How much did San Diego County Office of Education-JPA pay to delay girls' softball field?

(This article is being republished after editing.  It was originally published in 2009.)


Legal fees from losing Title IX suit prove costly
By Brent Schrotenboer
San Diego Union-Tribune
January 28, 2009

...The Ramona school district has been scrambling to find a way to pay almost $325,000 in attorneys' fees and costs to Ramona High softball parents who sued in 2007 because boys had a better baseball facility...


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Here's another article about the case written by Marquette University Law School:

"During previous proceedings, Ramona Unified School District (RUSD) was required to provide softball facilities that are comparable to the boys' baseball team. The parties were involved in a mediation process to come up with a proposal. The parties were able to come up with four different proposals, which included building a new softball field. The court had originally told RUSD to remedy the disparity prior to the 2008 season opener, but the court allowed the district to have the girls play on the middle school field until the new field was finished as long as the middle school field was renovated to fix drainage and irrigation problems. However, the court held that RUSD must provide an expected timeline to the court as well as provide monthly updates to ensure that it remains on schedule."

Multiple San Diego school districts ignore Title IX

 Update Sept. 24, 2014:  The author of the letter below was writing about Ramona and Grossmont school districts, but some of his/her comments also apply to Sweetwater Union High School District, which lost an appeal to the Ninth Circuit in Sept. 2014 regarding its firing of a coach for complaining about violations of Title IX.

Four board members of Sweetwater Union High School District recently pled guilty to corruption charges.  

The reader who wrote the letter below was responding to a story I discussed HERE.

Original article:

(This article is being republished after editing.  It was originally published in 2009.)

San Diego Union-Tribune reader comment by "T728"
January 30, 2009
Editor:

Ramona retained the same legal counsel that represented Grossmont High School District 10 years ago when I did the Title IX at Grossmont. That same counsel knew from the beginning what the outcome was/had to be at Ramona...

Two conclusions can be drawn.

First, Ramona didn’t want to abide by the federal law by somehow suggesting they were exempt...

The premise for Title IX is frequently over looked as demonstrated a few weeks ago with the question of continuing football at SDSU because of Title IX. The Supreme Court ruled back in the mid 90’s that the Federal Government doesn’t collect taxes by gender, and as such, the benefits of collect tax receipts must benefit each gender in government sponsored expenditures such as tax supported public schools.

The new superintendent still wants to blame the girls for the problem because he says the girls didn’t want to wait until the fairy shrimp moved to another location.

The new superintendent, along with the principal, and the prior superintendent should get together and explain to the District tax payers why their course of action of spending something like nearly three quarters of a million dollars on legal fees, school administration time, a playing field that was known not to satisfy the parity criteria, plus the cost of building the on campus field was a good use of tax payers money.

If they can’t explain it, then the tax payers shouldn’t be on the hook and those three should be held accountable by paying for it out of their current pay, or retirement pay, because of intentional reckless disregard for both girls and boys and the tax payers.

At Helix and elsewhere within the Grossmont District, the average cost of a new softball field was about $100K for each of the seven fields that were built.


Mesa College
State College

Castle Park High School loses girls sports case; when will Randy Ward hire lawyers who advise schools to follow the law?

A judge has ruled against Castle Park High School regarding the equality of girls' sports facilities (see story from SDUT below).

Shame on San Diego County Office of Education-Joint Powers Authority and its member school districts for helping schools to ignore the law and, even worse, to engage in retaliation against those who complain about violations of law.

Instead of wasting tax dollars in endless litigation, SDCOE-JPA should have settled this case and many other cases. Even worse is SDCOE's protection of bad administrators by helping the school district retaliate against those who complained.  Students are hurt by the systematic removal of good school employees.  This Castle Park High case in Sweetwater Union High School District (see story below) is all too familiar.

The firing of the Castle Park High coach is reminiscent of
1) the Coach James "Ted" Carter case;
2) the Mary Anne Weegar case (also in Sweetwater; also involving Supt. Ed Brand);
3) the Rodger Harnett case.

In another example of unlawful retaliation, SDCOE recently sued this blogger for serving a deposition subpoena on Risk Management Executive Director Diane Crosier.

It's time for SDCOE Superintendent Randy Ward to hire lawyers who will guide schools toward compliance with the law, instead of lawyers who try to help schools get away with wrongdoing. But most importantly, the retaliation has to stop. A judge recently told Mr. Ward that he should conduct investigations of wrongdoing instead of firing whistle-blowers.



Judge rules school shows bias in sports
By Brent Schrotenboer
San Diego Union-Tribune
April 2, 2009

SOUTH BAY — A federal judge has ruled that Castle Park High School has allowed “significant gender-based disparity” in sports at the expense of female athletes.

In a summary judgment this week, U.S. District Court Judge M. James Lorenz ruled that Castle Park is not in compliance with Title IX, the 37-year-old federal law that forbids sex discrimination in any education program or activity receiving federal funds...

The remaining claims will go forward in court, including one that the district retaliated against the plaintiffs by firing their coach after they complained of discrimination.
The plaintiffs showed that while female enrollment at Castle Park was 45 percent to 50 percent since 1998, female participation in athletics was 33 percent to 41 percent during those years...

Over the past 11 years in the county, the Ramona school district, Mesa College and the Grossmont Union High School District have faced similar legal complaints involving Title IX and subpar softball facilities.

Presentation: “Litigation in Schools Involving Athletics”

Update:  Sweetwater loses appeal.  The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal found that Sweetwater Union fired a coach for demanding that Title IX federal law be obeyed.  The law requires equal access for girls to athletics.


ORIGINAL POST: 

(This article is being republished after editing.  It was originally published in 2009.)

