by Jonathan Kleppinger

The West Jessamine High School baseball team’s annual spring-break trip to Florida is in jeopardy after the Jessamine County Board of Education pulled the item off its agenda Monday night. The board has scrutinized the trip the past three years for concerns related to cost, travel and supervision, but board members have approved it each year.

During the work session prior to Monday’s board meeting, superintendent Kathy Fields told board members that chairman Eugene Peel had asked to pull the West High baseball trip off the agenda, with the understanding that the move would cause the team to miss a deadline and not be able to take the trip. The trip had been included in travel authorizations as part of the consent agenda, which consists of routinely approved items that are lumped together and approved in one motion.

For a travel authorization to make it to the consent agenda for approval, administrators at the school and district have to find that it meets all the policy requirements. Deputy superintendent Matt Moore confirmed Tuesday that the West High baseball spring-break trip had been recommended for board approval because it was in compliance with policy.

Peel said during the work session that the trip and “some of the things that transpired” had caused the board “a great deal of problems.” He said pulling the trip off the agenda could be “kind of a little wake-up call” to tell the baseball team to “get your acts together.” Asked after the board meeting what problems he was referring to, Peel declined to offer any specific examples.

“There were some issues, and we went through that last year,” he said. “I don’t want to get into it.”

The chairman did confirm that an incident in 2013 in which a player on the trip got sick and was taken to the hospital by his parents was part of his reasoning. That issue came up during an unrelated demotion hearing, and board members cited that story about no coaches being present when they said they had supervision concerns about the 2014 trip in November 2013. Head coach Jody Hamilton appeared before the board two weeks later and said he had been with the player when the player was sick and chose to stay with the rest of his team since the player’s parents were available to take him to the hospital. The board made no comments to Hamilton and asked him no questions; they approved the 2014 trip unanimously at that same Nov. 25, 2013, meeting.

Reached by phone Tuesday morning, Hamilton said he was caught completely off-guard by the board’s decision to pull the trip off the agenda. He was not at the meeting Monday night but said he assumed “everything was a go” after the trip was vetted by superintendent Kathy Fields, deputy superintendent Matt Moore, district athletic director Ken Cox, West High principal Scott Wells and West High athletic director Dean Geary.

“I had absolutely no clue,” he said. “Any time it goes to consent agenda, you know Ms. Fields, Mr. Moore, Mr. Cox, Dr. Wells, Dean Geary — they have all done their homework and checked on it and made sure everything was OK.”

The board’s concerns about the cost of the trip began in 2011 when Hamilton said the team planned to go to Vero Beach in 2012 because the traditional destination — Cocoa Expo in Cocoa Beach, Florida — was closed for renovations. The team planned to make up for the added cost by having students travel with parents if possible instead of on a charter bus as in years past. That became a sticking point for board members who insisted the cost calculation should include projected transportation costs for all students without assuming any parent transport. JoAnn Rohrback, who left the board in 2012, cast the only dissenting vote for approval in 2011; that is the only “no” vote cast against the trip in the past three years.

Board member Hallie Bandy brought up the same concern about the calculation of the transportation cost in October 2012 but then was part of the unanimous approval of the 2013 trip.

Last year when issues about the trip came up for the third year in a row, Hamilton visited the board to defend himself and his program. In addition to explaining his side of the story of the sick student, he questioned why the board continued to scrutinize his program.

Hamilton said this week that West High sends players on to play in college at a much higher rate than the national average and that safety or supervision concerns about the team in Vero Beach were completely unwarranted.

“We’ve had exemplary conduct — our kids are so good down there,” he said. “All week long, we have bed checks at 10 o’clock, and we’re in a gated community that you can’t enter and you can’t leave without somebody watching you, and you’re on camera. It’s the safest place you can go, as far as taking a spring trip.”

During Monday’s work session, Bandy said her main problem with the trip was that students were missing school. She said that in years past the charter bus would leave after school Friday and drive through the night but that with parents driving, they had been choosing to take their children out of school Friday and drive during the day.

Students are counted as present when participating in regional or state tournaments on school days but not when participating in other athletic events away from school. Bandy said she thought the trip was meeting the letter of the law but that it was essentially forcing students to miss school.

“I think it’s questionable if it meets policy if a kid is required to miss school in order to go,” she said. “If your parents are taking you but you have to miss school in order for your parents to take you, then it doesn’t really meet policy.”

Peel said after Monday’s meeting that it was important to remember that the final decision rests with the board.

“It all comes back to right here, and this board makes a decision whether it’s within the policy — we’ve got the final say,” he said.

Hamilton said he is still hopeful the trip to Vero Beach could happen. Administrators told the board that the team would likely miss a deadline for the trip if approval wasn’t granted Monday, but Hamilton said that deadline was for room reservations at the complex and that organizers had agreed to hold rooms for West Jessamine until the board gave a firm yes or no to the trip.

Hamilton said parents of baseball players had been “blowing up his phone” on Monday after hearing about the board’s decision. He said the question they continued coming back to was, “Why are our kids being disciplined?”

“For (administrators) to give the OK and do their homework and then it’s kind of shot down by an elected official just doesn’t seem right to our parents,” Hamilton said. “They want to know why — and they’re going to ask them why they’re being disciplined.”