Posted on 02/02/2017 9:14:59 AM PST by oh8eleven
The New Jersey seventh-grader whose family sued the Catholic school that refused to let her play basketball on the boys team was abruptly expelled from her middle school Wednesday.
The parents of 12-year-old Sydney Phillips were sent a letter from an Archdiocese of Newark lawyer saying that both Sydney and her sister Kaitlyn should not attend St. Theresa tomorrow morning or any day thereafter.
The Phillips family was hoping Sydney would be able to play with the boys after the girls team was disbanded last school year.
When the Kenilworth school nixed that idea, her dad took legal action against the archdiocese and St. Theresa.
Apparently the school charter maintains that it can boot a student whose family brings a suit against it.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
The Jesuit pope will probably intervene against the school. Sounds like his kind of liberal activism.
Yeah, does she not have any local leagues or YM(W?)CA leagues around?
I mean, I understand staying at your school but one can still usually get into other leagues.
Good point. Why would one want to start the hassle and $$ of suits when they might much more easily sign her up for the local Y league?
PC or not, this should be standard conduct for any school or facility being sued. You are suing us, we cannot possibly continue to have you here.
Quick map search reveals several YMCAs right in that immediate vicinity.
I can’t believe none of them has a basketball league for girls!
Someone who sues the school if obviously not a supporter of the school. They need to go elsewhere. I will cringe if I hear of an apology issued in a few days. I’m sick of people having the courage to stand on principle, only to have them cave a few days later. If you’re not going to stand your ground, just let people walk all over you in the first place and be done with it.
Shhhhh. Don’t let the False Pope know. He’ll order the school to create a transgender team.
Bring back Benedict
That said, there are some missing details. Is there nowhere else that she could play? Is the school so small that it has a no-cut policy in basketball? (If it's a competitive situation, the chances of her making a boys team are remote.) What were the prior discussions between the school and the parents? This smells like one of those situations that reached a climax before any (emotionally mature) adults got involved in the discussion, which is not uncommon in youth sports.
Yes there was no girls team it was “disbanded last school year”
until that circumstance it was reasonable to ask to play on the boys team but suing wasn’t necessary...
The school should have brought back the girls team
or made a mixed team
or disbanded the boys team also
Q: Why was the girls team disbanded
about the expelling...if this is an ongoing case maybe the girls were disruptive ...
It’s not the 12 year old, you idiot. It’s the father.
Yeah he or some nun will dream that Jesus had girls on his team...
Nice to see the scool principal has a set of brass balls. A Nun no doubt.
So then the school will shut down the boys basketball team and blame it on the girl and her parents saying the courts overruled their policies which are there for very good reasons.
End result is the girls will have to go to school somewhere else anyway or be shunned then the team can be started again.
Hopefully the court will rule in the schools favor and charge the father all legal costs on top of it. This isn’t a civil rights issue and the world does not revolve around one girl who can go to another school if her passion is basketball and not learning.
Being stupid has consequences...lesson learned yet?
A not-quite-exact example: my daughter's soccer league had a "stranded senior" rule. That had to do with age considerations, not gender, but the underlying point is relevant. This was a highly competitive league. (A fair number of the girls will play in college.) Suppose that the core of a team has been together since they were tadpoles. Everything is hunky-dory through U-17. Then half the team, the ones with early birthdays, graduates high school. The remaining players are stranded without a team. In that situation, and in that situation only, the league allows girls to play down a year in age. The point is to keep kids in the sport as long as they want to play.(And not handicap girls who want to play at the next level, who would be hurt by having to sit out a year.)
In the situation in the story, the school dropped the girls' team. Going forward, girls who want to play basketball will choose other schools. But what do you do with those caught in the transition? I would lean towards letting them play, if they're good enough to actually make the boys team (which will be unusual, but not extraordinarily rare in middle school). Let her play her last year. Going forward, the problem will not recur.
Would this have happened under the watch of the previous occupant of the White House??
True enough for girls and their parents who are entering the school.
This story, however, involves an older girl in middle school. Let's say she's an 8th grader. She may have been in this school since pre-K. (My older daughter was a "lifer" at our local parochial school, pre-K through 8th grade.) She's probably been playing basketball since the school fielded its first CYO team in the early grades. Suddenly the school cancels the girls' team (probably for lack of players). What is she supposed to do? Transfer to another school, leaving her friends behind in her final year? Or give up basketball, which she may hope to play in high school?
No, the world doesn't revolve around this particular girl, but if I were involved in this situation, I believe I'd try to find an accommodation to allow a stranded player to stay in the sport for her final year.
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