It looks like school district isn’t playing fair with girls sports

One year ago, the Clark County School District was one of 12 school districts slapped with a complaint claiming it discriminates against high school girls when it comes to sports.

One year later, the administrative complaint filed by the National Women’s Law Center in Washington, D.C., remains unresolved, but the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights still has an active investigation under way.

The National Women’s Law Center asked federal officials to investigate whether the district is giving girls equal opportunities to play sports as required by Title IX, the 1972 law prohibiting sex discrimination in educational institutions which accept federal money.

“Obviously, our goal is to comply,” school district spokesman Michael Rodriguez said. But he had no idea when or how the issue might be resolved.

The district’s position hasn’t been revealed, nor the most recent statistics.

“Because we are still working with the Office for Civil Rights to resolve the issue, we cannot disclose information related to those resolution efforts,” Rodriguez said.

But based on data from 2006, the law center alleged that if the high schools provided girls with sports opportunities proportionate to enrollment, an additional 3,591 girls in Clark County would be able to play sports.

Compared with 2004 data, even fewer Clark County girls were participating in sports in 2006; so the problem is getting worse, not better, according to the law center, a nonprofit formed in 1972 to expand women’s participation in work, school and community.

In May, the law center pointed out that Nevada, Florida and Delaware have cut the number of games for most teams to save money. But these associations have specifically spared football from any cuts, thus imposing more of the burden of the economic crisis on girls, the law center stated.

Here’s what the school district offers high school girls:

FALL: Golf, volleyball, cross country and tennis.

WINTER: Basketball, bowling and soccer.

SPRING: Softball, swimming and diving, and track and field.

At least one parent agreed wholeheartedly with the law center’s complaint: Las Vegas attorney Eric Johnson. He fought the school district over this issue on behalf of his daughters, Tess and Emma.

Starting in 2008, he sought to block moving soccer to the fall, saying it violated Title IX. Johnson threatened to sue the school district and the Nevada Interscholastic Activities Association.

Moving girls soccer from winter to fall left only two girls’ sports for the winter, basketball and bowling. “That movement creates a void in the winter for girls,” he said.

His efforts worked, but after Johnson’s daughters were no longer in high school, the NIAA moved girls soccer to the fall after all.

Johnson’s suggested fix to the inequity is that different girls’ sports could be added to the offerings, such as lacrosse, field hockey and badminton.

“I’ve heard from a couple of coaches. They’ve been pressured to have as many girls’ teams as possible,” Johnson said. That would drive up the numbers, even if the girls weren’t really good enough to make those teams.

The law center’s Fatima Goss Graves, vice president of education and employment, said there’s a myth that not as many girls want to play sports.

“I would say the evidence says otherwise,” she said. “Before Title IX, when there were opportunities to play sports, there were fewer than 300,000 girls playing in high schools. Now there are 3 million. It’s been shown time and time again, when you provide the opportunities to play, they play.”

If high school sports builds character and improves health for boys, then girls deserve the same opportunities, unless our top goal is to produce girls who can count to 21.

It shouldn’t take the federal government to force the Clark County School District to provide adequate sports opportunities for high school girls.

But apparently, that’s exactly what it takes.

Jane Ann Morrison’s column appears Monday, Thursday and Saturday. Email her at Jane@reviewjournal.com or call her at (702) 383-0275. She also blogs at lvrj.com/blogs/Morrison