In 2023, the Oakland Tech girls’ basketball crew celebrated their third consecutive state championship. The following yr, the Oakland High girls’ basketball crew took residence the state basketball trophy. And this yr, Oakland Tech wrestler Shayna Ward gained Oakland’s first girls wrestling state championship.
It’s exhausting to think about that simply eight years in the past, Oakland’s public colleges have been being accused of gender discrimination.
It all began in 2018, when, to assist remedy a $30 million deficit, the district lowered the funds of the Oakland Athletic League by $500,000 by shutting down 10 highschool sports: bowling, wrestling, swimming, girls golf, girls tennis, boys tennis, boys golf, girls lacrosse, girls badminton, and boys volleyball.
The belt-tightening was powerful throughout, nevertheless it turned out the cuts disproportionately affected girl athletes: 347 girls misplaced their college sport in contrast to 183 boys. Students discovered shortly after they returned from summer season break, and a backlash ensued. The father of 1 Oakland Technical High School scholar known as it “a complete and utter tragedy.”
“We all jumped into action,” District spokesperson John Sasaki stated at the time. “We knew that this could not continue.” One anonymous donor stepped in to restore golf and tennis; one other to restore lacrosse. The Oakland Raiders stepped up with $250,000.
But the inequities had set off a chain response, and the next month, a group of fogeys, represented by Legal Aid at Work, despatched a letter claiming that Oakland Unified School District was in violation of Title IX, the landmark 1972 federal law — stipulating that “all persons, regardless of their gender, should enjoy freedom from discrimination of any kind in the educational institution of the state” — that set in movement the admission of ladies into all-male schools and universities and mandated equal funding in girls’ sports. Participation in school sports, one long-term study found, is related not solely with bodily well being, however with social and monetary well-being, self-motivation, and group engagement.
The authorized declare has had profound results throughout the Oakland Athletic League, The Oaklandside has discovered, setting in movement techniques and protocols to obtain equity not solely in girls highschool sports, however in rising a rising set of interscholastic center college groups as effectively.
‘It tells girls they are second-class citizens’
Elizabeth Kristen, now authorized director of the California Women’s Law Center, was a part of the crew who put collectively the case in opposition to the district. At the time, she was working for Legal Aid at Work, the San Francisco-based nonprofit legislation agency that drafted the authorized demand letter.
“The organization I used to work at and the organization I’m at now have been focusing for decades on creating opportunities for girls and women to play sports,” she stated, “both in equitable numbers, but also equitable facilities, uniforms, coaching and the right for girls to speak up about their rights without being retaliated against.”
Not lengthy after the district’s funds cuts have been introduced, Kristen instructed The Oaklandside, an OUSD mum or dad contacted Legal Aid. The Oaklandside reviewed a redacted model of the settlement settlement.
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“This to me is a clean and clear and blatant violation of Title IX,” Kristen said at the time. “I realize they have this budget deficit, but balancing the budget on the backs of girls sends a terrible message. It tells girls they are second-class citizens.”
She stated that the letter Legal Aid cited the district’s personal numbers for the 2017-2018 college yr, when girls represented round 48% of the scholar inhabitants, however solely acquired round 44% of athletic alternatives — a roughly 4-point hole. The inequities, Kristen stated, have been in all features of sports, not simply in participation alternatives, but in addition by way of services, teaching and uniforms.
Kristen stated the district’s in-house counsel was “cooperative” and “solution-oriented,” and paperwork present they rapidly sat down to have interaction in negotiations. Within six months, a settlement was reached: OUSD would put up the identify and phone info of a Title IX coordinator at the district and directions about how to file a grievance and rent a Title IX guide for a yr. The district would additionally file annual stories to the claimants’ counsel and submit to monitoring for 3 years. Most importantly, the district would commit to “equitable treatment and benefits” for female and male athletes, from gear to services, teaching, journey, fundraising, and publicity.
Five months after the deal was inked, Francisco “Franky” Navarro, a longtime coach and athletic director at Castlemont High took over as the brand new commissioner of the Oakland Athletic League. He was charged with guaranteeing compliance — and ushering in an age of gender fairness in Oakland college sports.
“Franky was the person who, in this agreement, became the one that was trained by the outside Title IX consultant,” Kirsten stated. “He became the Oakland expert on Title IX and what it requires.”
The monitoring was meant to final for 3 years, however Kirsten stated that with sports suspended throughout pandemic distant studying, it was prolonged for one more yr. That oversight lastly resulted in 2024.
