Anyway, today they are reporting that:
I recently learned via personal correspondence from someone connected to the matter, that someone filed complaint with OCR to challenge the cuts, and that OCR commenced an investigation. I further learned that the complaint was eventually withdrawn upon assurances from the school district that it would not put that particular reduction plan in place.OCR, by the way, is the (federal) Office of Civil Rights, the department responsible for enforcing Title IX.
The finalized plan is described by annarbor.com here, and in that annarbor.com article, Liz Margolis (AAPS Communications Director) is quoted as saying,
Margolis said the district is confident that, despite eliminating three girls’ sports and two boys’ sports, the district will be satisfying all Title IX requirements.Very interesting.
“The ADs have looked at these as well as Dave (Comsa, assistant superintendent for human resources and legal services) and feel that we’re OK,” she said. “It’s about accommodation and opportunity and we still feel that we fall well within Title IX implications.”
Thoughts?
I don't know about Title 9 compliance, but I have a big problem with the elimination of the freshman teams. My daughter plays a sport at one of the big 3 high schools and my observation is that most of the sports teams are made up of kids with years of private club training. They really are not "public" school sports in my mind. By that I mean that ordinary kids have little chance of making the team and playing (except for freshman teams). The coaches heavily favor the students who already have the training and spend little time with the others. Freshman teams at least allowed lots of students to play a sport and hopefully some of them got some good coaching and experience that they would not have gotten otherwise. I think sports is on its way out of public schools. There is no money and there is so much available privately. Just my opinion.
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