Did disability keep a student off team?
Presley Shine loves basketball. The Anthem high school sophomore wants a Michael Jordan poster for her birthday, she wears Air Jordan sneakers, and, at a recent basketball game, she scored a three-pointer.
But after the first day of Barry Goldwater High School’s three-day basketball tryouts, Presley was eliminated. She was the only student told not to return, her parents said.
Coaches pulled Presley and her parents aside, and told them that while they had “put up” with Presley on the freshman team, they did not want her on the varsity or junior varsity teams this year, the Shines said.
As her parents recounted the conversation with the coaches to The Arizona Republic, Presley put her head down on the table and hid her face.
She’s still hurt by the conversation, she said.
The Shines believe that Presley was cut from tryouts because she has Down syndrome. The family has filed a notice of claim, a precursor to a lawsuit, against Deer Valley Unified School District alleging discrimination.
“The District officials saw P.S.’s disability and not her,” the claim states.
Presley’s parents aren’t fighting the district because she didn’t make the team, Kevin Shine, her father, said. They just wanted her to get the chance to try out like every other student.
“I wanted her to have the equal opportunity to make the team,” he said.
The Shines claim the school district has inflicted emotional distress on the family and discriminated against Presley based on her disability. They’re asking for $150,000 in the claim: $50,000 to cover legal costs and $100,000 to train schools on their legal obligation to students with disabilities.
They’ve already moved Presley to a new school, a charter school in Anthem where she plays on the basketball team.
District spokeswoman Monica Allread wrote in an email that the district cannot comment on student-specific matters, but added that Deer Valley “follows all state and federal statutes.”
Presley’s first year playing freshman basketball at Barry Goldwater High was positive. She made new friends, she played in almost every game and enjoyed working with the coach.
“She grew tremendously,” Kevin Shine said.
But something felt off when Presley started her sophomore year, the parents said. Before tryouts even began, coaches started to nudge the parents toward putting Presley on a team through the Special Olympics.
Presley wanted the chance to play on the school team.
After the first day of the three-day process, the coaches took the parents and Presley aside, and offered the teen a team manager position, the Shines said. A coach told them that Presley would not make either team.
“Immediately we kind of were like, ‘Why are we having this conversation now?’” Kevin Shine said.
“How did you determine this after two hours?”
Presley started to cry, her dad said. “There was not one positive thing said about her,” he said. “It was so disheartening to hear someone speak with your child that way, especially coaches who she looked up to.”
Both federal and state law prohibit discrimination based on disability.
Troy Foster, the family’s attorney, said the claim revolves around giving all students, no matter their disability, “a fair shot.” Presley shouldn’t be defined by her disability, he said.
“My clients want to be treated like everyone else,” Foster said. “It’s really not about highlighting the disability.”
In 2013, the U.S. Department of Education released guidance for schools on allowing students with disabilities to participate in extracurricular activities. The document came after the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that students with disabilities were routinely being denied equal opportunities to participate.
The guidance stipulated that schools should:
❚ Not act based on generalizations or stereotypes. Educators should not assume that a student is not capable of playing a sport or joining a club because of his or her disability or stereotypes about the disability.
❚ A school must provide accommodations to ensure students with disabilities are afforded equal opportunities to participate in extracurricular activities. For example, if a student is deaf but is fast enough to make the cut for the track team, a school can signal the start of a race with a visual cue instead of just an audio cue.
❚ Schools should strive to include students with disabilities in regular extracurricular activities instead of offering separate opportunities.
❚ “A school district must ensure that a student with a disability participates with students without disabilities to the maximum extent appropriate to the needs of that student with a disability,” the guidance states.
Presley has since started attending a charter school, Caurus Academy in Anthem. Her mom can tell: Presley is much happier there.
Presley enrolled at Caurus after tryouts for their basketball team had already ended. But her dad said the team voted to let her in late.
“I love my teammates,” she said.