news-record.com

NG knew what he was like when they hired him. They're just as culpable.
I read somewhere that in a septic tank the biggest chunks rise to the top.
Draw what conclusions you may.

This is why we need a complete overhaul of how school athletics are run. Remove the blatant conflicts of interest.

Wouldn't it just be easier not hiring them. Tell them to apply at the Greensboro Fire or Police Department. They will be lowering the standards for applicants soon. You'll see.

What does he teach?

How many classes?

It truly amazes me how day after day, the ethics police of the Triad come to comment on issues they absolutely know nothing about. From the outside you continue to look in, trying to find any reason to bring down or destroy someone that is not up to your standards or does not perform in a manner that you think that they should. It even gets to the point that you feel as if eliminating high school sports or competitive sports on any level is necessary and will solve this problem of alleged recruiting and wrongdoing. Please remove the stick from your posterior and realize that these coaches are not the reasons for the problems that this school system is facing.

Yes, these coaches visibility has made them a target. Some of the quotes and interviews have been a little over the top and overdone but in this TMZ age, does anything really surprise you anymore? My concern is about what the others who are operating behind closed doors are doing. The ones whose secret shadows have not yet come to light due to the fact that you feel that this issue is definitely more important than others over the years that in my opinion have been more disturbing. In school systems across the country, teachers and administrators have been accused of changing grades, molesting students, drunken driving, drug abuse, domestic abuse, sleeping with each other inside the school and the list goes on. These issues do not get half as much play as some of the athletic issues and I am curious why. Let's see the court documents, emails, and evaluations from these types of incidents if they have happened in Guilford County. I heard someone say that ethics depends on who is using the word and in many cases, I believe that to be true. Personal agendas, jealousy, and hatred are not the proper motives to get positive results from any sort of investigation.

I am not a defender of wrong. If you make a mistake, then you should accept the consequences. What I do disagree with is this daily poking and prodding by people who act as if they have never done anything wrong in their lives. It drives me absolutely crazy! It is so easy to throw stones at Coach Bloom and Coach Kowalewski. I have never seen a glass house but would really like to visit yours sometime:) It is highly unlikely that the public will get full disclosure on this case or any other case having to do with the school system so please let this process play out so the county can move on.

““We were very upfront with (Bloom) before he came here of the procedures we have here and how we handle things,” Kidd said. “He understands that.””

“Bloom informed Northwest Guilford officials of the Florida investigation last summer during his interview, said Northwest Guilford athletics director John Hughes.”

This says we knew all this and hired him anyway. Worse, Human Resources let him.
He promised not to steal.

This Principal just got promoted to Regional Superintendent.
A man of good judgment.
Doesn’t that make you feel good.

Isn’t this the coach that complained about Stan

“There are other people in Palm Beach County that were making as much or more money than me and were giving little or nothing back to their program,” he said.

I call this the I was not the only Nazi defense

Don't you just love it...

These guy give honest coaches a bad name.

I agree with the transfer policy of sitting out for a year. That in itself would probably solve nearly all of the recruiting issues.

It's funny how the defenders of these idiots always say 'jealous' or 'we worked harder than anyone else.' To me, the jealousy is knowing that most people are doing things the right way and that these clowns are cheating and winning. If that is jealousy, so be it.
I also love the 'hard work' bomb....win with the players that you have we will believe that one.

"So what issues do you think we should be commenting on? What skeletons are hiding in closets that you know about and we don't? Remove the stick from your own ass. The freedom of citizens to criticize and complain about corruption in government is what makes our system actually work."

"I still haven't heard the sports "defenders" propose any kind of solution to the problem of cheating and recruiting in high school sports. Until I hear one from you, then I will go on being the ethics police--because someone sure needs to."

Panacea -

No need for the hostility. Debate is good and healthy. I know this type of conversation does not go on at the Star Trek conventions that you normally attend. Vulcan sports aren't quite on this level, but I digress.

