The Piedmont Unified School District Board of Education received an update on the district’s compliance with Title IX at the board meeting on April 26.
An audit of Piedmont High School’s sports programs to check their compliance with the landmark anti-discrimination federal law was conducted during the 2021-22 school year.
Stephanie Griffin, the district’s Title IX compliance officer, and Piedmont High School Athletic Director Bradley Smet gave the board an update on mitigation measures. The Board asked questions and eight members of the public commented. No action was taken by the Board.
The original audit was presented to the Board last year and the Board received updates at its May, June, and September 2022 meetings.
The discussion was twofold. The audit found that in measuring the athletic benefits at varsity, junior varsity, and freshmen levels, 16 out of 54 categories favored boys sports while just one category favored girls sports. These are significant problems in terms of compliance with the law.
For example, girls teams were not getting as many games as boys teams were in multiple sports. Girls were also not getting opportunities for overnight trips.
Smet said he has been working to correct these problems during the current school year.
“For the most part, our coaches have freedom setting up their schedules,” Smet said. “I have final approval, yes/no. There was a time when our girls weren’t getting overnight tournaments. This year, I don’t think there was a boys team that did an overnight tournament.”
Another issue was team uniforms, with some boys teams getting new uniforms more often. Smet has set up a three-year rotation for all teams to get new uniforms.
Access to the weight room is another issue, as Title IX requires equal access to training facilities. Smet said that part of Piedmont’s problem is that the football teams have long emphasized weight training while other sports have been inconsistent about it. Another issue, according to Smet, is the number of coaches not on campus, who are not paid for offseason work. While some of these coaches organize offseason weight training on a volunteer basis, others do not.
“Unfortunately, we can’t just let our kids into the weight room,” Smet said. “We have to have a qualified staff member. It’s very easy for someone to injure themselves doing an improper lift. We have to make sure it’s a safe environment.”
Title IX, which bars any discrimination on sex, requires schools to make sure girls have equal facilities whether coaches are on campus or not.
Team rooms at Witter Field are also unequal. The boys room has large lockers inside that are used for football. The girls room is more of a meeting space, according to Smet.
Smet told the Board that progress is being made and he is prioritizing fixing the inequities.
The other part of the discussion centered on participation numbers. According to the audit, PUSD had 446 male students and 425 female students in the high schools in 2021-22. There were 406 roster spots for male athletes and 332 for female athletes. Those numbers include multi-sport athletes, or “duplicated measure” in Title IX parlance.
That means boys are 51.2 percent of the enrollment and 55 percent of athletes. One prong of Title IX compliance requires “substantial proportionality,” or that a school’s ratio of female athletic participation is close to the ratio of female enrollment. Courts have set five percent as the allowable difference, so PUSD is within that gap.
However, the District is committed to eliminating the gap. Under the audit, the gap was 55 athletes last year. Plans were drawn up to add new girls sports and attempts were made to recruit more athletes to currently offered sports. Beach volleyball was added this spring and plans are to add girls flag football (a new California Interscholastic Federation-approved sport) in the fall.
The efforts drew 24 more girls athletes this year, including nine that took up beach volleyball. However, participation by boys increased as well, including an unexpected jump of 30 new boys competing in track and field. The gap ended up being lowered to 44.
Plans for a freshman girls lacrosse team fell through when not enough girls showed interest.
Flag football is expected to draw 30 girls, which should lower the gap considerably. But Piedmont still needs more girls participating in all sports to eliminate the gap altogether.
One of the public commentators questioned the methods for collecting participation data. Smet said the school is trying to figure out how many kids are participating on the first day of competition as well as how many drop out shortly thereafter, and how many join a team midseason, perhaps after another sport concludes its season.
Board members asked about whether boys participation would need to be capped, given the extra boys that came out for track. Smet and Griffin both said their intent is not to limit boys participation but to increase girls participation.
Schools and districts are often sued over non-compliance with Title IX. There is no lawsuit pending against PUSD at this time.
