The U.S. Department of Education has agreed to investigate whether Glenbard Township High School District 87 discriminates against girls by offering more athletic opportunities for boys.
The decision was made last week in response to the filing in September of a gender-equity discrimination complaint against the Glen Ellyn-based district by a group of area parents. The complaint, filed with the Education Department, alleges that girls do not have access to as many sports activities as boys.
The complaint grew out of the parents’ nearly yearlong effort to get a districtwide swim program started.
Glenbard is the only high school district in DuPage County that does not have a swim team.
“We’ve known for a long time that they were out of compliance, and we think it is about time women are recognized as equals when it comes to athletic activities at the high schools,” said Chris Davit, a parent in favor of a swim team. “We are happy that maybe it will finally be proved that fewer women participate in sports at Glenbard, yet the interest level is really high. They just aren’t offering girls enough.”
District 87 officials declined to comment.
“Until we get official notification, we cannot say anything about it,” district spokeswoman Julie Armantrout said. “But we make it a policy to address everything in this district conscientiously and thoroughly.”
Rodger Murphey, an Education Department spokesman, cautioned against reading too much into his office’s decision to look into the matter.
“It does not speak to the validity of the issues,” he said. “We opened the case strictly on the basis of having jurisdiction and that the alleged discrimination is covered by federal laws.”
Murphey said the department will ask district officials to try to reach a compromise with parents. If an agreement cannot be reached, he said, the department will launch an investigation to see whether the district is complying with Title IX, the 1972 federal law that requires high schools and colleges to give males and females equal athletic opportunities.
“We have a legal responsibility to help find a resolution to this dispute,” he said.
This is not the first time District 87 has faced this issue. Thirteen years ago, Glenbard was forced to start a girls soccer program after a group of parents filed a complaint with the Illinois State Board of Education.
The pro-swim team parents have been pressing school officials for close to a year to create two boys and two girls swim teams at the district’s four high schools. When the school board declined, the group focused its efforts on a girls team and started researching whether Glenbard was meeting girls’ interest in competitive sports.
Joan Johns, one of the parents who conducted the research, said it shows the district discriminates against girls by offering more athletic teams for boys than girls and having 2,600 males compared with 1,500 females on those teams. She also cited recent surveys that show Glenbard girls have a great interest in joining a swim team.
Mike Mangan, Title IX coordinator for the state school board, said state and federal sex-equity laws do not necessarily insist on a one-for-one correlation when it comes to high school sports. But they do insist that districts meet the interests and abilities of boys and girls to a comparable extent.
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“You might have more sports for boys and you may even be spending more money on those, but the issue is, Are there unmet interests out there on the part of the girls?” he said.
Johns said she met with district officials in April to discuss her findings but they did nothing to address her concerns. “They basically told us they were in compliance with the law and they didn’t want to discuss it,” she said.
The district did agree to survey the interest of female students in various sports. Unconvinced that the district would use the results to make changes, the pro-swim team parents filed the complaint in September with the Education Department.
District officials released the results of their survey this month, showing that Glenbard girls ranked swimming as their top choice for a new sports program. When asked which of 15 sports they would participate in, the 2,700 Glenbard girls who responded to the survey ranked swimming second, behind volleyball.
But the day they released the results, district officials called the survey flawed and decided to conduct another one.
“I think that showed us how serious they were about this Title IX issue,” Johns said. “We feel like we have been talking to them for a year and spinning our wheels. They have been dragging their feet and hoping we would go away. Maybe now, with the [Education Department] looking into it, they’ll do something to equalize things for girls.”