Alabama baseball coach resigns after texting with a student during school hours
A high school baseball coach resigned rather than face more devastating punishment after stepping over the line on social media, where he reportedly sent text messages to a student.
As reported by the Tennessee Valley NBC affiliate WHNT, Marshall County (Al.) Brindlee Mountain High head baseball coach Nick Garner resigned after accusations emerged that he had sent text messages to a student. While one might assume that the messages sent were broadly inappropriate, there’s no firm indication that’s the case. Rather, officials investigated both Garner’s phone and that of the unnamed student involved and reportedly found no inappropriate texts whatsoever.
Still, Brindlee Mountain has a strict no cell phone policy, which led the Marshall County Superintendent to confront Garner about the messages. Rather than face a longer investigation and potential punishment from the Marshall County School Board, Garner sent in his letter of resignation.
“We just got a report that he had been texting, and then it just kind of filtered in that it was a student involved. We just told him that we weren’t going to put up with that, and he resigned,” Marshall County Superintendent Tim Nabors told WHNT.
“If there is what we feel like is a desperate need [for a deeper investigation] then we’ll pursue it further … Anything like that we turn into the state department and then if there’s anything further investigation that goes on, they’ll do that.”
Those vagaries clear up little when it comes to the nature and frequency of Garner’s texts, but that matters little now. The immediate aftermath of the coach’s actions leave the school short a head baseball coach and assistant football coach in the middle of the 2013 season, with little time to find a full replacement for either post.
And all because of the use of a cell phone on school grounds by a teacher.
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