Jose de Wit
SUN Staff Writer
A father and son team of disgruntled Española School District athletics boosters has launched a range of complaints against Española Valley High School Athletic Director David Fontaine.
The subjects of the complaints range from failing to address student sexual misconduct to using physical force to discipline a student.
Damon Salazar, a self-described long-time supporter of student athletics, attended a Sept. 17 School Board meeting to dispute Fontaine’s decision to ban Salazar from Española middle school athletic events and to complain about an incident in which Fontaine allegedly used force to discipline Salazar’s daughter, a high school student and volleyball player.
Salazar distributed to Board members a contract Fontaine required him to sign as a condition for attending any future middle school athletic events. Salazar refused to sign the contract.
In the contract, Fontaine accuses Salazar of slandering District coaching staff and of “unacceptable” behavior at athletic events. The contract would have bound Salazar to make only positive comments during athletic events, or else risk expulsion from future events.
“You will not be admitted to any (high school or middle school) home event as a spectator until this document is signed and dated,” Fontaine wrote in the contract. “Any violation provides just cause for the school to exclude or evict you from athletic-related events under our jurisdiction.”
According to the contract, when Fontaine declined to hire Salazar as head girls volleyball coach in May, Salazar began making “statements and actions (that) appear to have been intentionally designed to subvert the efforts of the (high school) coaching staff.”
“You have chosen to make statements about your not being hired by tying it to your ethnicity,” Fontaine wrote in the contract. “You should know that it is (to use the term you recently applied to me) idiotic.”
The current head girls volleyball coach, Gary Maskaly, was hired in May. Salazar applied for, but did not get, the job, Superintendent David Cockerham said.
The contract forbids Salazar from being in the middle school gym during sports practices and from communicating with coaches or students.
Salazar said Fontaine rescinded the contract and allowed Salazar to continue attending games after a Sept. 25 meeting with Cockerham.
There was no way I was going to sign (the contract),” Salazar said. “It was full of inaccuracies and innuendo and a whole bunch of stuff that I can’t even believe they put in writing, but I’ll leave it at that. But they rescinded the whole thing because they didn’t have any evidence.”
Fontaine referred all questions to the superintendent. Cockerham confirmed only that he met with Fontaine and Salazar, and that Salazar is now allowed to attend games.
“The other issue, that still hasn’t been resolved,” Salazar said.
Salazar declined to comment on that other issue, but said in the Sept. 17 meeting that Fontaine had disciplined his daughter by striking her with a ball.
“I’m still pursuing that. But nothing’s happened at this point,” Salazar said. “I’m giving them time to make their investigation.”
Freddie Salazar, who until the summer of 2007 was the District’s C Team girls basketball coach, brought to the same Board meeting, but did not distribute to Board members, an email he sent in January 2007 to Fontaine and former girls basketball coach Nadine Trujillo about sexual behavior among team members. Freddie Salazar is Damon Salazar’s father, he said.
According to the email, Salazar, then employed as an assistant girls basketball coach, witnessed two incidents during away games that disturbed him.
One involved a trip to Belen, during which “four of our female players were caught in a sexual act between each other,” the email reads.
The other happened on a trip to Las Vegas, where the boys and girls basketball teams traveled to raise funds. Salazar said in the email that he saw two girls on the team “engaged in passionate kissing and embrace” at the entrance of the girls locker room.
Salazar said the purpose of the mail was to protect the eighth- and ninth-grade students he was supervising from “some, not all upper classmates on the basketball team (who) are promoting (or manipulating) the younger girls to engage or to do sexual acts.”
In his letter, Salazar asks Fontaine for guidance on how to handle such incidents and suggested policies should be written to address sexual behavior among team members.
“Something should be done before the parents find out that this is happening to their child,” Salazar wrote.
According to Salazar, Fontaine told him the issue was a middle school problem, and should stay at the middle school. Beyond that, Fontaine ignored Salazar’s letter, Salazar said.
Asked about the letter, Cockerham questioned how Salazar could have witnessed the alleged sexual activity.
“What was he, in the girls locker room or something?” Cockerham said. “‘Cause that’s an issue right there.”
Cockerham said he had no knowledge of Salazar’s letter or the incidents it describes, but said current District policies address “sexual misbehavior” among students.
The District’s policy handbook forbids “lewd/sexual behavior” among students, and outlines a process that involves parents and District staff to deal with such incidents. Salazar said that process has not been followed, and wants a stronger policy.
“I just want those policies done,” Salazar said. “There’s no way of knowing what a coach should do in a situation like that.”