As a proud advocate of athletics on the high school level, it does not make sense to remove it from our school setting. Athletics gives those who choose to participate an opportunity to become disciplined, experience team building, and set goals. It is when we as adults use selfish motives to advance our own agendas that the purity of high school athletics becomes tainted. As many are quick to point the blame at these coaches for flashing their money and using charm to influence others, they are only 1/3 of the problem. In my opinion the blame is shared by the school system and most importantly the parents of these young men and women.

I am sure that a gun is not being pointed at these parents that allow their kids to transfer solely due to athletics. I tend to hear that parents want their children to transfer due to "academic reasons", which is to me their right to do, but really in the case of Northern Guilford, what type of academic standards have you really set in less than three years? If people would just be honest, maybe some would be more willing to accept their true reasoning for transfer. Some of these parents and kids could care less about the school they attend. They are there because of the coach and the sport. You see this on the collegiate level all the time. When the coach leaves, the kids leave. As these kids are considered minors, they are not making these decisions on their own. There is a pattern of this not only in Guilford County but across the state.

As a child I attended elementary and middle school outside of my district. My parents had to go the school system's main office in order to fill out the proper paperwork in order for my brother and I to attend school in another district. That paperwork was reviewed and approved by a school system official out of the main office. I would assume that this still rings true in many areas across the state. Is this the case in Guilford County? Guilford County does have a Student Reassignment office so someone has to be approving these transfers. Is this system in GCS flawed as well?

Ideally we would all like to live in a world that is non corrupt and full of good people with good intentions but that is not the world that we live in. The people who are under the scope of this investigation are human as well as those who are conducting it. Emotions, pride, subjective thinking, he said/she said, are all apart of this process whether you choose to believe it or not. This investigation has become more of a pissing contest in the media as opposed to a strategic way of controlling a problem that has existed years before this new administration has taken over. Notice I said "controlling" and not "eliminating" because the culture is now such that it would take an act of Congress to do away with it totally.

While the school system's logic for implementing some of the plans to curb this sounds good, I am just curious how they plan to police it? They have done a less than stellar job of policing the policy that is currently in place. Telling a coach that is on a seasonal basis what they can or can't do out of season seems illogical without a contract in place. Normally in some of these AAU, USSSA, YBOA, etc settings, the head coach of a team is normally not the head coach at the high school. This duty may be delegated to an assistant, a parent, and the list goes on. No big deal if a head coach or a member of their staff can't coach a team. They will just find a buddy or someone else to do it and still talk to the kids or send messages. So what that they can not coach the age group that they coach during the year. Some coaches will just coach a team of middle school kids and try to influence them to come to their high school. Coaching kids of the same age group extends to basketball camps as well. Basketball camps are a great source of revenue but if a coach can not coach a certain age group for fear that he will try to influence that kid to attend his school then are you not infringing on his right to earn money or to work during the off season? Is the school system going to spend valuable resources that can be going back into our classrooms to police a bunch of AAU coaches?

I am so glad that GCS is working hard to overhaul things but it is certainly going to take a lot of effort. This is not a quick fix and it won't happen over night. The coaches are not solely to blame for the mess that is in front of us but their failures in certain areas will provide us an opportunity to get it right.

Also that principal( that is now a regional super)ended up having to fire the teacher he should not have hired in the first place a few months later.This is from a previous post as a reply to the hiring of the NW basketball coach. For some reason I was denied editing to my own post above earlier.

These coaches are very similar to the little league parents who berate officials because they are trying to remove their own athletic failures of the past through their five year olds. Parents should do their research...academic scholarships outweigh athletic scholorships exponentially. Athletics should be about the spirit of competition and having a good time...coaches and parents have ruined it by trying to turn it into a cash windfall. And be honest, your kid just ain't that good...but he is smart. Have him/her focus on the classroom. Would not it be great to see an English teacher make $250,000.00 for tutoring over the summer?