Agreements reached...

...in Portland, Maine where an investigation by OCR found that girls received fewer opportunities for participation in interscholastic sports than their male peers. The investigation also revealed some disparities in facilities. Under the agreement, the district will add girls' volleyball for the 2014-15 season and ensure equitable locker rooms, practice and competitive facilities. Administrators will also begin a process of assessing whether the district meets either prong one (proportionality) or prong three (interest) in determining the sport opportunities girls in Portland's schools receive.

...in the Union County (South Carolina) School District. Interestingly chairperson of the school board BJ McMorris announced at a meeting last week that OCR found no merit to a complaint filed in December 2012. Curious announcement given that a voluntary resolution agreement would not seem necessary for a complaint with no merit. Sure, some things will be improved, the public was told at last week's meeting, but nothing was ever really wrong was the message (along with a little passing of the buck--see below).
One of the issues with the resolution agreement process is the "no fault" aspect. Whatever semantic dance administrators--at all levels--are doing, an agreement means something was wrong that needs to be fixed.
What happened in South Carolina was that one part of the complaint in which the complainant argued that there were gender-based differences in punishments meted out to student-athletes was found to have no merit. Other aspects of the complaint and the OCR investigation did not, however, find Union County to be in tip-top Title IX shape.
Superintendent Kristi Woodall said she felt bad for the taxpayers who have to foot the bill for the work the district had to do compiling documents and otherwise accomodating OCR during the investigation. It was a throw-OCR-under-the-bus move. There have been plenty of times that OCR does not invesitgate a complaint because it does not seem to have merit.
Woodall is blaming OCR for doing its job and not taking any responsibility for its own non-compliance.
But OCR fired back seemingly immediately after the above-linked article was published in the local newspaper. A letter to the paper (which also bears some responsibility for not questioning a resolution to an proclaimed non-situation) included this statement:
“...OCR’s investigation determined that the district failed to provide female athletes equal opportunities with respect to: equitable facilities, including practice and competitive softball fields; strength training facilities and locker rooms; laundering of uniforms; pregame meals; scheduling and number of games; and maintenance of uniforms.
On Sept. 24, 2013, the district signed a Resolution Agreement to address these Title IX compliance concerns. OCR expects to issue a letter of findings, with accompanying Resolution Agreement, by the end of this week.”

...in Gloversville, New York after a January 2011 complaint triggered an OCR investigation. This is another case of spinning the situation with the superintendent of the Gloversville Enlarged School District saying that OCR found nothing wrong but that the district would be making some improvements. A project in which many of the district's fields and facilities were renovated dealt with some of the issues raised in the complaint, but the district will still be required to: schedule some girls' softball games on the lighted fields, fix the drainage on the softball fields, and make sure that a shared field is properly prepared for each respective sport that uses it.

The little moments in Title IX history

In the grand scheme of things, Title IX is not that old. Despite this, there is a lot of its history that we just don't know. We know about the legislative history. We know about the big cases, the watershed moments, the key players, the tireless advocates.
We don't know about all of the little things. Today whenever a complaint is filed--anonymously or not--we can often find out about it. But this is a recent phenomenon.
We don't know how many coaches went to their administrators 20, 30, 40 years ago and said "hey, the women's team needs better uniforms. And we are legally entitled to them." We don't know how many parents sought better treatment for their daughters.
So whenever I hear stories of such moments, I get a little excited because some of the gaps get filled and I am reminded of the ways in which activism works at both macro and micro levels.
Today I read one such anecdote about Kathy Delaney-Smith, the current coach of Harvard's women's basketball team. It was told by sports journalist Jackie MacMullan who was coached by Delaney-Smith at Westwood High School in Massachusetts right before the latter went to coach at Harvard and the former went to play at University of New Hampshire.
MacMullan, in a speech at a fundraiser for UNH basketball, told the crowd about the power of Title IX and the power of Kathy Delaney-Smith.
If you saw No Look Pass, the documentary about former Harvard player Emily Tay, you got to witness the power and passion and colorfulness of Delaney-Smith. These were traits she apparently had when coaching high school as well. MacMullan said that as soon as her coach got tenure at Westwood High, she filed a discrimination lawsuit against the school. She wanted the girls to have better uniforms and equipment and games scheduled on Friday nights--like the boys. And by the time MacMullan graduated, they had personalized warm-ups and games every other Friday night.
Stories like these show us that while concerted efforts were put into getting girls more playing opportunities, other smaller, less visible efforts were being made to improve the quality of the opportunity.

Complaint targets Boiling Springs HS

I'm not blogging about the recently filed OCR complaint targetting Boiling Springs High School in South Carolina because I think the story is especially unusual or raises any new issues.
It's just an example of both good coverage of the issue (for the most part) and a good complaint.
Mike Tutterow, who has two girls at Boiling Springs (why didn't my high school have such a cool name??), filed the complaint after attempting to work out some of the issues (for several years) he saw within the athletic department. Note that anyone can file an OCR complaint. One does not have to be affiliated, in any way, with the school.
But Tutterow witnessed many discrepancies including: the quality and rate of replacement of boys' and girls' soccer uniforms; girls' coaches who had to launder their own team's uniforms; access to strength training; and differences in facilities (specifically the softball and baseball complexes).
It's not just treatment of athletes, however, it's about participation as well.
Girls are 47 percent of the schools 1600-person student body. They have only 30 percent of the athletic opportunities.
OCR visited Boiling Springs last week for two days.
The school superintendent, though, believes the school is in compliance and thinks OCR will find the complaint "unfounded." Based on what I have read, this seems unlikely. But the superintendent did say the district would make whatever changes recommended by OCR should the complaint indeed be founded.

West Virginia Parents Sue for Gender Equity

Parents in Mercer County, West Virginia have filed a lawsuit in federal district court against the Board of Education, alleging that inferior athletic opportunities for female students at Princeton Senior High School violate Title IX. The Bluefield Daily Telegraph reports that the complaint cites discrimination in the distribution of equipment and facilities like pitching machines and batting cages, uniforms, travel, access to coaching staff, and "other specific complaints." One example noted in the article is that boys' uniforms -- and in the case of football, even shoes -- are provided by the school, but softball and volleyball players must pay or fundraise for all or some of their gear -- including the tape to mark the volleyball court.