Smet told the board members that the next steps include questionnaires for student captains of teams, evaluations with coaches, and a handbook for coaches. Coaching positions for flag football have been posted and Smet indicated that at least two employed staff have expressed interest. The district will need to update the coaches stipend schedule to accommodate the new sports.
Information about the audit and participation numbers are on the school district’s website. So is a mitigation plan. A state law requires certain information about participation be posted and the CIF (the state governing body for high school sports) requires reporting as well.
“The one thing that Piedmont Unified School District is committed to is mitigating the deficits we are in,” Smet said. “We want to build a program that is equitable and all are excited to be a part of it. It doesn’t matter what sport you’re in or what gender you are, we want you to have a great experience,” he said. “We are going to be doing this audit every single year, we’re going to be reporting on it every single day. It’s not just one and done.”
Smet and Griffin said the next update would come in the fall.
Thanks so much for the coverage of this important issue.
It is wonderful for our girls that the district is committed to eliminating the participation gap altogether and is making progress by adding two sports for girls and remedying some of the inequities of benefits and treatment.
I think the 5% percentage difference referenced in the article may be outdated. In a Title IX Task Force meeting in the Spring of 2022, Donna Lopiano, the nationally acclaimed Title IX expert the district engaged, clearly stated that to comply with the Title IX, the participation gap had to be smaller than the smallest viable roster. For PUSD that was 6 in the 2021-22 Academic Year and 5 in the 2022-23 Academic Year. In February 2022 the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that gauging the participation gap in percentage terms was erroneous and that it must be assessed in numerical terms. In the case MSU had a 2% difference. MSU appealed to the Supreme Court but the Supreme Court rejected the appeal in December 2022.
https://www.reuters.com/legal/us-supreme-court-rejects-michigan-states-appeal-title-ix-swimming-case-2022-12-12/
I’m going to expand on just one example from this article. Think about this please if it was your son or nephew who wanted to get into the PHS weight room for sports conditioning and were told no, and to keep waiting. “Access to the weight room is another issue [for PHS & MHS girl athletes], as Title IX requires equal access to training facilities.” The lack of weight room and conditioning for PHS & MHS girl athletes was an audit-recognized disparity for girl athletes last year. A Strength & Conditioning Coach – prioritized for girls – was budgeted for this school year ’22-23. In fall 2022, an offer was made with subsequent fingerprint delays in October…still delay in Jan 2023… and the PHS Title IX task force was told in March ’23 the offer had been revoked. This open position (again, to help rectify a known benefit disadvantage to our female high school athletes) was not and still isn’t re-posted on Edjoin. It all comes down to having a similar athletic experience for both high school girls and boys. As an example, PHS Football is currently accessing the PHS weight room three times/week from Feb to the end of May 2023. Meanwhile this school year, there are PHS & MHS female athletes paying out of pocket to off-site trainers and the YMCA in order to do weight training and sports conditioning. Our girls do not have equal access to weight training & sports conditioning at PHS. Chalk it up to another entire school year as inequitable. It sucks.
Yes, Gayle, it has taken an enormous amount of consistent pressure, assiduous participation, awareness-generation, and very detailed attention and scrutiny from a small group of dedicated current PHS parents to even get the District to accede to examining the extent of our District’s violation— 51 years after this Federal Law went into effect. The District has permitted ongoing Title IX violations with impunity for decades and are now only making slow progress toward achieving a basement level of equity for our female students. It’s sad, but at least we’re moving in the right direction, however glacially. I am so thankful for the serious and painstaking work of these women volunteers who are finally compelling the District to do right by our female athletes.
My daughter graduated from PHS in 1998. We fought hard the whole time she was in school for girls to have sports equity. It is unbelievable to me that this is still a problem! Something definitely needs to happen! Gayle
Thanks, Gayle, for shining a light on the long-term disappointment of parents working on behalf of our female scholar-athletes…