ADAMS TWP — The problem wasn’t the new 25-year-old coach hired by the Mars Area School District, a handful of disgruntled parents said at a recent school board meeting. The problem was the hiring process, they said.

While many players and parents gathered at the school board meeting March 10 to shake hands with the new football coach, Zachary Benedek, a small group of others — including members of the football boosters, the Mars Quarterback Club — attended the meeting to say the hiring process was flawed and in need of more transparency.

A school board member — one who voted against Benedek’s hiring — pitched a change to future coaching hires, but the superintendent and members of the board argued the proposal was unheard of in other districts and would be a “disaster.”

“Eight parents and four board members? It’s going to be a disaster,” board member Anthony DePrantis said. “You think things leak out to the public? Could you imagine if people involved, when their kids are in the sport and all their friends are asking them, ‘What’s going on with the interviews?’”

The proposal came from another board member, Aaron Rose, who said he believed it is important to “preserve parents’ rights” in the district’s decision making, something he said the proposed policy would do.

Rose proposed a council that would include the superintendent, the athletic director, all board members who choose to participate, up to three representatives from the sport’s booster organization, the outgoing coach if invited to participate by the superintendent and four to eight parents from the team’s players from all four grade levels.

Booster representatives would be selected based on the bylaws of each booster organization, Rose said.

According to the draft proposal, the council would serve in an advisory capacity to assist in the screening and evaluation process of considering coach candidates. The council would conduct interviews in a public forum, “in accordance with applicable state laws and district policies.”

However, the council would not possess the final authority to approve a hiring. That decision is made by the school board during public meetings.

While superintendent Mark Gross said he believed the feelings around the hiring process were sincere, he warned of further ramifications should the policy be accepted.

“If you do it for athletics, then that policy has to be in place for the hiring of every single extracurricular program and cocurricular program. And, our No. 1 responsibility is education, so that’s teachers also,” Gross said. “You don’t have enough superintendents; I don’t think you have enough parents; I don’t think you have enough staff to do it.”

He then added, “I have an attorney to my left, we want to be real careful about creating an arbitrary or capricious process.”

Gross said he’s reached out to other districts and did not find any that have a similar policy in place.

“There is not one district in this commonwealth that has not filled a board room over a hiring, a firing or an appointment,” Gross said.

He expressed concern such a process would layer in an additional level of risk and create concerns over ethical issues and future accusations of bias.

“In my opinion, by layering in people beyond school employees … I think it lends itself to actually more accusations of possible impropriety. Because which board members serve? Which community members serve?”

Gross said while he understands the passion around sports and the time and dedication student athletes put in, the policy could lead to a rabbit hole that includes the hiring process for teachers, nurses, counselors or social work employees.

“If you have a policy on who sits in for coaching hires, are you going to have a policy on who sits in for a new teacher?” Gross said.

Benedek, 25, played college football at Saint Francis University and Clarion, where he also began his coaching career as a tight end coach. He recently was the passing game coordinator and quarterback coach at Mt. Lebanon.

He was present when the board voted 7-2 to hire him in front of a packed board room.

While some used the public commentary part of the meeting to complain, many others crowded around Benedek to congratulate him following his hiring.

“I feel horrible that we just hired a football coach who is extremely competent and we’re excited about, who not only had to endure some of the commentary in the process,” Gross said. “But some of the commentary was, ‘Oh, after we’ve met him, we understand now.’

“And if the process was flawed, I don’t think this board would have voted 7-2 to put him in.”