SPORTS: FORMER PROVISO EAST HEAD COACH DONNIE BOYCE CLEARED OF WRONGDOING

Boyce, Michael Finley and Sherrell Ford, best known as the “Three Amigos,” helped lead Proviso East basketball team to a state championship in 1991. As a coach, Boyce led the boys varsity team to the state finals in 2011-12 and the state semifinals in 2012-13.

Cell phone footage released two years ago shows Boyce allegedly choking a female student while trying to break up a fight at Proviso East.

The Proviso Township High School District 209 Board of Education fired Boyce last February and voted against rehiring Boyce as a basketball coach last November after he reapplied for the position. The arbitration, which entailed a third-party probe into the incident, was launched last August and only recently concluded.

On Feb. 2, D209 board member Claudia Medina announced in a Facebook post that Boyce would be “reinstated into Proviso” and that arbitration “found him innocent,” although she didn’t go into specifics regarding the reinstatement. In a recent interview after Medina’s announcement, D209 Board President Theresa Kelly said that she had been told by district administration officials that Boyce would be reinstated to both his head coaching position and his position as a security guard at the high school. District officials have not yet responded to requests for comment.