The Department of Education and the Public Schools Athletic League (PSAL) are called to create 200 new teams in the next two years, as part of an agreement on unequal access to sports for black and Latino students.
Sneha Dey
NYC high school students rallying for more equitable sports access in 2018.
This article originally appeared in English on March 29. Translated by Ana Teresa Solá Rivière. Read the original article in English here.
The city’s Department of Education (DOE) and the Public Schools Athletic League (PSAL) are required to launch 200 new high school sports teams over the next two years—as part of a settlement approved by a state court this month—following a lawsuit over disparity in access to sports for black and Latino students.
New York Lawyers for the Public Interest (NYLPI) filed the class action lawsuit on behalf of the city’s students in 2018, alleging that the city’s policies for funding and allocating high school sports teams violated the new york city human rights law. The document cited more than 100 public schools without sports teams, noting that Black and Latino students are more likely to lack access and the city has historically spent less on a per capita basis on sports for these students compared to their peers. other races and ethnicities.
“Thousands of New York City public high school students will benefit from this,” said Jenny Veloz, lead organizer for the NYLPI Fair Play Coalition, where youth activists have campaigned for increased access for the past several years after noticing disparities, particularly for smaller schools predominantly attended by students of color compared to larger institutes.
“As someone who has always loved sports, I was shocked that New York City high schools with majority white students had 44 teams, while my school only had four,” wrote Matt Diaz, one of the plaintiffs. in an opinion column for City Limits in 2018 when he was a student at the Urban Assembly Bronx Academy of Letters. And he described another student whose school was forced to host basketball practices in the auditorium, something like a “gymatorium.”
“Most auditoriums have sloped floors, causing the ball to roll downhill every time they try to throw it and they have to run uphill to score,” he said. “Do white kids have to play in a gym?”
As part of the lawsuit settlement, the DOE and PSAL are required to expand the number of sports teams offered under their Shared Access Program, which allows neighboring high schools to play on combined sports teams. The DOE will survey all students at participating schools to help determine which new sports to offer, and must create at least 200 new teams by the spring 2024 semester, prioritizing schools with fewer options.
“For us and for this project, it goes beyond the physical practice of sport itself,” says Veloz, who points to other socioeconomic benefits of practicing, such as access to university scholarships, the development of leadership skills and, for some students, , increased motivation and interest in school.
“The mere fact that this door is opened to them is tremendous,” he says. “Sport can give young people an outlet if they have no other options.”
In a statement, DOE spokeswoman Suzan Sumer told City Limits that the agency spent $6 million for the PSAL expansion. “We are committed to providing equitable access to our amazing PSAL programs and putting sports in the hands of our students, changing their lives,” said Sumer. “Students in all zip codes will have access to PSAL sports programs that support their health and wellness.”
46,384 students participated in PSAL sports during the 2018-2019 school year. In March 2020, COVID-19 closed schools and their sports teams; the city only began to allow the sports of the high school to return in phases during the spring of 2021.
The pandemic created similar disruptions to the use of the city’s sports fields and courts, where student and adult teams compete for space reserved through the New York City Parks Department’s permitting process. COVID-19 forced the agency to suspend permitting in the spring of 2020, though athletic fields reopened that summer on a first-come, first-served basis.