External Coach Hiring/Screening Information

External coaches (those not employed as a teacher at a school) should look at the following information about how they can get staffed and hired by CPS Human Resources as a miscellaneous employee.

This will be something that the following schools should focus on, since all have stipend money currently set aside at the school in a budget line (“bucket”) marked for a miscellaneous (“non-teacher”) employee, i.e., external coach:

Alcott
Amundsen
Douglass
Hope
Hyde Park
Juarez
Kelvyn Park
Kenwood
Lane Tech
Morgan Park
Northside
Payton
Prosser
Schurz
Von Steuben
Westinghouse
Whitney Young

Please start with the External Coach Screening Recommendations, they’ll outline the steps you’ll need to take and answer almost any questions you’ll have. Please look at this document first, then contact David with any follow-up questions.

Then you’ll need the screening information and forms for your referral form (indicating the school has agreed to hire you) and drug/TB screening.

Reminder: don’t go to the CPS HR office unless you have all forms completed and have completed the drug/TB test at one of the approved locations or have a plan to do so within 72 hours – you’ll be turned away and waste a trip.

When you meet with a school administrator to fill out your referral form, you should also have them sign and agree to the External Coach Job Agreement, which is not a form used by or related to your CPS HR screening process, but one which will be helpful in ensuring you and the school are on the same page with your responsibilities and payment.

When you have followed the steps and are ready to make your visit to the CPS HR office at 320 N. Elizabeth, you can bring the “new hire” forms, which you can fill out there when you get fingerprinted for your background check. These are only filled out once they’ve told you you’ll be staffed and have everything in order – the Recommendations document reminds you to bring 2 forms of state ID as well.

We’re very aware that this has been a difficult, frustrating process for some external coaches in past years and that some had difficulty getting paid or did not receive compensation due to a lack of necessary information. In response, we have been working closely with the CPS HR office to help make sure you have all the information you need here and they’ve agreed to allow us to schedule days where our external coaches would meet up as a group and go with David to the HR office (see Recommendations document for dates/times if you’re interested).

External coaches have to be formally hired by the school they coach at. This means by the Principal of that school — the Principal is the boss of the school. External coaches work for their local school, for their local principal. External coaches do not work for, nor are they paid by, the Chicago Debate League.

External coaches should meet with their principals once per quarter, to discuss the progress they are making working with that principal’s school’s students on academic debate. These are meetings that the external coach will have to arrange — in some cases with help from the teacher-coach, but with or without help the meetings (even if they are very brief and informal) should happen.

External coaches will work with the local school’s business manager most directly in the process of their collecting their payment, submitting timesheets for the time they spend at practices, meetings, and tournaments.

The Chicago Debate Commission is committed to working with our external coaches to help them through this important “human resources” process because we know that external coaches are a valuable asset to the CDL in offering experience and technical debate expertise, in addition to their interest in working with CDL debaters. We are committed to seeing all external coaches rightfully paid for the time you dedicate to helping CDL debaters.

We have complete folders prepared with all the necessary forms (attached in electronic form to this posting) that can be mailed to the home address of any external coach requesting it – please contact Forrest about this.

Please contact David if you have any problems following this process or with any subsequent issues.