A teacher who founded a school athletic league plans to file a federal civil-rights complaint Wednesday that accuses the city of unfairly distributing money for high-school sports programs.
Small School for Athletics League founder David Garcia-Rosen said the city is spending more of its $23 million athletics budget on large, wealthy schools over smaller high schools in the city’s poorest neighborhoods.
“The Department of Education can’t continue to fund world-class athletic programs at schools with white students, leaving the most segregated schools begging for teams year after year,” he said.
The city added 84 new teams to 50 high schools with the lowest percentages of black and Latino students last year — and the 50 high schools with the largest amount of those students got 22 new teams, an SSAL analysis found.
Department of Education spokeswoman Devora Kaye said the city hopes to create a new league within the Public School Athletic League for small high schools that would meet federal equality and safety standards.
“Ensuring accessibility to the many athletic options in our schools is a priority, and cultivates critical skills which enable success both in and out of the classroom,” she said.