A tax measure marks a new period for highschool sports
Under Navarro’s management, the Oakland Athletic League’s funds crept again up to the place it had been earlier than the funds cuts that set the Title IX grievance in movement. The funds lastly crossed the $2 million mark within the 2022-2023 college yr as Navarro started to construct out sports within the district’s center colleges. That December, he made an excellent greater play. He appeared earlier than the unbiased committee that oversees Measure G spending to make an ask: commit cash to OAL.
Measure G is a $195 annual parcel tax that was approved by voters in 2008 to bolster town’s public colleges by, amongst different issues, attracting and retaining extremely certified academics, protecting class sizes small and textbooks up to date, sustaining college libraries, and — what doubtless caught Navarro’s eye — offering “programs, including arts and music, that enhance student achievement.” His slide deck to the oversight committee, offered in December 2022, argues that extra sports funding would increase scholar enrollment numbers, enhance scholar attendance, and permit for equitable programming for boys and girls, sustaining Title IX compliance.
Navarro, who had himself been a student athlete in Oakland, playing baseball and soccer for Castlemont High, made his case, successful a main infusion from Measure G. By the 2024-2025 college yr — the newest yr for which the committee has reviewed an annual spending report — OAL acquired $3.06 million for center and highschool sports.
According to Navarro, the present funds for OAL is $4.2 million, with roughly $3.7 million coming from the Measure G parcel tax to cowl every thing from teaching and refs to transportation, uniforms, and gear. Money from the district’s common funds and ticket gross sales — round $200,000 final yr, Navarro stated — covers the remainder.
“For me it’s an appreciation for the community and Oakland taxpayers,” Navarro stated. “Everyone that pays this parcel tax on the properties in Oakland don’t know that the money goes to support OAL. And it really does.”
He stated OAL has additionally cast partnerships with town, which permits the league to use baseball fields without cost; with personal corporations who supply sponsorships or reductions; and with skilled athletes who need to give again to their alma maters.
Navarro stated that since 2021, the district has had a partnership with Under Armour, the Baltimore-based sports attire firm, to buy uniforms at a discounted charge. That low cost, mixed with Measure G funds, now permits OAL to present uniforms to each highschool crew, junior varsity and varsity alike, on a three-year cycle. Stephan and Ayesha Curry’s basis, Eat. Learn. Play., has additionally kicked in funds. Through these kind of partnerships, he stated, the league has additionally been ready to purchase uniforms at wholesale priced for girls flag soccer groups at Tech, Oakland High and Skyline by Marshawn Lynch’s model Beast Mode.
As head coach of the girls varsity basketball at Oakland High, Anita Simpson led her team to the California Interscholastic Federation state championship. She stated that Oakland High alum Damian Lillard, the NBA participant and gold-winning medal Olympian, has been giving again to his alma mater for years. In late 2016, Lillard joined with Adidas to revamp various parts of the school together with the set up of a new weight room, a new sound studio, and a new scoreboard at the basketball court docket. Lillard, Simpson stated, has additionally sponsored sneakers, balls, and uniforms for each the boys and girls basketball groups.
Navarro spends a lot of time ensuring his $4.2 million funds will get distributed equitably — by gender, but in addition by college, and likewise amongst varsity and JV groups. Each crew, he stated, will get new uniforms each three years, and every crew will get transportation to league video games and up to 5 “nonleague” buses — for journey to matches an hour or extra away. Each crew additionally receives a funds of $450 per season, from the mixed gate income, for objects like uniform replacements and event charges.
Since 2018, Navarro stated, the league has added girls flag soccer and girls lacrosse for highschool, and elevated participation in softball.
Navarro stated that when skilled athletes donate to college sports, the cash is usually paid straight to the distributors concerned, and neither the league nor Navarro are concerned. In the case of Lillard, although, Navarro stated the donation benefited the boys and girls basketball groups equally.
“There’s this notion that there’s a lack of funding, and that’s incorrect,” Navarro stated. “There’s adequate funding. Can we do more? Of course.”
In a dream situation, Navarro stated he would love for the OAL funds to be $7.5 million a yr, practically double its present funding. That would enable the league to rent full-time athletic administrators at every college like personal colleges have — at present, most do these duties on high of educating PE or serving as a group college supervisor — enhance teaching pay, and rent athletic trainers.
