Merged booster clubs in Maine

The Portland (ME) school board has proposed that all athletic booster clubs be merged. So now, at the city's two public high schools, there will no longer be booster clubs for individual sports. Each school will have one booster organization and an administrator who supervises the organization, according to the proposal.
The proposed change is due to some questionable accounting practices within booster clubs as well as Title IX concerns over the equitable distribution of funds and treatment of athletes.
Apparently there is already some sharing of booster funds among teams, so the concept is not completely foreign.
But based on the article's public comments section, there is much criticism of this plan. People are basing these critiques on the belief that fundraised monies should not affect Title IX compliance and that the amount of money raised is a direct correlation to the amount of effort put in by parents.
While the latter may be partially true (the former is not, by the way), these arguments fail to consider the different values parents, students, administrators and the general public have regarding different sports. Football boosters raise more money, in part, because high school football in many, many cities and towns is the highest profile sport. If both the football team boosters and the girls soccer team boosters sell concessions at their respective games, who is going to raise more money?
Such an argument just perpetuates the inequities and punishes those student-athletes, and their parents, who may feel just as passionately about their sports as football players and their parents but cannot get others to feel similarly.

Booster Club Can't Pay Football Athletes' User Fees

School and city officials in Haverhill, Massachusetts understand Title IX. That is why they denied the request of the Touchdown Club, the booster club for the Haverhill High School football team, to use its fundraising proceeds to defray the cost of participating in football. This would violate Title IX, because boys would have the opportunity to play a sport for free (football) while girls would have no such option -- Haverhill charges $275 for all varsity and $175 for all freshman teams. Title IX does not consider the source of funds in determining whether it is equitably spent. If a school accepts money -- whether it be from private funds or public money, it may not use that money to fund disparate treatment for male and female students.

Touchdown Club officials were reportedly disappointed -- though not surprised -- that their request was denied. Hopefully there is a way they can use their money -- a donation of $15,000 was planned -- in a way that benefits athletics as a whole, and could maybe bring down the user fees for all students. I wonder if the boosters considered a "scholarship fund" that would cover the costs' of athletes' user fees based on their financial need, regardless of their sex and regardless of their sport. While it would be illegal to designate this fund just for football players, I don't think it would be illegal to designate the fund for "needy students," even if that criteria happened to help more football players than other athletes. As long as the boosters use sex-neutral criteria as the basis for making the awards, and boys and girls have equal opportunity to apply and be considered based on need, it would not be required that an equal number of awards be made to girls and boys. This solution would seem to be in line with the football boosters' goal of gaining back athletes who have had to drop out since the fees were implemented (the team has gone from 70 to 40 players in the last ten years). So it actually may be that there are more football players eligible the scholarship than players in other sports.

Pay-to-play is controversial in a lot of schools, as user fees operate to limit athletic participation to students who are already financially privileged. Certainly, class-based discrimination in athletics is a troubling as sex-based discrimination; but the solution to the former must not implicate the latter. I think that booster clubs have tremendous potential to help reduce financial barriers to participation, and there are opportunities to do so in a sex-neutral way.

Report ready for digestion in PA

Title IX consultant Peg Pennepacker finished her report on the gender disparities within Hazleton School District in Pennsylvania. We wrote about this situation just over a year ago. Interestingly, the reporting of the complaint about the lack (i.e. none) of middle school girls' sports in the winter seemed to be more focused on whether girls' basketball should be moved out of the spring season to its traditional winter season.
But the raising of the concern clearly triggered an investigation and brought Pennepacker into the situation. Her report goes a lot further than just winter sports, too. (Sometimes educational administrators are not very smart.) A large concern highlighted in the report seems to be the use of booster donations. Or at least that is what people are talking about. And it seems the ad-hoc committee, created in order to "digest" the report, is getting on the booster club issue immediately, suggesting that there be a district-wide booster club policy and that financial audits of booster clubs be conducted.
And I can see why a special digestion committee is necessary. Here are the rest of the items that "warrant action" in order to achieve Title IX compliance.

Increase number of participation opportunities.

- Improve equality in supply and condition of athletic equipment and supplies.

- Improve scheduling use of athletic facilities including locker rooms, practice and competition facilities.

- Re-evaluate team transportation and meal allocations.

- Recruit best-qualified coaches and offer coach training.

- Make publicity and promotional activities available to all groups.

- Improve game and practice scheduling.

- Re-evaluate access to training facilities and medical services