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Equity in Athletics

Advocacy in Action: Young Athlete's Fight for Equity in Pittsburgh Public Schools

Charlotte Murphy Picture
Charlotte Murphy meeting with Superintendent Linda Lane

Throughout 2011, the WLP worked with a fifth-grade basketball player, Charlotte Murphy, who attends an elementary school within the Pittsburgh Public Schools (PPS) system. Her basketball team was eliminated last year, but the boys' team was not. The young activist wrote to Superintendent Linda Lane, told her the school was in violation of "title nine," and demanded a meeting.

Her courageous advocacy led PPS to overhaul their elementary athletics programs. At our urging, PPS formed a K-5 basketball league that would be gender-balanced and equitable (that is, if a school wanted a basketball team, it would have to have both a boys' team and a girls' team, and the teams would be treated equally). While some naysayers predicted that requiring teams for girls would end up eliminating athletic opportunities for boys, the girls of the Pittsburgh Public Schools proved them wrong.  Of the 16 elementary schools, 14 have chosen to participate in the new league, a big net gain for the boys as well as a spectacular improvement for the girls, who last year had just two teams. Even more exciting was the level of enthusiasm among the girls: at one school alone, 40 girls showed up for basketball try-outs!

Charlotte’s victory at Linden clearly demonstrates the importance and the power of advocacy. Still, Title IX compliance in PPS is a work in progress.

Background:

Fully three years ago, WLP pressed for and won a district-wide audit of high school athletics which revealed serious disparities in athletic opportunities and unequal treatment of female athletes. In April 2011, a year after the audit results were announced, the school district unveiled a plan for correcting the deficiencies revealed by the audit. Despite this progress, girls continue to be shortchanged in athletics. Thanks to the support of the FISA Foundation, WLP can keep up the fight to end sex discrimination in school athletic program.

In related news, months of negotiations between the Women’s Law Project and ACLU of Pennsylvania with Pittsburgh Public Schools have produced an agreement to eliminate gender segregation at Westinghouse Academy, a grade 6-12 public school, and to take affirmative steps to prevent gender stereotyping discrimination in city schools.

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