Re: Single-Sex Public Schools

Elizabeth Homer (lizlansing@mindspring.com)
Fri, 03 Apr 1998 21:07:16 -0600


In Michigan I filed an OCR complaint against the Pellston Public
School District, a small district near the bridge in northern
Michigan, because of sex-segregated classrooms.
I filed it in September. They promised that the target date for
completion of their initial review would be October 27, 1997. My
contact was Denise R. Ennis, Administrative Officer, Cleveland Office,
Midwestern Division. In January they said they were analyzing the
information and would soon determine what action needs to be taken.
This complaint has to do with a middle school where the sixth grade
boys were underachieving to a greater extent than the girls were so
the principal was going to develop a special program for the boys.
When he was informed that he couldn't do this under Title IX, he came
up with the idea that he could claim the girls were underachieving in
math and science and thus go about his plan to provide special
programs for the boys but claiming to be segregating the classrooms to
help the girls. He explained the scheme on Public Radio (apparently
he didn't think there were any NOW members up there who listened to
the radio) and how they couldn't say what they were really doing. We
had the transcript within 24 hours.
I'm still waiting for resolution of the complaint, and of course the
school year is nearly over.
Liz Homer, Chair
Michigan NOW Education Task Force
http://www.geocities.com/Wellesley/6628/titleix.htm
lizlansing@mindspring.com

tina wrote:
>
> I am sorry to be coming on what seems the tail-end of this flurry of
> information regarding the single-sex public school issue. I wanted you to
> know, especially Linda Purrington, that the New York City Chapter of the
> National Organization for Women and the New York Civil Liberties Union have
> been actively involved with trying to get the office of civil rights to
> enforce Title IX in the case of the Harlem Leadership School for Girls. They
> have met with Norma Cantu on several occasions--to no avail. NOW-NYC's
> former president, Anne Conners, and Michael Meyers of NYCLU--are, to my
> knowledge, the only two people speaking out on this issue (besides
> yourselves ofcourse)--and NOW-NYC has taken a lot of blows from their stand.
> NOW's position is basically: 'we get thousands of calls from women suffering
> from sexual harrassment in the workplace--we don't tell them 'the only thing
> we can do is create separate-sex work environments..why should we run away
> from, and sex-segregate, these problems when they concern teenage girls.."
> Also, the NAACP has also taken a stand against these public single sex
> schools...
>
> Just so you know--the Office of Civil Rights has been stunningly
> disinterested in enforcing Title IX in these cases.
>
> <tina@tiac.net>

tina wrote:
>
> I am sorry to be coming on what seems the tail-end of this flurry of
> information regarding the single-sex public school issue. I wanted you to
> know, especially Linda Purrington, that the New York City Chapter of the
> National Organization for Women and the New York Civil Liberties Union have
> been actively involved with trying to get the office of civil rights to
> enforce Title IX in the case of the Harlem Leadership School for Girls. They
> have met with Norma Cantu on several occasions--to no avail......
> Just so you know--the Office of Civil Rights has been stunningly
> disinterested in enforcing Title IX in these cases.
>
> <tina@tiac.net>


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