State champs with ‘ugly gold uniforms’
Those sorts of sources have by no means flowed into OUSD’s sports applications earlier than.
Alexis Gray-Lawson, the previous NBA participant, graduated from Oakland Technical High School in 2005, when the sports program was at a low.
“When I first was at Tech, boys football had never won a silver bowl, and girls basketball had never won a championship before,” she stated. “Tech had teams in the playoffs in the ‘80s, but by the ‘90s they were nonexistent.”
“We didn’t feel any inequities,” she recalled, “because both male and female athletes didn’t have access to facilities.”
Gray-Lawson stated that a wave of Tech athletes who went on to have skilled careers put Tech on the map — NFL gamers Marshawn Lynch and Josh Johnson (class of ‘04) and NBA player Leon Powe (class of ‘03), along with college stars like basketball players Quentin Thomas (class of ‘04), and Devanei Hampton, who was in the class of ‘05 with Gray-Lawson when they led the women’s basketball crew to two state championships. “That’s when parents and other community members wanted to invest,” she stated.
“We had these ugly gold uniforms my freshman through my junior year, and those uniforms had been worn by at least two or three more classes before me,” she stated. “I remember us getting brand-new uniforms our senior year, but we had to go out and fundraise. There was a barbecue spot in East Oakland right off 80th Avenue that ended up donating money for us to get uniforms that year. And we had just won a state championship. The fact that we had these terrible uniforms on during the state championship, I think brought some awareness to it.”
“We were as good as Leon Powe,” she stated, noting that she and Hampton have been named McDonald’s All Americans, “and we still didn’t get the notoriety that the boys were getting,” though extra D1 athletes got here out of girls basketball in OAL her yr than boys basketball.
Many of OAL’s sports legends got here up at a time when there weren’t girls’s professional groups to feed into: McClymond High’s Bill Russell, who went on to win 11 NBA championships with the Boston Celtics within the Nineteen Fifties and ‘60s; Hall of Famer Joe Morgan, a Castlemont High grad who went on to lead the Cincinnati Reds to back-to-back World Series wins in 1975 and 1976; running back MacArthur Lane, a Fremont High grad, who played for the NFL for 11 seasons in the 1960s and ‘70s; Skyline High’s Gary Payton, thought of one of many one of many biggest level guards of all time, who was drafted into the NBA years earlier than the WNBA launched.
So far, solely three women who started their basketball career at an Oakland public college have made it into the WNBA: Rehema Stephens, one other Oakland Tech star, was drafted by the Monarchs in 1998 at the daybreak of the league; Amisha Carter, out of McClymonds, joined the Liberty in 2004, and Gray-Lawson was drafted by the Mystic in 2010.
Seventeen years after Gray-Lawson graduated from Tech, she returned as the college’s athletic director, and he or she’s seen main adjustments. For one, the college lastly has a weight room. And there’s one other necessary one.
“When you look at Tech, we are evenly matched in sports participation by gender,” she stated. “We have more female athletes now, especially with the addition of flag football.”
Simpson, the girls varsity basketball at Oakland High, stated she thinks there’s nonetheless a great distance to go in getting caught up after years of disenfranchising girls’ highschool sports.
“To say that you can make up a deficit by just saying we’re going to be equal, that doesn’t work,” she instructed The Oaklandside. “Because, in essence, the program is already behind, which means you’re going to need more capital to bridge the gap.”
A balancing act
The problem, Navarro stated, is that coaches usually need to flip to personal fundraisers to get what they suppose their groups want. And that dangers not solely groups utilizing distributors that aren’t district-approved, however creating spending imbalances that might throw the district out of compliance with Title IX.
“If the boys football team raises $20,000, how is it that an equal percentage of the girls team also gets a $20,000 benefit?” he stated.
Last yr, the Oakland High girls’ basketball crew raised over $36,000 to cowl prices for collaborating within the Nike Tournament of Champions event in Arizona, together with flights, lodges and meals. In January, the Oakland High co-ed swim crew launched a campaign to assist pay for swimsuits, hoodies and snacks that raised extra than $1,500.
Kirsten Mitchell, a spokesperson for GoFundMe, stated extra than 1,000 sports fundraisers have been created in Alameda County over the past 5 years, though she couldn’t break down what number of of these have been for public college groups in Oakland.
Navarro stated generally groups fundraise at college websites and “we have no knowledge of it, no connection to it, but coaches still have to report it.” But when he’s made conscious of a crew that fundraises and their college can’t present the equal profit for the other gender, he stated, “then we will use those gate revenues so that we can provide that same benefit.”
