On Friday, the Lowndes County School District Board of Trustees is expected address a complaint from a parent of a New Hope High School freshman over a matter that has been debated for more than 40 years.
Anthony Palmer, acting on behalf of his daughter, Kaiya, filed a complaint with the federal Office of Civil Rights (OCR) accusing the school district of failing to meeting Title IX requirements in its athletics program.
Title IX is probably the most famous portion of the Equal Opportunity in Education Act of 1972. It states: “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.”
Palmer’s complaint charges the LCSD has failed to meet those required standards in seven areas: facilities, equipment/supplies, scheduling, access to coaching, medical/training services, publicity/promotional support and fund-raising.
In a written response school board attorney Jeff Smith said the district lacked funding to make the requested changes. Smith’s letter went on to say the district’s official response would not be offered until the school board takes up the matter at its Friday meeting.
Title IX has been a contentious matter since its inception. Opponents say the rules are too harsh and male programs have often been eliminated in order to become compliant. They say it has proven to be addition (of female sports) by subtraction (of male sports).
Proponents dispute this, and say the statistics are on their side. Male sports participation has risen, not fallen, in the intervening years, they argue. Meanwhile, there is no question that Title IX has had an enormous impact on female participation. In 1971, there were 300,000 females playing high school sports. As of 2010, that number had grown more than 10-fold to 3.2 million. In 1971, females made up just 7 percent of all students participating in sports. Today, females account for 41 percent of total sports participation.
Ultimately, the school board’s challenge is to fashion a reasonable response to Palmer’s complaint that satisfies both the parent and the OCR, which has the authority to force changes if the district is found to be in violation.
Several of the alleged inequities can be resolved without great expense. Those issues should be resolved immediately. Others may require some shift within the district’s athletic budgets. The district may choose to add money to its athletic budgets or look for other means to create the level playing field that the law demands.
We hope that this matter will not become an “us vs. them” dispute between the school’s highly-successful boys programs and its less-heralded, though equally important, girls’ programs.
This is not the time to choose sides: It is a time to resolve these problems in an amicable way that promotes fair play and equal treatment.
That, after all, is the reason Title IX exists in the first place.
The Dispatch Editorial Board is made up of publisher Peter Imes, columnist Slim Smith, managing editor Zack Plair and senior newsroom staff.
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