Presentation: “Litigation in Schools Involving Athletics”

Stutz law firm partner Daniel Shinoff presented “Litigation in Schools Involving Athletics” at the California Council of School Attorneys Workshop, held at the San Diego Marriott on December 1, 2011. The County Counsel Association helped arrange the presentation, which met State Bar of California requirements for Mandatory Continuing Legal Education (MCLE) for attendees.


Sweetwater will appeal ruling
Allison K. Sampité
Chula Vista Star-News
Feb 18 2012

A recent Title IX ruling by a San Diego District Court judge against the Sweetwater Union High School District for gender-based disparities in sports at Castle Park High will be appealed, according to the district's attorney.

Daniel Shinoff, who has represented the district for approximately 30 years, says the grounds for appeal include no actual violation and the fact that all inequities have since been corrected.
In his ruling last week, Judge James M. Lorenz said the district violated female students’ rights under Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 and the United States Constitution because its sports program unfairly favored boys’ sports over girls’ sports.

The decision was made in the 2007 case of Ollier v. Sweetwater Union High School, et al, and was prosecuted by the Legal Aid Society-Employment Law Center, California Women’s Law Center and Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, LLP.

“I am disappointed because I think that the court really didn’t take into consideration all of the efforts that were made by the district to improve the facilities,” Shinoff said. “The issue became moot.”
The female student athletes who attended Castle Park High School sued for injunctive and declaratory relief under Title IX, which bars sex discrimination in education and athletic programs for present and future female student athletes.

District Superintendent Dr. Ed Brand released a statement last week in response to the ruling saying, “The standard for which girls’ sports facilities outlined in this ruling is not applicable to high school sports — it aligns with university-level sports.”

Since the case was filed, Brand said that the improvements at Castle Park have become the standard for softball field upgrades throughout the district.

Plaintiff’s attorney Erin Witkow said she’s “thrilled” with the judge’s ruling.

“They (the plaintiffs) fought very hard…” Witkow said. “I hope this case will serve as a wake-up call to the school district that equal treatment is a right and not a luxury.”

Witkow said the victory has a big impact (in case law) because it’s one of the few cases that found Title IX violations in a high school setting.

The trial, which Witkow said is the first of its kind, occurred in 2010 after Lorenz issued a partial summary judgment for the plaintiffs a year before, ruling against the district for unequal treatment and benefits and retaliation.

“It’s a complicated issue because a lot of time high school students don’t have the ability to bring these types of cases and that a lot of times, high schools think they can get away with this … but Title IX applies across the board with all levels of education,” Witkow said.

California Women’s Law Center Legal Director Vicky Barker said the district needs to realize they should comply with Title IX on their own, without others getting involved.

The judge ordered the plaintiffs to come back in 45 days with a proposed plan to remedy the injunction.

Thirty-two-year Sweetwater district softball and wrestling coach Tim Tyler said he is unhappy with the ruling.

“I’m a Title IX advocate,” Tim Tyler said. “But I fully disagree that the district has ever prevented a female from going out for a sports team.”
Tyler has daughters who play sports.

“We at Sweetwater have always given girls and boys equal sports participation,” he said.

Hilltop High School Athletic Director Nancy Acerrio, who said she is pleased with the ruling, also said it’s the district’s responsibility to maintain the fields.

“It’s (the ruling) an eye-opener for the community,” Acerrio said. “I’m glad this was brought to the attention of the district and the public. It’s been long overdue and many people will benefit from it.”

$40 million settlement finalized in lawsuit by UCLA's Ed O'Bannon and other student athletes against video game companies

Do colleges own the images of their students? How about when they make huge amounts of money off those images?

College sports is big business, and it has very little to do with educating students. So why pretend that UCLA and other colleges are just a well-meaning public institutions devoted to the care and improvement of young people? If it's a business (which it is) the NCAA should be treating its workers as essential contributors to its bottom line--it should pay them.

Former NCAA Players Receive $40 Million in Ed O’Bannon Case
Steven Lebron
Triangle Offense
05.31.14

You may have heard awhile back about Ed O’Bannon—former collegiate basketball star at UCLA—and the antitrust lawsuit he filed against the NCAA, Electronic Arts (EA) and the Collegiate Licensing Corporation. The lawsuit challenges the NCAA’s rights to use player’s images and likeness for commercial purposes, such as the NCAA video games that EA has been putting out since 2003.

A settlement between the college players represented in the suit and EA and Collegiate Licensing Corporation was announced last year, and today the $40 million agreement was finalized. After legal and other fees, over 100,000 players represented in the suit are expected to receive between $2,000 and $4,000 each. It’s a big step considering that while the payment isn’t coming directly from the NCAA, this is a precedent for college players receiving some compensation tied to the marketing of their performance.

Without their star power, the video games don’t happen.

You will notice the settlement does not include the NCAA. Essentially, this is a partial settlement in which EA and Collegiate Licensing Corporation are now no longer defendants of the lawsuit. This leaves O’Bannon to move ahead with his lawsuit against the NCAA, who are the only remaining defendant in the case. Just yesterday, the NCAA filed another emergency petition to try and delay the trial hearing for the lawsuit, which was slated to begin on June 9th. This was their fifth attempt over the past couple of weeks to push the trial back. There’s another similar lawsuit filed against the NCAA from former Nebraska Sam Keller, and that hearing isn’t scheduled until 2015. The NCAA is petitioning that O’Bannon’s lawsuit should not be heard before the Keller case since there are overlapping issues.

Regardless of these tactics, the case should eventually make it to court, and when it does, it could be another huge step in what is looking like a losing battle for the NCAA.