OAKLAND — In a magnanimous gesture toward girls sports, an anonymous donor has stepped up to save two of the 10 after-school sports programs cut last week by financially strapped Oakland Unified.
The donor — school officials would not even disclose whether an individual or a company — contributed about $35,000 to save girls golf and tennis, Oakland Unified School District spokesman John Sasaki said at a news conference Monday. He didn’t elaborate about why those two programs were selected or provide any more details.
Sasaki also noted the district is reviewing its cuts to see if there’s a way to save more girls programs, which bore the brunt of them.
Skyline High School junior Janissa Salazar, daughter of golf coach James Salazar, said in an interview at the Lake Chabot Golf Course after school Monday that she views the reinstatement of the program as “another chance” to show the rest of the world her talent as a golfer.
“Now we have to redeem ourselves and show (the donors) that they did the right thing by giving us another opportunity,” Salazar said.
To her, Salazar said, golf is important because “if you’re having a bad day, you can come out here and let all your stress out. It’s not like I’m mad and want to hit the ball as hard as I can. I can take my time and do it slowly, and by doing so, I release a lot of animosity.”
As for the sport getting cut in the first place, Salazar added, “They always say we’re equal, but to this day they still treat girls different from boys. Boys don’t have more ability to do things just because they’re boys, and I don’t think it’s fair to girls who have just as much ability or more.”
The Skyline girls golf team may not be as celebrated as the school’s football or basketball teams, but the program is important to the players, coach James Salazar said at the golf course. It gives the girls a chance to be outside, enjoy the golf course and develop their golf skills.
Over the past two years, the team has started winning some titles, he said. Though students rarely get scholarships for playing golf, it’s another activity to put on their college application, which helps set them apart from other applicants, he said.
“From where I sit, it’s an opportunity for them to be exposed to a sport that’s not a mainstream, inner-city sport,” Salazar said. “It exposes you not only to the game of golf but all that comes with golf, the etiquette of playing, dressing in the appropriate attire, teamwork, sportsmanship, patience, all the things that come with playing the game.”
Oakland Unified administrators cut about half of the district’s sports programs last week, dashing the athletic aspirations of an estimated 500 students. They needed to chop about $500,000 worth of expenses from the sports budget — almost a third of the total — as instructed by the school board. The other sports that were cut included wrestling, swimming, bowling, girls lacrosse, badminton, boys volleyball, boys golf and boys tennis.
After news of the cuts broke, administrators of the Oakland Athletic League — the district’s sports program — crunched the numbers and realized that about 70 percent of the 500 students enrolled in the eliminated sports programs were girls, Sasaki said. In an effort to avoid violating Title IX — a federal anti-gender discrimination law that requires schools to offer boys and girls the same access to sports — administrators are working to save more girls sports programs, he said.
Sasaki could not say Monday whether the restoration of girls golf and tennis would put the district in compliance with Title IX.
“Once we saw it all laid out on paper, and how it affected this amount of boys and this amount of girls, we immediately backtracked,” Sasaki said.
Sasaki apologized Monday on behalf of the district for the haphazard way in which coaches and students were informed and for a decision being made without realizing girls would be impacted more than boys.
“We at the district didn’t handle the situation as well as we should have. To any athletic director, coach, student, participant, teacher, principal, I apologize for us for not handling the situation better. This was a situation where all of it happened very quickly, and as you saw, once we got ahold of it, that is once the board got ahold of it, once upper leadership got ahold of it, we realized we needed to change course, and that all happened immediately,” Sasaki said.
Oakland Unified needs to reduce its spending by about $30 million next year to remain fiscally solvent. It is considering laying off hundreds of staff, including teachers, during the 2019-20 school year.
Years of spending beyond its means and rising employee pension costs, among other things, put the district deep in the red. Oakland Unified is still paying back a debt to the state, which took over the schools 15 years ago after the district had badly misspent its money.
The school board cut about $9 million mid-year from its 2017-18 budget, and in December it voted to chop $11.2 million from the 2018-19 budget. It ended up cutting an additional $2.2 million after learning there would be less one-time state funds coming than anticipated.
Sasaki said businesses and individuals have reached out to the district since the announcement offering to donate money.