Many college students we heard from stated the personal fundraising felt unfair on its face. “Asking for money from my parents just to be included in a high school soccer team is unjust,” Mariela Rubio, a ninth grader at Madison Park Academy, instructed us. “It should be funded directly from the school.” Navarro stated he additionally tells groups that no scholar whose household can’t take part in these fundraisers, ought to ever be excluded from collaborating.
Navarro stated gender fairness questions additionally come up as he tries to construct out center college and junior varsity athletics, which are experiencing fast development, with 1,400 ninth graders collaborating on groups this yr. He stated he encourages college websites not to add a JV crew for one gender except they’ll add one for each, however scholar curiosity doesn’t all the time enable that. So in some instances there may be JV groups for boys in soccer or basketball that he’ll stability with a JV crew in volleyball for the girls, or the latest addition of girls flag soccer.
It’s a fixed balancing act, Navarro stated.
When groups like these at Oakland Tech fundraise by their Parent Teacher Student Association or Associated Student Body accounts, it’s simpler, Navarro stated, as OAL has oversight over the funds and he can guarantee that the league is following Title IX guidelines. “We will work with the school to make sure that equal benefit is being provided,” he stated.
Gray-Lawson stated that at Tech, the athletic division tracks the funding they obtain, which flows by the PTSA or ASB accounts, and what number of athletes have performed which sports — stats she sends alongside to OAL to help with the league’s Title IX compliance.
Another equity-based fundraising possibility, Navarro stated, is the Oakland Public Education Fund, a nonprofit that serves as a bridge between the group and the district, as a fiscal sponsor.
According to Ali Medina, the nonprofit’s chief government officer, the group’s efforts to mobilize sources for Oakland public colleges and extracurricular applications are guided by two components: compliance and fairness. The purpose is to be certain that “all fundraising efforts align with Title IX and other equity requirements, preventing imbalances within the league,” and meaning the Ed Fund doesn’t sponsor fundraising for particular person groups. Instead, they’ll develop campaigns to modernize a sports facility that may serve all genders or create a program to develop student-athlete leaders.
Mostly, the gender inequities that stay in OAL are refined, college students and coaches instructed us.
Simpson, the Oakland High girls’ basketball coach, stated boys groups generally have extra sources to faucet into outdoors of faculty.
“Say the boys’ coach has access to other gyms from their own personal connections, that provides an advantage when, say, there’s usage conflicts in the school gym,” she stated. “If that girls coach doesn’t have access to those resources, there’s still a gap there. People aren’t opening doors for each other.”
The sheer stage of consideration paid to boys’ versus girls’ groups can sting, college students stated.
“It’s better, but there’s a lot of things they can still do to fix it,” Jane Alexander, a triple menace at Skyline High School who performed softball, flag soccer and basketball this college yr. Alexander stated she sees entry to the health club and uniforms as equal. But the boys’ groups, in her view, simply get extra consideration. Students present up for the lads’s soccer video games regardless of a dropping season, however someway when the girls basketball crew made it to the state championships in 2025, they nonetheless couldn’t shake an outdated status as a “bad” crew. The boys’ deal with soccer crew, she stated, will generally present up earlier than flag soccer follow is over, forcing the girls onto a partial discipline. Or youngsters will speculate about whether or not a center college boys’ soccer crew may beat the Skyline girls.
“The girls’ teams aren’t talked about with respect,” she instructed The Oaklandside. “I think if they acknowledged us,” she stated of Skyline’s leaders, perhaps with extra consideration at pep rallies, “more people would notice the girls teams have talent, and go to their games.”
A Skyline sophomore badminton participant named Caden Holder additionally stated that whereas facility entry is equitable, he had skilled gender inequity in different methods. “I have seen male coaches treat women like they are inferior to men, or feel less than men,” he stated. “I have witnessed students and other athletes making sexist jokes.”
Skyline’s athletic director, Koresh “K.C.” Adams, in regards to the college students’ claims, however he didn’t reply to our request for remark.
Navarro stated that when it comes to OAL, the league roots for all groups equally.
“Everyone in the office is a girl’s dad,” he stated.
This article was reported in collaboration with two Oakland highschool scholar reporters, Alexis Kennedy and Brean Melgoza, who are collaborating in an Oaklandside high-school fellowship program made doable by a grant from the Stuart Foundation.