STARKVILLE — The Starkville School Board is expected to make a decision tonight about who will coach Starkville High School’s baseball team this season.
Starkville High School Athletic Director Stan Miller said Monday he has a “couple of proposals” regarding the job of the school’s baseball coach, which came open Sept. 30, 2011, when longtime coach Danny Carlisle retired as a teacher at the school. Miller said he will submit the proposals to board for it to examine tonight, and that he hopes the board will give the OK which direction it wants to go and that it will make a decision about who will coach the program no later than tonight.
“I can’t tell you what is going to come out of the meeting because I don’t know,” Miller said.
No person who is being paid a retirement allowance, or a pension after retirement under Article 3 of the Mississippi Code of 1972, as amended, shall be employed or paid for any service by the State (sic) of Mississippi or any of its departments, agencies, or subdivisions participating in the Retirement System, including services as an employee, contract worker, contractual employee or independent contractor, until the retired person has been retired for not less than ninety (90) consecutive days from his or her effective date of retirement. After the person has been retired for not less than ninety (90) consecutive days from his or her effective date of retirement or such later date as established by the board in Section 106.2 of this Regulation, he or she may be reemployed while being paid a retirement allowance under the terms and conditions provided in Section 103 of this Regulation.
There are five exceptions under which a retiree may be re-employed while in receipt of a retirement allowance: The first one, which applies to Carlisle, is retirees re-employed in other than an elected position. It says, “The Retirement System may not withhold a monthly benefit payment if the retiree is employed by a covered employer in the following instances: a) For a period of time not to exceed one-half of the normal working days for the position in any fiscal year during which the retiree will receive no more than one-half of the salary in effect for the position at the time of employment, or b) For a period of time in any fiscal year sufficient in length to permit a retiree to earn not in excess of 25 percent of the retiree’s average compensation.
The timing of the decision about who will coach the Starkville High baseball team shouldn’t pose a problem.
The Mississippi High School Activities Association doesn’t allow its member schools to officially start practice until Feb. 1. Scrimmages are allowed to start Feb. 18, classic games are allowed to start Feb. 24, and teams are permitted to play their first games Feb. 27.
Carlisle declined to comment Monday about his status as coach at Starkville High. He said he has been blessed not to have any health problems and that “retirement has been nice.” He said he has spent the better part of the past three months working on his “little old place” in Starkville, where he has “40-something” acres, mixing days in which he has plenty of work to do and a lot of days in which he enjoys “doing nothing.”
Carlisle, who has won more than 500 games as a coach, led Starkville to a 9-12 record (2-7 in Class 6A, Region 2) in 2011, his 27th as head coach at the school. Starkville had a chance to make the playoffs into the final week of the regular season before it lost to South Panola 14-13. The Yellow Jackets led 13-6 entering the bottom of the seventh inning.
Starkville was in position to make the playoffs despite losing pitchers Shaquille Hill and Nick Brooks and Andrew Armburst and Jalen Campbell in March after they were suspended indefinitely to violating team rules. At the time of the suspension, Carlisle declined to specify when the players would return or what they had to do to get back on the field.
Adam Minichino is the former Sports Editor for The Commercial Dispatch.
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