BOE Eyeing Changes to Manchester High's Indoor Track Policy (Again)

Students may soon be running in the halls of Manchester High School again.

With permission, of course.

At least that’s what a majority of the Board of Education indicated they favored after hearing an update on the status of the high school’s indoor track team as part of its meeting Monday evening.

The presentation was given by Athletic Director Lindsey Boutilier, indoor track coach Steve O’Reilly, and a pair of soon-to-be-senior runners, Jesse Robinson and Jackie Ofria, as a follow-up to a disappointing season and a controversial, abrupt eleventh hour decision by Superintendent Kathleen Ouellette late last year to for safety reasons.

“This year was a difficult year in many ways for our indoor track athletes and coaches,” said Boutilier.

After the policy change, the team had to cobble together a workout schedule through the winter that sometimes saw them , at other times running outdoors, or conditioning in the school’s pool, weight room or gym.

Boutilier said the busing and rental fees for the Star Hill Facility alone cost an additional $4,000, which likely would have been even greater if the team had not lost a month of practice time to uncertainty at the beginning of the season and 10 of its planned 26 practice days at Star Hill to inclement weather.

Robinson and Ofria told the school board that there were both positives and negatives to having to ride a bus to Star Hill for practices, but that they, and most of their teammates, felt that the negatives far outweighed the positives.

“It wasn’t a good experience on the buses,” said Robinson, who added that the buses would often arrive late or with faulty equipment like windows that would not close or no heat.

Robinson said that in the previous season the boys and girls teams had 83 total participants and 14 all-conference athletes, compared to 55 participants and no all-conference selections in the season that just passed.

Those numbers are even more startlingly when contrasted with the school’s outdoor track teams: , while several .

Ofria said the uncertainty surrounding the team’s training schedule discouraged many would-be participants, while the lack of a stable training regiment hurt the athletes who did take part.

“There were some days if we didn’t know the day before if we were going to be outside, in the pool, or at Star Hill,” she said.

Several members of the school board said they would support revisiting or adjusting the recent policy change to allow the students to again practice inside the halls of the high school, even members who initially supported the change like Republican Michael Rizzo, who said he did so because of safety concerns.

“I think we did something too rash and quick last year,” Rizzo said. “We should have gone through the process to determine (if this was the best thing), rather than just shut it off.”

Board of Education Chairman Chris Pattacini reminded members that it wasn’t a vote from the school board that led to the change in the first place, but a recommendation from the superintendent.

“I think that the board would be able to override a decision of the administration, certainly, but I think the decision is ultimately with the administration,” he said.

Several board members asked for the matter to be placed back on the agenda after the start of next school year, although they asked that it come up in early September to avoid the situation that happened last year where members of the team weren’t sure where they were going to be able to practice at the start of the season because of the uncertainty with the team’s practice policy.

“The fact of the matter is the numbers are down and there’s no denying it,” said Michael Crockett, a Republican member of the school board who attributed the lack of indoor track participation to the change in the team’s practice situation.