SOCCER MOMS PREVAIL!

East & Highland High Soccer (3/26/14)

East & Highland High Sophomore/Freshman Soccer Game (3/26/14)

A soccer Mom is someone you do not want to tangle with–The Salt Lake City School District bureaucracy learned that lesson when they ran afoul of the soccer moms of East High School.

Last Friday the school district ordered the disbandment of the East High sophomore /freshman boys’ soccer team.

Link: District Nixes Soccer Team

On Monday night, one of the soccer moms wrote the following email to school district officials:

“I am reaching out to you as the Title IX Coordinator of the Salt Lake City School District. I am forwarding you a string of emails wherein someone on the district level, believing that Title IX required the school to create a balanced athletic system, ordered coach Schenk to abruptly disband the boy’s sophomore/freshman soccer team.

This action is not only counterintuitive but I believe in violation of the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights directive which states:  “It is OCR’s policy to encourage compliance with the Title IX athletics regulations in a flexible manner that expands, rather than limits, student athletic opportunities.”  (see Dear Colleague Letter – September 17, 2008)

Rather than draw unfounded inferences based on the boy’s soccer team expansion in recent years, and risk missing the forest for the trees, it is important to look at the overall picture of the athletic program at East High. My email to the superintendent solicited no real solutions. A players/parent meeting earlier this evening resulted in the absence of any district personnel. This served to increase the distrust that the community already has for the district.

In my research, I discovered that schools can comply with Title IX’s requirements in the area of athletic participation opportunities in any one of three ways: (1) by providing opportunities substantially proportionate to each gender’s enrollment; (2) by expanding opportunities for the underrepresented sex; or (3) by fully accommodating the existing athletic interests and abilities of the underrepresented sex.

Meeting any one of these three tests will bring a school into compliance in this area. Significantly, none of these three standards requires schools to cut teams for the overrepresented sex and the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) actively discourages resorting to this measure; each of these measures can be achieved by expanding opportunities for the underrepresented sex. Which I believe our school has done.

I am asking that you intervene and compel the district to comply with tenants of Title IX and reverse its decision to disband the sophomore/freshmen soccer team.  At this time it would only be fair to allow the boys to continue their regularly scheduled season as is while an investigation is conducted.

This matter was brought to our attention after three games were already played in the season. The boys have a game Wednesday, March 26th at Highland and a set of games they are scheduled to play with three other teams in Park City on Saturday, March 30th.  As of right now the coaches have been told that the boys will not be able to participate in the games Saturday due to the games being out of the Salt Lake City School District.

We are all aware that among its many benefits, participation in extracurricular athletic activities promotes socialization, the development of leadership skills, focus, and of course, physical fitness why would we want to rob our students of this opportunity.

Please let me know within the next 24 hours if your office can help rectify this situation or is this something that we must file a complaint with OCR in Denver.”

 On Tuesday, district officials released the following statement:

“I wanted to let you know the latest update regarding this situation. ..It is our intent that while we gather additional information on the situation, that the soccer team will be allowed to continue its schedule.…Upon receiving the necessary information to review the situation, if indeed a problem exists then a plan to remedy the issue will be developed.  The approach that we would like to pursue will be one that is inclusive rather than restrictive….”

The moral of this story:

DON’T MESS WITH SOCCER MOMS!

Comments are closed.