Is it a requirement that varsity baseball and softball be equally funded?

[whiporee]

It's not a sport by sport thing, it's an overall funding. In order to have a valid complaint, you have a net situation where the girls programs as a whole get less money than the boys programs. Most school cover this by having more girls programs than boys programs. So something like cheer can take a lot of funding.

But usually it's that a school has a girls volleyball team, maybe a girls gymnastics team, a cheer squad, field hockey, whatever, to balance out the actual funding. Since there aren't scholarships involved, it's usually a matter of coaching salaries, facilities and uniforms. Travel costs can factor in, too -- the school pays for busses for the softball team but not the baseball team, so the baseball team has more money to spend on things like uniforms. A lot of it can be really sneaky, but the balance aspect goes both ways. If they start increasing the softball uniform budget, then a budget on the boys side would need to go up, too.

 

[MNDad]

It's not a sport by sport thing, it's an overall funding. In order to have a valid complaint, you have a net situation where the girls programs as a whole get less money than the boys programs. Most school cover this by having more girls programs than boys programs. So something like cheer can take a lot of funding.

But usually it's that a school has a girls volleyball team, maybe a girls gymnastics team, a cheer squad, field hockey, whatever, to balance out the actual funding. Since there aren't scholarships involved, it's usually a matter of coaching salaries, facilities and uniforms. Travel costs can factor in, too -- the school pays for busses for the softball team but not the baseball team, so the baseball team has more money to spend on things like uniforms. A lot of it can be really sneaky, but the balance aspect goes both ways. If they start increasing the softball uniform budget, then a budget on the boys side would need to go up, too.

Generally Cheer is not considered a sport for Title IX purposes. Competitive acrobatic cheer is a sport. Traditional cheer is not. Dance Isn’t a sport either

 

[radness]

I’ll add this…. I should get off my rear and work on this stuff with the local hs. My daughters have graduated from hs and unlike current players parents I no longer have anything to lose.

Make no mistake, if you aren’t ready for it and have skills to deal with it, they will try to mess with you and your kid.

And they count on you being nervous about doing it and they count on wearing you down to the point that you don’t care after your kids are gone.

This is quite a post!

 

[radness]

Generally Cheer is not considered a sport for Title IX purposes. Competitive acrobatic cheer is a sport. Traditional cheer is not. Dance Isn’t a sport either

dont tell them that.

 

[Long Baller]

DD's HS built a totally new Baseball facility a couple of years ago. It's absolutely beautiful; decorative block pressbox and dugouts, p/a system, their own designated batting cages, folding stadium-type bleacher chairs, infield tarp, the whole nine yards. The softball field got a new "backstop" net (not fencing), painted the old wooden dugouts, a windscreen, and new "drainage pipe" on top of the outfield fence. I asked the new head coach about the field "renovations", and his reply was "I was promised a lot of things with regards to our field before I took this job, and this doesn't quite deliver..." Our AD at the time was a female and seemed to hate women's sports for some reason.

Ironically, a "freshman mom" was chatting with me earlier this season and she brought up the "Title IX" issue regarding the fields. I just laughed and said, "Yeah, if you want to bring it up to the administration, go right ahead." I had already learned that anything softball related went in one ear and right out the other.

 

[MNDad]

Here’s how to file a Title IX complaint with the Dept of Education Office of Civil Rights. It’s free and you don’t need a lawyer. Some school districts will act quickly to prevent an investigation, others will fight it knowing your kid will graduate and most people will lose interest in pushing it. Gathering the evidence needed is daunting, but worth it when the girls get some of the things they deserve.

OCR: Discrimination Complaint Form

This is the Office for Civil Rights' online discrimination complaint form.

www2.ed.gov

 

[sbmom19]

DD's schools baseball team "raised" a bunch of money to improve the baseball fields - some of which was donations from wealthy relatives. I say "raised" because it later came out that one of the parents stole money from his employer (he was the accountant-oops) to give to the baseball team. They installed dugouts, a clubhouse, a concession/bathroom/announcing building and big fancy scoreboards. When the investigation was going on the softball parents raised concerns to the school board about the Title IX issues with the inequities between the programs and consulted a lawyer. Even though the money for the baseball team was raised with some ill-gotten gains, the schoolboard bought the softball teams scoreboards and made dugouts to address the Title IX issues.

 

[sbmom19]

I filed two Title IX complaints back in the 90s and won both.

I'm still amazed that I had to file complaints. The gender discrimination was ridiculous...boys had dugouts, girls had to sit on an open air bench. They had a "co-ed" soccer team, but the rule was that only 3 girls were allowed on the squad. Crazy stuff.

The AD for the district was so sure that girls didn't want to play sports he had a survey performed...and it came back that a higher percentage of girls wanted to play sports than boys.

Our AD said (right to my face) that girls only play sports to look cute in their uniforms and aren't serious about playing. And he was dead serious. Almost punched him.

 

[sluggers]

Our AD said (right to my face) that girls only play sports to look cute in their uniforms and aren't serious about playing. And he was dead serious. Almost punched him.

Wow.

September-November, on Friday nights all over the US, you can find 120 boys at football fields dressed in identical uniforms, even though only about 50 of them play. Why? They want to belong to a group.

 

[bmakj]

Our AD said (right to my face) that girls only play sports to look cute in their uniforms and aren't serious about playing. And he was dead serious. Almost punched him.

if DD ever found out our AD said something like this, she would literally find him and kneecap him with her cage bat, and ask him how cute that was (she has some anger issues)(he wouldnt though, his DD is a very good athlete, now graduated)