You’d best get out your hip waders, folks – we’re about to wade through a steaming pile of government balderdash.
The controversy surrounds a storage shed built by the baseball booster club at Arbor View High School in Las Vegas. The youngsters needed a place to store their bats and balls and bases.
The boosters had wanted to build a clubhouse for the teenage ball players, but after months of delay they came up with an alternative plan.
One of the parents knew the owner of a company that made precast one-story buildings. The company offered to donate the manpower and materials to build the boys a shed.
Carl Pastrone, whose son is a pitcher and outfielder for the Arbor View Aggies, told me they pitched their plan to school administrators and were promptly given a green light. That was in 2014.
The storage shed was erected last September. Boosters installed doors and gave the shed a coat of paint – nothing elaborate.
It cost a grand total of $21,000 to remove a shed that was given to the baseball team at no cost. The school district took every single penny of the booster club’s money.
“It cost the booster club zero,” Carl told me.
And that was that – until a few months ago.
That’s when officials with the Clark County School District showed up at the school and demanded that the storage shed be torn down. They said it violated Title IX.
Title IX states: “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.”
In other words, for every boy sport there must be a girls alternative.
And in the case of Arbor View High School – if the boys have a storage shed – the girls must have a storage shed.
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“It requires that we have equal facilities for boys programs and girls programs,” district spokesman Joe Murphy told 8NewsNow.com.
It doesn’t seem to matter one iota that the girls softball team never asked for a storage shed.
“The girls aren’t complaining,” Carl told me. “It’s totally coming from the school district.”
You’ve probably turned to your significant other and wondered aloud, “Those administrators are morons. There’s no reasonable way a storage shed could violate Title IX.”
But we’re not dealing with reasonable people here, folks. We’re dealing with public school administrators.
“We have a compliance problem and that’s not something we can allow,” Murphy told the television station.
Oh, but it gets even worse for the booster club. The school district is making the parents pay to remove the shed.
“The funds have already been taken out of the baseball fund -- $10,000,” Carl told me. “The remaining funds were taken out of the high school fund.”
It cost a grand total of $21,000 to remove a shed that was given to the baseball team at no cost. The school district took every single penny of the booster club’s money.
“It’s a mess created by adults,” Carl lamented.
Indeed it is, sir. Indeed it is.
I do wonder, though, how far the government is willing to take this Title IX equality nonsense. I mean, boy athletes do have parts that girl athletes don’t have.
How does the Department of Education propose to remedy that?
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