Salary rules restrict prep coaches

Do you ever wonder why Utah’s successful high school coaches don’t bounce all over the place and from job to job like coaches in the college and professional ranks?
Well, there’s good reason why high schools don’t try to lure coaches away from each other with promises of higher pay. When coaching positions become open, there’s a reason why every coach in the state isn’t knocking on the principal’s door with resume in hand. There’s a very simple reason why most high school coaches have long tenured gigs at one school, other than plain loyalty, and don’t move from school to school.
High school coaches, the veterans at least, are limited by a salary cap of sort. When any coaching position opens at a school, there’s a limit as to what that school can pay to fill that position to any applicant who is currently not employed by the same district. Most districts have a cap at what salary level they will start new teachers. We’re talking about teachers who are just new to that district. That level, in most cases, is around the six-year or seven-year salary level.
In other words, a coach with 10, 15 or 20 years of teaching and coaching experience, who wants to take a job at a different school in a different district, would have to take a huge salary cut to do so. A coach like American Fork’s Davis Knight, for example, couldn’t get a coaching/teaching job outside of Alpine School District at his current salary. He’d go from his 25-year salary level to a seven-year salary level. What coach is going to do that?
In other words, when coaching jobs open the applicant pool is mainly comprised of teachers/coaches already employed by that district or coaches/teachers with less than seven years experience. Veteran coaches are pretty much financially bound to remain at their current school, or at least their current district, for the remainder of their career.
When the Lone Peak football job opened up a lot of people expected every big-name coach in the state to go after the job. Most people didn’t realize that Lone Peak’s administration, just like the administrations at Springville and Provo, were limited in who could be hired. They could only pay so much.
There are a few exceptions. When a new school opens school boards don’t want a faculty comprised of rookie teachers and coaches, so they do allow for the hiring of a few veterans ‘ which is why Salem Hills High was able to hire former Lone Peak coach Monte Morgan. Also, some schools hire non-teachers to coach ‘ which is what Springville did in bringing in Scott Mitchell. Occasionally, a coach can retire from one district and afford to take a job at another district at the lower salary, which was the case when Cottonwood hired former Pleasant Grove baseball coach Jon Hoover.
It’s understandable why school districts have this policy. However, is it fair to coaches? Is it fair to any teacher? Is it fair to players and parents? Does it unfairly limit schools and athletic programs? Or, does it help level the playing field in prep sports and eliminate some of the conflicts and controversy that would come with job bidding by coaches?