The school district has spent seven months and more than $20,000
investigating the Gilroy High girls’ head basketball coach after
parents of a player alleged religious discrimination.
GILROY – The school district has spent seven months and more than $20,000 investigating the Gilroy High girls’ head basketball coach after parents of a player alleged religious discrimination.
Ed and Lisa Foster – parents of GHS junior Lindsey Foster – filed a complaint Feb. 6 with Gilroy Unified School District asking for Coach Susan Shapiro to be removed for “bullying, harassment, retaliation, (and) intimidation.” Those charges stemmed, the Fosters said, from the coach retaliating against their daughter after the player missed a preseason practice to attend a confirmation class.
“I’m fighting for my daughter’s justice,” Ed Foster said. “There was no reason for her to be sent to the bench, humiliated in front of teammates constantly and not getting a chance to go to college just because of a religious choice to go to confirmation.”
Shapiro said it’s a matter of the parents trying to play by their own rules.
“I treat the kids fair across the board. The Fosters just couldn’t deal with the fact their daughter wasn’t the star of the team,” she said.
Both the family and Shapiro said they would sue the district if the conflict was not resolved in their favor.
The scope of the district’s investigation – which has not been fully released to the public or to the parties involved – has eaten up time, resources and money for everyone involved. The district hired an attorney to investigate, as well as an independent observer from San Benito High School to monitor and report on Shapiro and Lindsey Foster’s behavior at practices and games, following the first of three complaints.
Virginia Calderon, the district’s legal counsel, interviewed more than 40 people for the initial investigation, which included pulling players on the varsity and junior varsity teams out of class.
Superintendent Deborah Flores said a resolution was delayed by two more complaints filed with the district on May 11 – one by Tina Steele, mother of fellow GHS junior Laura Steele, and a second by the Fosters.
“It has taken a while, but it’s not completely out of the norm,” Flores said. “I’ve been involved in several coaching situations. They do take several months.”
Flores said she didn’t know how much the total investigation will cost the school district and would not guess. She expects the investigation to finish next week.
Calderon’s firm, Garcia Calderon Ruiz, charged the district about $16,000 for an undisclosed number of hours relating to the first complaint’s investigation. Susan Rojcewicz, a counselor at San Benito High School who played on the 1975 U.S. team in the Pan Am Games and went on to become the head women’s basketball coach at the University of San Francisco, was paid $3,326 by the district for more than 100 hours spent monitoring the team.
“I think it’s a lot of money, but I think it’s our duty that when we get a complaint we investigate it,” trustee Denise Apuzzo said. “When somebody complains and they’re alleging serious things, we can’t just ignore it. If we don’t (investigate) and it turns out the allegations are true, it will end up costing the district quite a bit of money.”
Shapiro said she earns $2,300 a season for coaching the team. She owns and operates All-Pro Bail Bonds in Gilroy with her husband, Gary Cates.
She said she has hired an attorney, and will sue if she is not brought back to coach next season.
“If this was just a job I would walk away tomorrow, but I owe the kids who have been playing for me since seventh grade,” Shapiro said. She is studying to get her Masters in Coaching Education and is intent on coaching at the next level.
“This is the foundation for me to go to college and coach. In no way will I let this lie.”
Shapiro also oversees a local Amateur Athletic Union club team called the Lady Titans, which showcases almost all of Gilroy’s players at tournaments during the offseason. Lindsey Foster used to play for Shapiro’s club teams and both the family and coach said they were on friendly terms before this past season.
In a letter sent to GHS Principal James Maxwell in April of last year, Ed and Lisa Foster lobbied for Shapiro to be hired.
“Susan has helped developed so many girls to make them better ball players, better persons and to make the right choices in life. She is a role model, friend and mentor to these girls,” they wrote.
Shapiro said the conflict arose when Lindsey Foster was not selected as a team captain.
The Fosters said the conflict started when Shapiro sent an “inappropriate” text message to Lindsey Foster after being informed that the player would be missing a full preseason practice for a confirmation class. The original agreement between Shapiro, who is also Catholic, and Lindsey Foster was for her to miss part of practice. The parents met twice with GHS Athletic Director Jack Daley to get the matter resolved, leading to Shapiro eventually changing practice times to accommodate Foster’s schedule.
The situation deteriorated over the next few weeks. Ed and Lisa Foster said Shapiro held a vendetta against their daughter, who has hopes of playing in college, and began to retaliate through verbal harassment and reduced playing time. The parents also complained about preferential treatment for other players’ religious obligations.
Daley passed the school’s investigation over to Principal James Maxwell in December.
Unhappy with Maxwell’s response, Ed and Lisa Foster took the matter to the district in February.
“We were hoping for … [Shapiro] to be dismissed,” Lisa Foster said. “We were told by Mr. Maxwell that couldn’t happen because it’s hard to get rid of a coach during the season. He was just telling us that thinking we were going away and not going forward with it.”
In an April 16 three-page letter from Flores to the Fosters summarizing the first investigation, Shapiro was found to have broken rules against recruiting and shown favoritism to certain players but did not exhibit religious discrimination toward Lindsey Foster. In fact, a follow-up letter on May 26 from Flores to the Fosters states that statistical data supported the coach’s distribution of playing time and that the coach actually showed favoritism to Lindsey Foster, among other players.
Unhappy with the conclusions of the first complaint and that Calderon’s firm is general counsel for the district, Ed and Lisa Foster filed an appeal to the California Department of Education.
“We were told when we made the (original) complaint it would be an independent investigation and it wasn’t,” Lisa Foster said. “They got their own people to do it. That comes from them not wanting to admit wrongdoing.”
The Fosters’ second district complaint claims Shapiro told another GHS coach that Lindsey Foster and Laura Steele would be cut from next year’s team.
Ed Foster said the family’s legal bills already total “thousands of dollars.”
“If she’s not (dismissed), we’ll have to talk to our attorney on which way to go,” he said.
Tina Steele, whose complaint is of a similar nature to the second district complaint filed by the Fosters, said she has no intention of filing a lawsuit, but “there would have to be some changes” for her daughter to play on a GHS team coached by Shapiro next season.
