Parents of six South Greene High baseball players assigned to the county school system's alternative school for allegedly drinking alcohol on a school bus last March 18 are questioning school officials' handing of the incident.

But Dr. Joe Parkins, director of Greene County Schools, says he stands by the actions of South Greene High baseball coach Larry Hogan, assistant coach Mike Taylor, and SGHS Principal Cindy Bowman in the handling of the incident.

"I have heard the allegations (of parents), and I have spoken to all three of them, and I am satisfied that no board policies were violated," Parkins said in an interview with The Greeneville Sun late this week.

The Greene County Board of Education, on a 4-to-3 vote on Monday, April 28, upheld the assignment of six SGHS baseball players to the county school system's alternative school, which is located at the Thomas H. McNeese Educational Center on Hal Henard Road.

During that meeting, parents were not given an opportunity to speak. Afterward, some parents complained publicly about not having an opportunity to speak, and about some aspects of the way school officials handled the alcohol incident itself.

But Dr. Parkins said that, during the April 28 meeting, no board member made a motion to conduct a new hearing on the matter. The only options before the board during the meeting were to uphold the punishment, reduce it, or conduct a new hearing.

The only applicable motion made at that meeting was to uphold the punishment, he pointed out. If a motion been made and passed to conduct a hearing, parents would have been able to speak, Parkins said.

Seven SGHS baseball players had been expelled from school for a year in March by SGHS Principal Bowman under the county school system's "zero tolerance" policy after the players allegedly admitted to consuming alcohol aboard a school bus while they were returning from an away baseball game on March 18.

Earlier this year, Dr. Joe Parkins, director of Greene County Schools, said the March 18 incident involved consumption of "moonshine" and an alcohol-laced energy drink called "Sparks."

Parkins later modified seven players' punishment of expulsion to allow them to attend the county's alternative school for the balance of the current school year and the first semester of the 2008-09 school year.

Parents subsequently appealed the punishment to a county school system disciplinary hearing authority panel composed of school system administrators and one retired administrator, Parkins said.

After the disciplinary hearing authority upheld the punishments, parents of six of the seven players appealed that body's decision to the full school board, which convened on April 28 to consider options.

Following the April 28 meeting, the mother of one student handed out a statement in which she said her son "admitted that he was wrong and guilty in the drinking incident that happened on March 18."

But the statement said the mother was concerned about how the incident had been handled.

"There is no doubt in my mind that the coach (SGHS baseball coach Larry Hogan) knew this (the drinking) was going to take place," the mother wrote. "He knew there was drinking and still let them continue to drink," she continued in the statement.

"Then he checks some of these boys' bags, (but) not all of them. He then lets them drive home. I cannot understand why he wouldn't tell everyone to call their parents and not risk their lives."

Parkins said he was told that all the players were searched as they left the bus when it returned to SGHS on the night of March 18.

The director of schools also said that Taylor, the assistant coach who was driving the school bus, had thought he might have smelled alcohol while the team was still at Happy Valley High School, where the baseball game was played.

Subsequently, Parkins said, Taylor was told on the return trip to South Greene by another player that there was alcohol on the bus.

After Taylor communicated the suspicion to coach Hogan by cell phone, Parkins said, Taylor and Hogan decided to wait until the bus reached SGHS to deal with the situation.

Parkins said Hogan and Taylor told him that, when they searched the players after the bus reached SGHS late on the night of March 18, they found only two empty cans of an alcoholic beverage and an empty jar into which one of the boys claimed to have urinated earlier.

"They (Hogan and Taylor) didn't know the full extent of the problem that night and, in their opinion, none of the boys appeared to be impaired," Parkins said. "They didn't know when the drinking might have taken place."

The mother also complained in her statement about Principal Bowman's handling of the incident.

"The next morning (March 19)," the mother wrote, "the principal takes each boy and interrogates them with six adults in the room with them. Does this sound legal?"

Parkins, however, said it is perfectly legal for school officials to interrogate students suspected of violating rules without parents being present.

He also noted that only by interrogating the players individually on the morning of March 19 did school officials learn that seven players had consumed alcohol on the bus.

Also in the statement, the mother complained that the players were punished for having told the "truth" about the incident.

"The people that we entrust with our children's lives are not being honest, because they are afraid of the consequences," the mother wrote.

She also complained that Director of Schools Parkins conducted an investigation of the incident "without talking to the parents, or the kids involved."

But Parkins maintained that, during the week of spring break in March, he spoke "at length" with all the parents and all the students involved in the incident.

