School district sued over Title IX concerns

MAT-SU — Two Colony High School softball players and their parents have filed a lawsuit in federal court against the school district, claiming that girls’ sports aren’t treated the same as boys’ sports in the district. That’s in conflict with Title IX, a federal mandate requiring equal opportunity for student participation.

One girl is 14 years old, the other 17.

The girls and their parents are unnamed in the suit and referred to only by initials. Samuel Schiller, an attorney out of Cookeville, Tenn., filed the suit on Thursday.

The school district had not filed response in court as of press time. School District Spokeswoman Catherine Esary did not have any comment on the suit, but did speak in general terms about sports funding.

In the suit, Schiller writes that the district funding discriminates by:

• Funding boys’ sports better than girls’ sports by, for example, requiring the softball team to raise money for its own equipment and supplies.

• Providing better facilities for the boys, for example, by providing an on-campus practice field for baseball but none for softball. Baseball teams, the suit alleges, also gets to use Hermon Brothers Field while the softball teams are stuck with the Bumpus fields, which they can’t use because alcohol is served there.

Esary, in talking about funding, said that most every district sports team, or even extra-curricular activity, engages in raising funds.

“Chess clubs, choirs, drama, music — there’s always more need than there is money, and so almost every student group in the district will be raising money at some point,” she said.

The suit asks that the school district be ordered to fund sports more equally and pay the plaintiffs’ attorney fees.

Editor’s note: See Tuesday’s Frontiersman for more on this story.