Pierce Gets Approval to Bring Back 2 Programs

The Los Angeles Community College District has approved faculty transfers that will allow Pierce College to hire coaches and reinstate its football and men’s basketball programs, vice chancellor Virginia Mulrooney said Wednesday.

As a result, Pierce is expected to have both programs in place for the 1987-1988 school year.

Mulrooney said the district, after almost two months of negotiations, resolved potential conflicts with the faculty union over the proposed transfers. Two physical education instructors were laid off in June, thus prohibiting transfers of other instructors under the faculty contract.

Both instructors, however, are expected to be offered teaching assignments in the spring semester, eliminating the ban on transfers.

“The go-ahead has been given to the colleges,” Mulrooney said.

Mulrooney said that Pierce can hire a full-time instructor from any of the district’s nine colleges to coach the football and men’s basketball teams, providing it can arrange a faculty exchange with the school from which it selects its candidate. The matter will be handled by campus presidents, Mulrooney said.

Pierce President David Wolf said Tuesday that Steve Butler, an instructor at West Los Angeles College, would be offered the football job pending district approval. Jim Stephens, coach of the women’s basketball team at Valley College, will be offered the men’s basketball position, Wolf said.

Both programs were dropped in June as a result of a tight intercollegiate athletics budget and, in football, by the absence of a coach following Jim Fenwick’s resignation in February. Fenwick, who teaches at Valley, left the Pierce job to become a volunteer assistant at Cal State Northridge.

Butler, a former head coach at Crespi High and Valley, has been informally canvassing Valley area high schools to begin the recruiting process, Wolf said.