Being completely round, a volleyball is not supposed to take crazy bounces, but you’d never know it from the stunning “Press Release” issued yesterday from the desk of Superintendent of Schools Winfred Roberson.

Wrote Roberson: “In order to reconcile recent events around volleyball, yesterday (Monday) I met with Ms. Julie Crawford to discuss her immediate appointment as the Varsity Girls Volleyball Coach for the 2014-15 season, pending BOE approval on Friday, March 21.”

Added Roberson: “As superintendent I strongly believe that employees and students alike should have opportunity to grow as professionals and learners, even in the face of challenging circumstances. We are confident that our student-athletes, Ms. Crawford, the DJUSD and our community will begin the process of moving forward for the betterment of our students and organization.”

To review, late last Thursday night, acting on the recommendation of the District staff, including the superintendent, the School Board voted to deny Julie Crawford her position as head coach of the Davis High School boys volleyball team.

Her transgressions were detailed in a 72-page, $22,000 report that both the District and the Board read with a fine-tooth comb, but apparently the complete report was never offered to Crawford ahead of time so she could mount an informed defense.

Still, come Monday, the superintendent met with the deposed coach, decided she had been flogged enough, and suddenly began to treat her as the Coach of the Year that she is.

If you’re scratching your head and wondering out loud how in a span of little more than 80 hours Julie Crawford could go from bad coach to good coach in the District’s mind, you are not alone.

The District is like the guilt-ridden dad, who, after angrily sending the children to bed for making too much noise, feels so bad that he calls them back into the living room and announces the whole family is going to Disneyland.

Throughout this entire affair, the Board and the District have consistently stated that their overriding interest has always been “the kids.”

I don’t doubt that to be true, but if you’re worried about the kids, whose talented head coach has been given a clean bill of health and declared good to go, then why continue to deny those same kids her valuable services?

We keep hearing that “mistakes were made,” but the only one who had to go to confession and genuflect at the Board’s feet on her way out was Julie Crawford.

I’ve yet to hear a single Board member or anyone from the District staff who participated in this debacle admit even the slightest degree of fault.

The three Board members who voted to punish Julie Crawford have yet to register any disagreement with the ill-advised hiring of three outside attorneys to compile a top-secret report at taxpayer expense.

And then, almost simultaneous with Roberson’s about face, Board members Sheila Allen and Susan Lovenburg released a letter to the editor of The Davis Enterprise basically telling us all that it’s “time to move on.”

I guess if I were running for City Council as Allen is, I’d suggest it was time to move on, too, but it’s never wise to talk down to folks in the Second Most Educated City in America. Nancy Peterson learned that lesson the hard way after telling the whole town to “calm down.”

It remains to be seen if those comments will go down in history as memorably as Neville Chamberlain’s “peace in our time,” George McGovern’s “I support Tom Eagleton 1,000 percent,” Ron Ziegler’s “I will not comment on a third-rate burglary,” Bill Clinton’s “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky,” George Bush’s “we have found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq,” Barack Obama’s “if you like your healthcare plan, you can keep your healthcare plan” and Bob Dunning’s “Denver will roll Seattle in the Super Bowl, 34-24.”

Indeed, mistakes were made. This one was a whopper.

— Reach Bob Dunning at [email protected]

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