West Deptford School Board OKs New Handbooks for Coaches, Athletes

athletic director Tim Cammarota has one less thing to worry about now.

Instead of cobbling together policies and a department philosophy from all over the place when a new coach comes in, Cammarota can just grab the new coaches’ handbook approved by the West Deptford school board Monday night.

The handbook is less a sea change in the athletic department than it is a streamlining and simplifying of all those different ideas into one document, Superintendent Kevin Kitchenman said.

“We just took a lot of different processes and procedures that we've had in place...and codified them all into one handbook,” he said. “We've had something before, but this is kind of modified and cleaned up to make it more consistent.”

Now, Kitchenman said, there’s essentially a go-to spot for everything a newcomer needs to know about being a coach in West Deptford.

And to go along with that, the board also approved a new student athletic handbook, which school board President Christopher Strano said should put all the sports at the high school on roughly the same standards.

“Overall, we just wanted to have a little continuity between programs,” Strano said.

The student handbook lays out standards of conduct and consequences, which Strano said aims to eliminate favoritism going in.

“Everybody knows going in what the penalty could be or what the consequence could be for any action,” he said.