Ferrero Expects to Be Rehired at Valley : Laid-Off Coach Intends to Lead Football Team, Even If It Takes an End-Around

Less than a month before the start of school, Valley College is without a head football coach.

One way or another, however, Chuck Ferrero will be in charge by the start of the season, said Valley Athletic Director George Goff on Tuesday.

The appointment will become official if the Los Angeles Community College District passes a resolution that would allow teachers from outside the physical education department to coach teams. Ferrero and Jim Stephens, women’s basketball coach at Valley, are among the teachers currently barred from coaching a team.

The delay is the result of faculty layoffs in the district; six PE instructors and 23 part-time coaches, including Ferrero and Stephens, have been furloughed since June 30.

By the end of the week, the district is expected either to allow its nine schools to hire coaches or announce the elimination of programs that do not have a full-time physical education instructor as coach.

Valley cannot wait for the decision, Goff said.

“Chuck Ferrero will be our coach. We made that decision from the beginning,” Goff said.

“No question about it,” Ferrero said. “There are a couple of different plans, but I will be coaching the team.”

If Ferrero is not rehired for his seventh season as Valley coach, the school has considered at least one option that would give him control of the program. A full-time instructor could be named head coach and Ferrero named his assistant. “That would be a last resort,” Goff said.

Goff also expects to rehire Stevens, although a standby plan similar to Ferrero’s might be hard to create.

To stay at Valley after his layoff, Ferrero used his secondary teaching credential to join the science department. Teaching outside the PE department, however, jeopardizes his chance to be head coach. The position must first be offered to full-time PE teachers before other laid-off personnel can be considered, Goff said.

Valley and Harbor will be the only football programs in the district this season; there were six last season.

Goff says he wishes the district would have acted more quickly.

“If you want to do away with a sport, you let people know the day after the season ends,” he said.

“The district has waited almost until the day before the session begins and still hasn’t made a decision. They think that the day before the season is supposed to open that people mysteriously start to show up and we play football.”