- D.C. officials to introduce bill requiring schools to report boys and girls sports data
- Schools locked down after Navy Yard shootings [Richard Wright PCS mentioned]
D.C. officials to introduce bill requiring schools to report boys and girls sports data
The Washington Post
By Brigid Schulte
September 16, 2013
Faced with two formal Title IX complaints, years of angry parents’ pushing for change and steep disparities between boys and girls who play sports in the District’s public schools, D.C. Council member Kenyan R. McDuffie on Tuesday plans to introduce legislation that he hopes will finally bring equity and more opportunity.
The bill, which has garnered support from five of the council’s 13 members, would require all public and charter elementary, middle and high schools to publicly report how much they spend on boys’ and girls’ sports, the quality of the equipment, fields and facilities for boys’ and girls’ teams, and the number of boys and girls who participate.
If the legislation passes, the District of Columbia would become one of only a handful of jurisdictions, including Georgia, New Mexico and Pennsylvania, that require schools to report Title IX equity data, as a federal law requires all colleges and universities to do.
“I’m the parent of two young girls who love sports, and up until this point, we have not seen the same opportunities for girls to play sports as for boys. I want to change that,” McDuffie (D-Ward 5) said. “We shouldn’t have to wait until a complaint is filed to do something. If you look at some of the girls’ participation rates in the schools, it’s just jaw-dropping.”
The gaps between the number of girls enrolled in the District’s traditional high schools and the number who actually play sports ranged from a low of 5 percent at majority-female Banneker to 19 percent at Wilson to 26 percent at Ballou and Roosevelt, according to 2010 data, the latest available, that the National Women’s Law Center obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request.
That information, which would become available annually under McDuffie’s bill, was part of the reason that the law center filed a Title IX complaint in June against District schools with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights. (A second group has filed a separate Title IX complaint.)
The law center’s complaint also highlighted that girls in the District’s traditional public high schools routinely have fewer opportunities to play sports than boys and that they often have lower-quality facilities, fields, uniforms, lockers and coaching. The complaint noted how one girls’ team resorted to using masking tape to make numbers on their uniforms, and how boys at one school practiced on nearby fields, while the girls had to lug heavy equipment more than a mile away to play.
The school system is in negotiations with the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights, said D.C. schools spokeswoman Melissa Salmanowitz.
“Parents have a right to this information,” said Neena Chaudhry, legal counsel for the National Women’s Law Center. “We talk to students and parents all the time, and they can see what the boys are getting that the girls aren’t. But they don’t have a sense of the whole picture or just how widespread the problems are.”
Chaudhry said it was particularly important that the proposed legislation covers charter schools, where more than 40 percent of D.C. public school students are enrolled and where there is no currently public information on sports or sports equity.
Janice Johnson, who heads the Sankofa Project and has advocated for fairness in sports for girls for years, said getting good information is the only way the system can change.
“We know that boys who play football have wonderful opportunities to go on to college on athletic scholarships, but how many girls get to go? We don’t know. We haven’t collected the data,” she said. “The data collection will help us see for real where we stand, not just for girls and boys, but also by geography. We’ll see that schools east of the river, east of the park, pale in comparison to schools on the other side of the divide.”
A similar effort calling for regular equity reporting died in the council a few years ago. Johnson and Chaudhry said that with the complaints filed and media attention, they are more “hopeful” this time.
McDuffie’s legislation also calls for the mayor to come up with a five-year plan for ensuring equity, for schools to better handle Title IX grievances with district and school-wide Title IX coordinators, and for a new NCAA eligibility and athletic scholarship coordinator to ensure both boys and girls are being groomed for potential play in college.
Schools locked down after Navy Yard shootings [Richard Wright PCS mentioned]
The Washington Post
By Nick Anderson
September 16, 2013
When the doors to Tyler Elementary School were locked Monday morning in response to the shootings at the Navy Yard nearby, a few parents who had just dropped off their children were also shut inside.
Ivy Estabrooke, who has a 4-year-old daughter at the school on G Street SE, said she didn’t mind being “caught” along with her 2-year-old in the lockdown that began about 9 a.m. Estabrooke, a civilian Navy employee who works in Arlington and lives on Capitol Hill, said she and her 2-year-old daughter waited out the lockdown in the older daughter’s pre-kindergarten classroom.
“Frankly, if something was going to happen,” Estabrooke said, “I would rather be with both of my children.”
Two other parents and siblings were in the classroom during the episode, Estabrooke said. The school found an extra diaper for a visitor when one was needed. It also rustled up some spare lunches of bean burritos, green beans, oranges and milk.
The teacher continued teaching, Estabrooke said. It was a normal day except there was no recess. Estabrooke and the other parents left with their children at about 2:45 p.m., when school officials were given approval to dismiss.
Students from a D.C. public charter school near the Navy Yard shooting scene spent several hours sitting in hallways — and away from windows — while their campus was secured against possible threats.
But the lockdown at Richard Wright Public Charter School for Journalism and Media Arts, on the 700 block of M Street SE, ended without incident as students were dismissed at about 3:30 p.m. under police protection. The school has about 400 students in grades 8 to 11.
Charmaine Weldon, who came to pick up a niece and nephew, said the school kept in close touch with families during the lockdown. “They kept notifying us with updated information on voice mail,” she said. But she added: “I was definitely scared.”
The head of the school, Marco Clark, said students were escorted from classrooms to an interior hallway after they were alerted by police at 8:45 a.m. They sat there until shortly after noon.
Teachers handed out books and puzzles to help students pass the time. They were not allowed to text or make calls on cellphones. “Some did work,” one teenage girl said. “Some went to sleep.”
In the early afternoon, Clark said, some classrooms were reopened for instruction.
Clark said the police let him know at about 2:30 p.m. that students could be dismissed. He did so an hour later, after notifying parents. That was earlier than the usual dismissal time. “Our kids did a great job of following directions,” Clark said.