A Phoenixville family recently filed a complaint against the Phoenixville Area School District citing alleged disparities between the boys’ and girls’ teams, writes Maddie Hanna for The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Kenzie Padilla, an all-American swimmer headed to Harvard, observed many discrepancies in the district’s treatment of boys’ and girls’ sports.

When her cross-country team won the Pioneer Athletic League championship three years ago, the girls were rewarded with commemorative T-shirts. But when the Phoenixville boys’ baseball team won the conference championship the following year, they received championship rings, jackets, and a ceremony to mark their achievement. And that was just one of many examples.

Together with her father, Padilla started researching the district’s spending on sports teams and found that the budget was sometimes 25 percent to 30 percent greater for certain boys’ teams, excluding the extra funding coming from booster clubs.

After a year of research and asking questions, the father-daughter duo filed a Title IX complaint with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights last month.

Disparities between the teams “were just kind of accepted by everyone,” said Padilla. “No one was doing anything about it.”

Read more about the Padilla family stepping up in the school district in The Philadelphia Inquirer.

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Editor’s Note: This post first appeared on VISTA Today in January 2024.