SIMMS TRUSTEE, ASSISTANT COACH RESIGN DURING HOT MEETING

SIMMS -- A Simms school board member and an assistant football coach
resigned Wednesday night, after the board voted against the
administration's decision to kick two seniors off the football team.

The debate in front of 30 parents and coaches grew so heated that one board
member stood up and yelled at the others after the split vote, and another
board member, Kathy Fleming, left the meeting, saying she quit the board.

Students Mike Gurnsey and Josh Bartz were suspended from school for five
days, kicked off the football team before the final game of the season Oct.
14 and had their school letters taken away after Assistant Coach Derek
Wheeler said he spotted them inhaling from a pop can in mid-October.

School officials assumed the two were smoking marijuana and took immediate
action, even informing the team while one of the boys was out of town.

Wheeler was in his house near the school and watched the boys through his
window with binoculars. He recovered the pop can and turned it in to school
officials.

Wednesday night, he told school board members that he saw the boys lighting
a lighter and inhaling from a Pepsi can.

Bartz and Gurnsey insisted Wheeler was wrong, and said they were in the
truck talking and flipping through CDs.

They went as far as to take drug tests, and passed. They gave their
fingerprints to the Cascade County Sheriff's Office, who determined the
boys' prints could not be recovered from the can, which also had no trace
of drug residue.

All this was submitted to Superintendent Bruce Wallace, who nonetheless
decided to support the coach and suspend the boys.

Bartz, a straight-A student who according to his father had the class's
highest ACT test score, started the quarter with F's in all his classes.
His father fears the punishment could damage his scholarship chances.

Gurnsey, so upset and embarrassed by the events and accusations, is still
struggling to catch up nearly a month after he was kicked off the team, his
mother said.

Mimi Gurnsey said administrators were rash, acted against their own
policies and repeatedly questioned the boys without their parents, despite
being asked to include them.

"There is nothing further they could have done to prove their innocence,"
Mimi Gurnsey said. "The issue isn't their letter being taken away. ..."

"The issue is our kids' reputation," added Josh's father, Brian Bartz. "We
know our kids were right and we knew we needed to back our kids."

Coaches, a school counselor and the high school athletic director backed
the administration's decision, saying Wheeler's eyewitness account of the
events should be enough.

"What's at stake is the integrity of school sports at Simms High School,"
athletic director Molly Pasma said. "If we give them back their letters and
they're guilty, then those letters mean nothing for all the other athletes."

Three school board members agreed.

"We hire coaches and staff members to make judgment calls," board member Ed
Hassell said. "If we don't support our teachers, staff and administrators,
we're going to continue to have trouble finding people to work here."

However, the four remaining board members said the evidence just wasn't
there, and that perhaps Wheeler, who was standing some distance away,
mistook what he saw that dark October night.

The decision to suspend the boys is not one that can be reviewed by the
school board. The parents are appealing that in a separate process and hope
to have the F's garnered on the days the boys were suspended and the
suspension itself wiped off the school records.

However, the board could review the decision to kick the boys off the team
and take away their letters. In a 4-3 vote, they supported the boys.

"I find it very hard to penalize the boys when every bit of evidence has
come back in their favor," board member Angie Hawks said.

Immediately after the vote, board member Alan Gagne stood up and began
yelling, saying the school probably just lost three good coaches because of
the decision.

Seconds later, Wheeler quit.

"I've given too much to this school and to the team to be treated this
way," he said, leaving the meeting.

Chairman Todd Klick quickly shut down the meeting for a five-minute recess
before things got out of control.

But minutes after the meeting restarted, the issue flared up again and the
family left the meeting, followed shortly after by Fleming.

Fleming had twice voted in support of the boys; as she sped away, she told
the family and the Tribune that she quit.

"I hope these boys are innocent because of what this has done. I quit. I
can't take any more," she said. Fleming could not be reached for further
comment at home late Wednesday night.

Even as the school board tried to move on to other issues, anger crept into
the discussion of board goals for the year as one woman in the crowd began
debating with Gagne.

She said perhaps the board should adopt a goal of working and respecting
students and staff, and not yelling at them.