Robert Garrett has the best job in America. He goes on his computer each day from home, checks in and that’s all he’s required to do to get a full paycheck from the Los Angeles Unified School District.
It’s called “teacher jail” but at home.
“Who got it better than me,” he said.
March will mark the eighth consecutive month in which he’s been getting paid to stay home. The City Section’s winningest football coach with 300 career wins and a longtime P.E. teacher at Crenshaw High was placed on administrative leave last August on the eve of Crenshaw’s football opener.
Nothing has happened since.
The district supposedly has 120 days to make a decision but that’s not really a deadline based on past cases.
“Who knows, who cares,” Garrett said by phone. “It’s a good deal. It’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me. I haven’t had a break in 45 years.”
The LAUSD can apparently take as long as it wants to bring a conclusion to its investigation. Without him, Crenshaw still made it to the City Section Open Division football final.
But who knows how many students this school year have lost out on receiving a lesson from Garrett, who’s been head coach since 1988 and has been an important figure in the Crenshaw community.
Nike had a celebration of Crenshaw High.
(Robert S. Helfman)
Has Crenshaw forgotten about Garrett’s contributions? Nike, the shoe company, took over the campus recently re-making the gymnasium, cleaning all the banners hanging from the walls, putting up signs and using the auditorium to make it a shoe store.
There’s a little inconsistency going on, the LAUSD allowing Nike to show off Crenshaw while one of its most successful coaches and teachers is banned from campus.
If LAUSD intends to keep this going on and on, Garrett is fine with it.
“It that’s the plan, let’s roll with it,” he said. “I haven’t heard nothing about anything. That’s OK. I have no complaints. I take the bitter with the sweet. I take the good with the bad. I take the ups with the downs. I’m resilient. I was born to coach. That’s my gift. I was put on this earth to coach. That’s the reason I went to college.”
LAUSD has so many teachers on administrative leave at any one time (probably hundreds) that there’s no real deadline for decisions being made. Former Huntington Park basketball coach Joe Reed was out for 14 months before being cleared but the school didn’t give him his basketball coaching position back, only his teaching position. Until a policy change in 2014, teachers would have to show up at a district office and stay eight hours each day.
That’s when it was known as “teacher jail.” Now they get to stay home.
One of the more interesting situations involved former Monroe and Granada Hills basketball coach Don Loperena, who the district tried to fire but then had to rehire after a judge ruled in his favor during an arbitration hearing. He went from teacher jail with pay to six months without pay until winning his case.
Yes, complaints should be investigated, but something tells me in the case of Garrett, whenever his situation is finalized, he’s going to get his job back if he wants it and whether the district apologizes or not, he’s going to leave with his head held high knowing he did his best every day to make a difference in the lives of students, whether they liked him or not.
About the only certainty for this fall is that Garrett will return to coaching.
“I will be coaching somewhere, somehow,” he said. “I will be coaching on someone’s sideline — even if it’s Pop Warner.”
