I take no sides of the issue here but hope to make just the facts known for a better understanding of the matter.

On December 10th, Mr. Vance, as a parent, sent an email to Loudon High School principal, Cheri Parrish, athletic director, Ronald Roberts and coach Graves. The letter addressed an issue pertaining to the coach's previous decision to allow certain freshmen basketball players, one of which was Vance's son, to dress out with the varsity team in rotation and then the coach's decision not to allow the freshmen to dress out. In no part of the letter does Mr. Vance make any demands of the coach or threats toward the coach pertaining to his job. I can not publish the letter due to student confidentiality laws.

Some time later, the email sent by Vance began turning up in the general public and was widely distributed to members of the community. This is a violation of federal law known as The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) which protects student privacy.

At Thursday night's meeting, after a couple of hours of public comment, school board member, Scott Newman, made a motion to suspend Vance from his job. The vote ultimately failed 5-4 needing 6 votes to pass. Voting to suspend were board members, Newman, Kenny Ridings, William Jenkins, Kim Bridges and Brian Brown. Voting not to suspend were, Phil Moffitt, Gary Ubben, Craig Simon, and Zach Cusick.  Bobby Johnson Jr. was absent.

According to Newman, after the meeting, his motion to suspend was to allow the board to investigate the matter and it not seem to be tainted with Vance still in place as the director.

The board intends to investigate the whole issue including the release of the confidential letter.

Contrary to the rumors and social media posts, there is no evidence that Vance made any threats of any kind, written or verbal, to Coach Graves nor has that accusation been made by Graves himself. It is abundantly clear that someone, one of the three, who were included on the original email list did release the confidential letter to the public which is a violation of federal law and could lead to a reprimand, suspension or termination for the guilty party.

This whole incident is unfortunate, and a negative for Loudon County. Hopefully the board can get to the bottom of all the questions in the coming weeks and let the public know what was found.