Oakland schools agree to boost girls’ sports
The Oakland Unified School District will be scrutinized for the next three years to ensure that girls have equal access to sports programs and facilities, following proposed budget cuts that illuminated the underlying gender inequities of sports in Oakland schools.
On Monday, after two years of negotiations with attorneys representing the nonprofit Legal Aid at Work’s Fair Play for Girls in Sports project, the district announced a prelitigation settlement agreement — in anticipation of Tuesday’s 48th anniversary of the Title IX federal law that mandates equal opportunity for girls and boys to participate in school sports.
“The partnership with Legal Aid at Work is an exciting and collaborative approach designed to finetune our system and ensure equity among athletic offerings, opportunities to play, and access to benefits and facilities,” said John Sasaki, the Oakland Unified School District’s director of communications. “We are excited to engage in this multiyear collaborative plan that underscores our commitment to serve the whole child, eliminate inequity, and give opportunities to all students to equally benefit from schoolcentered athletics.”
The gender gap in Oakland schools’ sports first came to light in August 2018, when district officials sparked community outrage by abruptly cutting 10 sports at city high schools. Officials told parents that these cuts would help close a budget shortfall by saving $500,000. But the cuts, including bowling, golf, tennis, wrestling, swimming, girls’ lacrosse, girls’ badminton and boys’ volleyball, affected twice as many girls as boys districtwide.
And this gap threatened to violate Title IX rules, which require that competitive sports participation reflect school enrollment. At the time, Oakland’s student body was 51% male and 49% female, but under the proposed cuts, sports participation would be 61% male and 39% female.
Following the announcement, the community mobilized to close the funding gap for these sports, amassing donations that helped save a handful of the girls’ programs, including tennis, golf, and lacrosse. But they fell far short of the new $500,000 gap.
The attention drawn to the proposed budget exposed inequities in Oakland schools that long predated the cuts, according to representatives from Legal Aid At Work. In the school year before the proposed changes, less than 46% of Oakland students who played competitive sports were girls, even though females made up about 49% of student enrollment, according to the California Interscholastic Federation. In some schools within the district, girls’ participation fell as low as 35%.
In September 2018, attorneys from Legal Aid at Work sent a letter to the Oakland Unified School District on behalf of girls and parents, alleging that the district was violating Title IX. The attorneys, the district and other stakeholders have since been negotiating a path forward outside of the courts.
Oakland wasn’t alone in its gender disparities. The state began requiring schools to report sports participation and gender data in 2016. A recent report shows an average 6percentagepoint gap between the number of girls enrolled in California public and charter schools and the number playing a sport, according to the Fair Play for
Girls in Sports.
Monday’s settlement set a plan to break the pattern, giving Oakland schools a threeyear “monitoring period” to ramp up their sports offerings for girls. By June 2023, all district elementary, middle and high schools must have sportsparticipation gender proportions that reflect enrollment. Girls also must have equal access to athletic facilities, transportation, scheduling and publicity.
In the coming years, progress on these goals will be monitored: Per the terms of the settlement, the district will annually survey female students about their sports preferences and will hire a Title IX expertconsultant to oversee and advise the changes.