applications. He apparently single handedly rejected the Frisco Aquatics applications even though the LISD Employment Requirements and Restrictions related to Conflict of Interest state “an employee shall disclose in writing to his or her immediate supervisor any outside employment that in any way creates a potential conflict of interest with the proper discharge of assigned duties or responsibilities….” If Mr. Coskey did not forward Frisco Aquatics rental applications to the Head of Maintenance, it appears he did not discharge his assigned duties or responsibilities as required by the conflict of interest policy.
In response to a public information request from WhosPlayin, we received three documents today, which we've made available here:
1. We asked for the compensation, job title, and duties of Donovan Coskey, including number of scheduled class hours per week. We receivedthis document, which appears to be a job description. (No compensation is listed)
2. We asked for copies of any disclosures that Coskey had made to his supervisor as required by policy DBD Local, which states in part:
NONSCHOOL EMPLOYMENT An employee shall disclose in writing to his or her immediate supervisor any outside employment that in any way creates a potential conflict of interest with the proper discharge of assigned duties and responsibilities or with the best interest of the District.
3. We asked for Use Agreements with Lakeside Aquatic Club for periods 2009 and later.
We received this LISD Pool Reservation Application, which covers the period 8-31-09 to 6-12-10. The document, which requests 16 lanes at $3 per hour, was submitted in the name of Nina Arnett, but the pool manager signature shows "D. Coskey". Remember we were told that Coskey would have to recuse himself from the entire deal.
The document also has this disclaimer:
This document is NOT a contract and does not obligate the signers in any contractual obligations. LISD Facility Services will forward a rental agreement to the renter, secure the required documentation and instruct the renter on fees due and the appropriate remittance address.
Under this pricing, LAC was to rent 272 lane/hours per week, which would provide the district with $876 per week in revenue. (Custodial and lifeguard fees might be extra - not clear from the document)
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LISD Aquatics - Documents Received
