Wilkes County Settles Title IX Complaint

Wilkes County, North Carolina, will improve the lighting and grading of its girls' softball fields by August 2012, and will create policies to improve girls' teams' access to the gym by Jan. 2011, according to the terms of a recent settlement agreement with the Department of Education. The settlement resolves a Title IX complaint filed a parent against the county school district in 2009, which triggered an investigation by the Department of Ed's Office for Civil Rights. According to the press, the parent who filed the complaint said of the settlement, "I know it states the school system is not admitting fault for not fixing things; however, these issues would not be an issue if they'd been taking care of business as they should be."

First-Class Locker Rooms Remedy Title IX Violations at N.C. High Schools

Last year we blogged about Title IX violations at the high schools in New Hanover County, North Carolina -- in particular, the inequitable locker room facilities that had girls' teams doubling up and changing in the weight room, and the county's ongoing efforts to honor a 2008 compliance agreement with OCR. But today there's good news for the girls at Hoggard and Laney high schools, as the county purports to have completed all of the necessary renovations to comply with Title IX. Of the new, spacious girls' locker room with varnished wood lockers (a "carbon copy" of the existing boys' locker room), Hoggard girls' basketball coach Ray Beatty said,

Everyone that's been in there has been overwhelmed, especially the girls that have been with me for a while[.] It's more like a college atmosphere now than in the past. My girls probably just felt like second-class citizens because the boys had such nice facilities, but now they feel like first-class citizens.

To me, this quote epitomizes the intent and effect of Title IX, indeed, civil rights laws in general, and provides the most compelling counterargument to those who say the law is unnecessary and unimportant. No group should be stigmatized by second-class treatment. Discrimination in athletics, whether it be in the number of participation opportunities for each sex, or the quality of their playing fields and locker rooms, sends a clear message to students about whose athletic experience society appreciates, expects, and respects. It's obvious that they should be equal. It's not obvious why it takes government intervention to make schools realize that too, but until it is, Title IX is both necessary and important.

Question the parentheses

I, too, read the news that Orange County, North Carolina schools had been given a clean Title IX bill of health. This article from the Chapel Hill News goes so far as to say that any statistical disparities favored girls--but not the detriment of boys.
Notes the writer: "[girls'] coaches were paid more than coaches of boys' teams when compared to the proportion of students participating in athletics by sex (excluding football)." (emphasis added)
So this is a little confusing. Orange County clearly met one of the three prongs regarding equitable opportunities. But it was not necessarily proportionality. How does this affect our understanding of the above statement? (And as Erin noted, just because it seems that salaries are equitable, does not mean there was not discrimination against the one fired coach--the catalyst for this investigation.) And more importantly, why was football excluded from these calculations? And how many other statistics do not include football?
I haven't been able to find any answers yet, but would love to be enlightened.

North Carolina High School Cleared of Title IX Charges

After school officials at Cedar Ridge High School in Orange County, N.C., decided to terminate the highly successful volleyball coach, Laurie Calder-Green, and replace her with a less experienced male coach, parents there filed a complaint with OCR, claiming that Orange County Schools discriminated against high school girls and their coaches by paying the coaches less, providing less qualified coaches and not working to recruit and retain their coaches. But after an 18 month investigation, OCR has determined that both county high school athletic programs comply with Title IX.

In its investigation report, OCR acknowledged that the "that the complainant disagrees with the district’s termination of a particular coach." But, it continued, "termination of one coach is an insufficient basis on which to find that the district has denied girls equitable opportunities with respect to coaching, and there is no other evidence that supports such a finding."

Notably, however, OCR's conclusion that the firing of this particular coach deny girls equal opportunities with respect to coaching does not address whether the school's decision to fire the coach was itself discrimination, either directly or in retaliation for voicing concerns about perceived discrimination. A lawsuit addressing such claims is certainly possible.

NC county trying to comply

Not sure how reliable all the facts provided in this article are given that the writer(s?) thought that OCR stands for Office of Civil Review.

It's probably true, though, that the county schools of New Hanover have a list of Title IX violations most of which relate to facilities. But they are not news either because OCR--that's the Office for Civil Rights--has already paid a visit to North Carolina. In fact, this past Monday was a deadline for remedying some of the disparities. And some have indeed been remedied.

At one school what was once the boys' baseball locker room has been divided in half (wall down the middle) for the girls' softball team, which previously did not have its own dedicated locker room.

Other improvements are apparently on the way with renovations to fields being high on the list.

Also appears that the ABC affiliate in NC is running a series about the Title IX issues. So stay tuned. There may be more.

Teacher's Complaint Prompts Title IX Investigation, Changes to Facilities

The New Hanover (N.C.) County Schools, which had been under investigation by the Office for Civil Rights, recently agreed to upgrade athletic facilities and locker room for female athletes, who had been receiving inferior access in violation of Title IX. A teacher and coach named Alan Sewell triggered the investigation when he filed a complaint with OCR. After reading an article about Title IX in the local newspaper, he said, he realized that something should be done to remedy the inequities he'd witnessed over the years. Particularly, Sewell was concerned about the girls' basketball team's access to locker rooms at Laney, one of the district high schools. The team had to yield the locker room to visiting boys' teams, which often resulted in the girls having to change in the lobby restroom or the weight room. The team's booster club lobbied the district unsuccessfully to remedy the situation.

OCR's investigation also revealed gender disparities in athletic facilities at both New Hanover high schools, particularly, the inferior quality of the girls' softball fields relative to the boys' baseball fields. According to OCR's report, the boys' facility "look[ed] closer to a major league baseball park and the softball field look[ed] closer to an abandoned sandlot field."

According to the resolution agreement, New Hanover has two years to upgrade the girls' facilities at its high schools.