"They were all nice," he said. "These are good kids. There are some great athletes and some great scholars among them."

The mother of a second SGHS player also gave a hand-written statement to a Greeneville Sun reporter in which she said her son "did take a sip of alcohol." But she maintained that the punishment had been too severe.

In words apparently written in response to a report Dr. Parkins had given the school board members about the incident, the mother wrote that she had "never once said these kids don't need to be punished."

"All we asked is that these sentences be modified to the end of the school year and maybe some sort of community service work," the mother wrote.

Parkins said in the interview that only the school board had the power to modify the punishment in the manner the mother described.

Her son, the mother wrote, also has been punished at home, including the loss of his driving and telephone privileges.

In addition, she wrote, her son had "suffered humiliation and embarrassment" and endured disappointing statements from teachers at SGHS.

The mother also wrote that she and parents of other players questioned "why there was not more supervision" on the team bus on March 18.

"On field trips, or anything like that, there is supposed to be one adult per 15 kids," she wrote. "What was the difference on this trip?"

Parkins, however, said the chaperone rules don't require all the chaperones to be on the bus. "We have 69 buses that pick up children every morning with only one adult on the bus (the driver)," the director of schools noted.

He said SGHS baseball coach Larry Hogan was driving behind the bus in his personal car on March 18 because of a back injury that he thought might be aggravated by the rough bus ride.

But the mother questioned the claim about the coach's back problem.

"If Coach Hogan had these back problems as stated, he could not have taken infield practice, where he hits the ball to infield players and outfield players, and he certainly could not have jumped up and down and bent over to touch his toes," the mother wrote.

But Parkins said Hogan does have a back problem and was wearing a back brace on the day in question.

The second mother also wrote in her statement that the coaches had said they "smelled the alcohol" while the SGHS team was at Happy Valley High School in Carter County on March 18.

"Why not pull the bus over, search the kids, and pull them to the front of the bus?" she wrote in her statement.

By not doing so, the mother wrote, the coaches "condoned this drinking all the way home."

"Well that could have led to more drinking," she wrote. "Then, they tell these kids to get in their cars and drive home."

Parkins, however, said that the coaches didn't know if drinking was taking place on the bus or if it had taken place before the bus departed. Because the students were confined to the bus, he said, the coaches decided to wait until the bus reached South Greene to evaluate the players' conditions.

Parkins said he believes that "no teacher, coach, principal or volunteer coach in the Greene County School System" would knowingly leave the parking lot in a bus if they thought anyone aboard the bus had alcohol in their possession.

The second mother also wrote in her statement that Dr. Parkins had said in a report to the school board that he had "addressed these issues with Ms. (Principal) Bowman and the coaches and had taken steps to correct this, 'God Forbid,' it happen again."

The mother said the parents also have taken steps to prevent a similar situation involving their children from ever happening again.

On Thursday, Parkins said he remains "satisfied that no school system policies were violated by any South Greene High staff member in connection with the March 18 incident.

Asked if there was a possibility that the South Greene baseball players did not know that possessing alcohol on school property or in a school vehicle was a zero-tolerance offense that mandated expulsion from school for a year, Parkins said that fact is spelled out in the student handbook given to South Greene students.

A copy of a page from the handbook concerning alcohol and drugs, says, "It shall be a violation of board policy and considered to be behavior which is detrimental to the welfare, safety or morale of other students or school personnel for any student to possess, use, sell, distribute or procure or to be under the influence of alcohol, drugs or other controlled substances."

Concerning zero-tolerance offenses, the handbook does not specifically mention alcohol, but does list being under the influence of a drug or possession of a drug or drug paraphernalia as zero-tolerance offenses.

"Any health book includes alcohol as a category of drugs," Parkins wrote. "In other words, alcohol is a type of drug."

Parkins also pointed out that possession or consumption of alcohol by those under 21 years of age is illegal under Tennessee law.

"Everyone over about 11 or 12 years of age knows that," Parkins said.

Parkins said the county school board voted in 2003 to add possession, or use, of alcohol, to its list of zero-tolerance offenses. Such offenses, he said, required suspension from school for a period of one year.

Such suspensions can be modified by the director of schools to allow students adjudged guilty of zero-tolerance offenses to attend the county school system's alternative school while suspended from their regular schools.

During the county school board's April 24 meeting, Parkins said that as the result of an "oversight" alcohol had not been added to the list of zero-tolerance offenses in all the relevant school board policies.

During it's April 24 meeting, the board voted, on first reading, to correct the oversight.