Posted on: Sunday, June 1, 2003

Hawai'i high schools making 'promising progress'

By Dennis Anderson
Advertiser Staff Writer

Hawai'i's high schools are making "promising progress" toward achieving gender equity in their interscholastic athletics programs, but there is much work to be done, a special commission has concluded.

The Advisory Commission on Gender Equity in Sports, created by the Legislature in 2000, has completed its three-year assignment and filed a final report. Among its findings:

• The percentage of female high school athletes in Hawai'i is about 1 percentage point below the national figure.

• The Legislature approved $10 million in capital improvement funds last year to upgrade athletics facilities for girls, but none of it has been released and spent.

• The percentage of girls in Hawai'i high schools who participate in interscholastic sports rose officially from 36.5 percent of total enrollment in 1995-96 to 40 percent in 2001-02, but those numbers are skewed because girls who play more than one sport are double and triple counted.

Title IX, known now as the Patsy Mink Equal Opportunity in Education Act, after the late congresswoman from Hawai'i who championed it, forbids exclusion of either sex from any education program receiving federal financial assistance.

Although the Mink law applies to any program that gets federal money, its major impact has been in medical, law and engineering schools, plus interscholastic and intercollegiate sports. It has led to significant gains in participation by females.

In Hawai'i, for example, there were nine state high school championship events for girls in 1997; next year there will be 17.

"Our whole focus was ... to give everybody a level playing field, especially young ladies who had never had it," said commission chairman Michael Victorino of Maui. "We want to give everybody a fair opportunity now and in the future."

As for the allocated but invisible $10 million, Victorino said, "Chances are not very good of getting money for improvements ... when every-day school repairs are $280 million behind and growing every day."

One of the commission's victories, Victorino said, was "helping administrators see what they could accomplish without extra money, like re-assigning facilities that exist.

"Some schools had locker rooms that were used for football only. Football doesn't last all year — use those locker rooms for girls' basketball or soccer in season."

"This is so important," Victorino said. "We have worked hard to do this and it is not over."