Coaches in All Local Sports Organizations Will Need Higher-Level Criminal Background Checks; Palm Coast Seeks Standards

Palm Coast government wants to align city policy with a new state law requiring more detailed criminal backgrounding of youth athletic coaches and others who supervise children in organized sports even when they do not work for the city. 

The backgrounding could result in disqualification from coaching in some cases, but council members want to more precisely define those thresholds so that, say, a drug offense from 10 years ago isn’t a life sentence away from coaching. The city attorney is cautioning council members to be consistent, whichever policy they adopt. 

“It’s going to be a tightrope for sure to find that spot where we’re keeping our kids safe but also not doing a disservice to them by removing people that would be good mentors,” Council member Ty Miller said. 

Last spring the legislature passed a bill requiring state and national criminal background checks–called Level 2 screenings–for youth athletic coaches and their assistants starting no later than July 2026. The requirement applies to private organizations such as little league baseball, soccer or flag football, all of which operate in Palm Coast. The governor signed the bill into law. 

An important caveat to the law: “a person who has not been background screened may act as an athletic coach if he or she is under the direct supervision of an athletic coach who meets the screening requirements,” according to a legislative analysis of the bill. 

Employees and volunteers working for Palm Coast already receive a Level 2 screening through the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office, which also provides that $60 to $105 service to anyone else who requests it. (The fingerprinting the city was requiring of its employees and volunteers had cost $36 until recently, which the city paid.) 

Typically, athletic coaches received Level 1 background checks, which don;t include national backgrounding. Vendor at city events who directly interacts with children are also required to be backgrounded. Now, all those individuals will have to have Level 2 checks. The requirement is annual. Nothing stops a local government from requiring it sooner than July 2026. 

Since numerous athletic organizations operate in the city, the council had two options: to require each organization to provide an affidavit that certifies compliance with the new law, or for the city to conduct the background checks for each organizations’ coaches and assistant coaches directly. The city in the past has asked certain organizations to provide letters certifying who had been backgrounded. But the approach was informal, and must now be according to law. 

National organizations have generally required screenings “due to insurance purposes,” , Acting City Manager Lauren Johnston said. “They make all volunteers, including coaches, anybody that’s going to have any direct interaction with children, go through that background process. But this previously it was like a Level 1, and now they have upped it to a Level 2.” 

Council member Ty Miller was looking for consistency in expectations and enforcement of the new requirement. A lot of organizations, he said, may focus on crimes against children. There could be individual coaches who may have faced criminal charges unrelated to children who the organization would not disqualify, “which is a concern of mine,” he said. “Same thing with say, drugs. You sold drugs, but you didn’t sell them to a kid, so it’s ok. It doesn’t seem right to me.”

To Miller, the city could define the threshold of disqualification for coaches and others interacting with children, even if they are not volunteering for the city, or employed by it, but running sports organizations within its borders. Violent crime and drugs should be disqualifiers in his view. “In effect, they’re acting on our behalf because of that use of the city facilities and parks,” Miller said. 

He did not specify what kind of drugs or what level charges, but in a text exchange with FlaglerLive today he said he favored a common-sense approach without being too heavy-handed. 

He’s not interested in adding costs to the city to pay for those screenings. But he is interested in having access to an organization’s screening records “and make sure they’re all matching up at any given time, so that we’re keeping them honest,” he said. 

“I don’t want to go overboard here but I also want to make sure that we don’t have bad people under the radar either,” Miller wrote. “Vice mayor also indicated that there may be other things like animal abuse or domestic violence that may not be a felony that need to be considered as well.” 

Local governments generally suspend an employee who is charged with a felony, but not a misdemeanor. First and second-offense drunk driving charges are typically a misdemeanor, as is discharging a weapon in public or battering someone, including a domestic partner. Aggravating factors convert the charges to felonies. (Child abuse or child neglect are automatic felonies, though they often get pleaded down to misdemeanors.) 

“We have to keep in mind that we’re talking about coaches that are mentoring our young people,” Council member Theresa Pontieri said, with children coming from “some troubled backgrounds of their own, and sometimes it takes a mentor who’s been through that to pull the kid out of that. So I don’t want to disqualify people who have a past history of drugs, but it was 10 years ago.” 

Mayor Mike Norris is worried about city overreach, what he calls “getting in the weeds when you shouldn’t be, and I don’t want the city to incur legal ramifications or something like that.” He’d support requiring affidavits from local organizations, but nothing beyond that.