Fired high-school football coach Brad Bolding stayed fired Thursday after a Pulaski County circuit judge rejected his appeal of the North Little Rock School District's decision to dismiss him.
Judge Tim Fox's findings from the two-hour hearing will be formalized in writing in a few weeks after lawyers for Bolding and the school district submit suggestions for the wording of his order.
Written findings are required for an appeal.
Bolding spent 82 minutes on the witness stand testifying about his disagreements with district officials, hoping to persuade Fox to order that he be rehired.
Bolding, 46, was head coach at North Little Rock High School for eight years until his January dismissal.
The School Board upheld his firing in April, and Bolding appealed the decision through a lawsuit that same month.
Fox made it clear Thursday that his job was not to decide whether the district made the right decision in firing Bolding.
His role was to decide whether school officials had presented sufficient legal grounds to terminate the coach's employment, the judge said.
Fox ruled that Bolding had not met the standard requiring that he prove that the school district's decision was "arbitrary and capricious."
"You're asking me to second-guess them," he told Bolding's attorney, David Couch. "I decide it was sufficient. Plaintiff has failed to meet his burden" of proof.
The judge ruled after hearing all of Bolding's evidence. That meant that school Superintendent Kelly Rodgers, represented by attorney Jay Bequette, did not have to defend the district's firing decision.
Ahead of Thursday's hearing, the judge had twice rejected the district's motions to dismiss the litigation.
Couch said he thought the judge should have used a different standard in evaluating Bolding's firing.
Couch argued that the judge was required to review the process that school officials used to reach the decision to fire Bolding, then determine whether that process complied with the 32-year-old Arkansas Teacher Fair Dismissal Act.
Couch asserted that Bolding's dismissal was not done in accordance with the law.
Bolding was fired over complaints that he had violated the district's purchasing and inventory policies, had improper contact with the stepfather of a player before the student transferred, and arranged to pay the man $600 from an athletic booster club.
The district asserted that Bolding's relationship with the player, K.J. Hill, and Hill's stepfather, Montez Peterson, violated player recruitment regulations.
As a result, according to district officials, the school voluntarily forfeited 10 football games and at least 24 boys basketball games, including the Class 7A state basketball championship, during the 2013-14 academic year.
Bolding vehemently denied any wrongdoing at Thursday's hearing, telling the judge that any contact he had with the teen and stepfather was aboveboard and that he had scrupulously stayed within the rules.
No other district in Arkansas has ever voluntarily forfeited a championship season, Bolding told the judge.
"Our school district ... they were begging for the death penalty, and they gave it to themselves," he said. "It's never been done."
Bolding said his firing was retaliatory.
His lawyer told the judge that district leaders were mad at Bolding and had conducted a slapdash investigation that improperly dredged up resolved grievances, which did not meet Fair Dismissal Act standards, to justify his firing.
Bolding testified that he had wanted to leave the district for some time before his firing, feeling like he had "worn out his welcome" and that he had been promised the head coaching job at the high school in Nashville, Ark.
"I felt like North Little Rock didn't want me anymore," he testified.
Bolding said he did not get the Nashville job because the North Little Rock district did not turn over his personnel file to the Nashville officials as he had asked. There was a limited window for him to submit the information, which closed because North Little Rock did not act, Bolding told the judge, suggesting that a district official had deliberately dragged his feet on it.
Bolding, who began coaching in 1997, testified that he has not been able to find another head coaching job, particularly one that accommodates his wife's career. He said he now works for Memphis-based Roofing Supply Group.
Metro on 11/06/2015