City Moves on Improving Girls’ Access to Recreation Facilities

Acity report Wednesday showed that 20% of the recreational centers in the San Fernando Valley are not being fully used, room that could be dedicated to boost girls’ access to sports programs without biting into those that mainly serve boys.

“There’s a lot of opportunity to expand the pie in the Valley region,” said Councilman Mike Feuer, chair of the committee that requested the survey from the Department of Recreation and Parks. Feuer predicted that efforts to increase female participation would bring “a dramatic infusion of girls into the sports programs of the city.”

The report came amid an ongoing federal lawsuit against the city, alleging that girls are denied equal access to publicly run sports programs. The suit, filed in April by the West Valley Girls Softball League, was expanded by the American Civil Liberties Union two months ago to include all girls in the city.

Seven recreation facilities in the Valley have at least 20 after-school hours per week available for additional programs, the survey found. Six other locations were found to have acreage that could accommodate new fields.

The survey also identified space at parks that is not used for sports, including 1,437 acres at Hansen Dam Recreation Area, and 2,031 acres at Sepulveda Basin Recreation Area.

A gender breakdown of participants in the Valley’s city sports programs showed 14,304 male players and 3,503 female players. The vast majority of both groups were children.

Attorneys representing the girls said the survey was a positive step, but urged aggressive changes to the publicly run sports programs.

“I think it really manifests the city’s seriousness in looking at the issue,” said Paula Pearlman, an attorney with the California Women’s Law Center, which serves as co-counsel with the ACLU and a private firm in the lawsuit. “They need to spend this time and attention on every region in the city.”

One major change Pearlman advocated was revising the annual permit process for city ball fields so that leagues, some of which have used the same sites for decades, share their fields. Rob Glushon, the former president of a private Encino baseball league, reminded the committee that in May, his league proposed sharing its fields, but has not gotten a response from the city attorney.

Last week, the city sent out its standard permit applications for the upcoming year. Deputy City Atty. Dion O’Connell said Wednesday that a full revision of the permits would be lengthy, and several baseball leagues had warned that a delay past the month’s end would have jeopardized their ability to maintain their insurance.

As chair of the council’s Arts, Health and Humanities Committee, Feuer has sought several improvements aimed at strengthening sports programs for girls. Calling the new survey “a good beginning,” he said he would form a working group of people representing the leagues, the city attorney and the parks department to make specific proposals.