A federal judge has accepted the settlement in a West Virginia case that bars single-sex classrooms in one county’s public schools at least until after the 2014-15 school year, the Charleston Gazette reports.
A mother of a sixth-grade girl at Van Devender Middle School in Parkersburg sued the Wood County school system because her daughter found herself in a girls-only reading class. The school system received a private grant to start separating sixth-grade reading classes by sex, and their plan was to expand the single-sex classrooms to other grades and core subjects.
The settlement also forces the school district, through the 2018-19 school year, to give notice before initiating any single-sex classrooms so potential plaintiffs have time to object.
“Wood County has expressed interest in restoring its single-sex education program,” Marissa Harrison, an attorney representing the mother, told US District Judge Joseph Goodwin. Plaintiffs, joined by the American Civil Liberties Union, argued that separating public school students by sex was unconstitutional and also that the policies violate federal gender equality laws.
The ACLU posted on its blog about this case last year, saying:
Judge Goodwin ruled that in order to comply with U.S. Department of Education regulations implementing Title IX, a school must have the “unequivocal,” “clear and affirmative assent” of a child’s parent or guardian before placing the child in a single-sex classroom. In other words, any program in the future must be opt-in only.
That blog post, summarizing the district court’s enjoining of the Wood County Board of Education (see the Aug. 29 order of the court, here), essentially means that an “opt-out provision” is insufficient to meet the requirement that single-sex classes be “completely voluntary,” which they must be in the public schools.
Quite frankly, it staggers the mind that a public school district could think forcing a single-sex classroom situation on 12-year-olds wouldn’t violate Title IX. Boys and girls have the right to the same opportunities within a school, and they alone—or, their parents, really—can refuse to exercise that right. The school district can’t just take it away from them.