Title IX audit of Watertown sports teams finds no major violations

“Some of (the recommendations) were actually done before the auditor even left our district,” Mrs. LaBarr said, adding that there was training for herself; Title IX coordinator Tina M. Lane; Stacey J. Eger-Converse, assistant superintendent for instruction and chief diversity officer; and Joshua W. Hartshorne, assistant superintendent for finance.

She said all building-level administration will be trained next Tuesday.

“We thought it was so worthwhile to have the training that we asked the gentleman if he’d come back and do the same thing for our administrative team here in the district, so that everyone will have the Title IX training,” she said.

Other recommendations from the audit included adhering to Board Policy 0011 — to keep forms in each school for people to use to report possible discrimination, along with having the form available online; having a process for the Title IX coordinator to monitor participation in athletics to identify any disproportionate enrollment based on sex; and developing a method to survey the school climate about the equity of the athletic programs.

The audit reviewed and compared equipment purchases for all boys and girls interscholastic sports from 2017 to 2020; uniform purchases for all boys and girls interscholastic sports for the last four years; the number of games played of equivalent sports for boys and girls for the last three years; the coaching compensation for all interscholastic sports for the last three years; district data for participation levels in interscholastic sports for the last three years; transportation expenditures for all boys and girls interscholastic sports from September 2019 to February 2020 to determine if they were equitable; and the allocation of fields for practices and games for all interscholastic sports for 2019-20 to identify if they were equitable.

“We’ve had two comments now throughout this year, one earlier on softball and then (Tuesday) night from the board meeting we had another parent come and share his concerns with Title IX,” Mrs. LaBarr said Wednesday. “The district is currently working on a response to his concerns, we want to do our due diligence and go through each and every concern that he had and put a response together for that.”

The audit was conducted by Questar III BOCES, based in Rensselaer County, which provides consulting and auditing services to more than 640 school districts in New York. Findings from the district’s audit included:

• Comparing the number of games played for comparable sports for the school years 2019-20, 2018-19 and 2017-18, the audit determined the number of games played over the last three years to be relatively equitable.

• The stipends for the boys sport coaches were on average 12% higher over the course of the three years tested, and the then-director of health, physical education and athletics noted the stipend amount that is paid to coaches is based on contract language. While the years audited were not directly available, for the 2021-22 year, a total of $151,880.25 went to coaching salaries for male sports, opposed to a total of $132,147.85 for coaching of female sports in the same year.

• Overall, the allocation of field use appeared to be equitable.

• For locker room spaces and gym spaces, the conditions and allocation of the spaces overall appeared to be equitable.

• Uniform purchases: The athletic director stated that new uniforms are not purchased every year but typically every few years or whenever the uniforms become too old and unusable. This practice is followed for both boys and girls. The audit observed that year over year, uniform expenditures did not appear to be equitable and favored girls sports. For the 2021-22 year, $3,027.76 was allocated for girls sports and $2,059 for the boys.

• Equipment purchases: Amounts spent for boys equipment were significantly higher than amounts spent for girls in the past three years. A major driver of this was the boys football and wrestling programs. For 2021-22, $9,186.56 was allocated for equipment for male sports teams and $3,779.22 for female sports teams.

• From September 2019 to February 2020, amounts spent for boys transportation was higher than amounts spent for girls during the year. For 2021-22, a total of $63,272.52 was allocated for male sports teams, as opposed to $66,831.94 for female sports teams.

“Sometimes what you don’t know, you don’t know,” Mrs. LaBarr said. “So sometimes it takes somebody to tell you something that may be going on.”

She said that both her son and daughter, who graduated several years ago, participated in sports and she never felt like there was preferential treatment one way or the other for their teams.

She said the district will continue to strive for Title IX compliance and is looking into the claims about girls lacrosse compared to boys lacrosse brought forward Tuesday by parent Peter M. Virga before issuing a response.