State College Area School District has hired a Philadelphia-area law firm to conduct a Title IX audit of district athletics programs amidst a lawsuit over its handling of opportunities for girls to play on the middle school hockey club team.
Parents of three students filed the lawsuit in August after no girls were selected to play on the co-ed middle school team, which operated under the direction of a booster group, and no other accommodations were made, despite a series of proposals. A federal judge ruled in a December preliminary injunction that “the plaintiffs have not been given the opportunity to which they are afforded under Title IX,” ordering the district to roster the girls on a team and to create a second team if necessary.
In status updates filed in the U.S. Middle District Court of Pennsylvania, SCASD said it had taken steps to form a second team, but the plaintiff parents responded that the district has wasted too much time and had few answers about when, if at all, the team would play. Judge Matthew Brann on Feb. 14 referred the case to mediation.
The school board on Monday voted 8-1 to approve an engagement letter with the law firm of Fox Rothschild to perform the Title IX audit at a rate of $250 per hour.
“We believe based on our own audit that we are in compliance,” SCASD Title IX coordinator Linda Pierce said. “We want a third party to tell us whether we’re correct or not.”
Board member Laurel Zydney voted no, citing uncertain total costs. She motioned to table the vote until other options could be explored, but her motion was not seconded and failed.
Pierce said Fox Rothschild “is very well known in the Title IX world,” and was separately hired by the district about a year and a half ago to provide employee trainings on various aspects of the law, which extends beyond athletics. In response to Zyndey’s question about the total cost, Pierce said she was told “until they can review the scope of the materials that’s really not possible to give. They should have a scope finished within about 30 days of the approval of the engagement letter.”
Zydney took issue with effectively handing over “a blank check.”
“…Just to sort of give a blank check, as important as this work is, concerns me,” Zydney said. “…Lawyers fees can add up very, very quickly and I don’t have a sense of whether we’re talking about 3,000 or 30,000 or even higher.”
“I’d like to ask that at least once we have that scope as soon as possible we get a sense of how far this could go,” she later added.
Pierce said the firm’s billing has been “very reasonable” for trainings.
“I’m not going to predict the future; I’m just telling you about the past,” Pierce said.
Board members Peter Buck and Amy Bader both called Fox Rothschild “eminently qualified,” and said their experience should expedite the process.
“…Hiring someone who is eminently qualified means an efficient process and that means hopefully less expenditure in the long run, rather than hiring someone that isn’t quite sure of the rules and what they’re doing,” Bader said. “We know we’re working with somebody who is relatively top-notch and should be able to go through this process pretty quickly. We’ve generated a lot of the data just recently. That will all be fresh and readily available, so I don’t see where we could do much more to make it expeditious and cost-efficient. So I’m more than happy to continue this relationship with that organization.”
Linnet Brooks, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, said during public comment she did not necessarily oppose hiring Fox Rothschild for the audit, but urged the board to “cast a critical eye.”
“… One of my concerns would be that you ended up with a Title IX suit after they trained people here at the district,” Brooks said. “I don’t know who had their training and who did not. I don’t know how much their training either was not taken to heart or may have missed key aspects that resulted in allowing decisions to be made and then supporting those decisions that landed the district in a Title IX suit.”
Bader and Pierce noted that the trainings have been focused on areas not solely specific to athletic, such as sexual harassment and assault.
In addition to conducting the audit, the district also has responded to the lawsuit by updating its policy so that club sports now fall under the purview of district administration, not booster clubs.
