DOE gives $4M field to ex-chancellor's all-boys school — and girls soccer players get the boot

Yahoo

5 hours ago

It's a field of broken dreams.
The city Department of Education spent $4 million in taxpayer funds to renovate a Brooklyn athletic field — then handed it to a small all-boys public school founded by former Chancellor David Banks, which promptly kicked out three girls' soccer teams.
The power play by Eagle Academy for Young Men II in East Flatbush is under scrutiny by the feds for alleged violation of Title IX, which bars sex discrimination in public schools, The Post has learned.
Until last fall, the girls' varsity soccer teams from Medgar Evers College Prep, Wingate and Prospect Heights high schools — all in District 17 and within walking distance of the 'Old Boys and Girls Field' at the corner or Troy Avenue and Rutland Road — used the space for practice and home games.
But the DOE gave control of the refurbished field to the 622-student Eagle Academy in Ocean Hill, which is two miles away in District 23, for its football team.
DOE workers even painted the school's logo and name in huge letters on the turf to underscore ownership.
'Suddenly, quietly, behind our backs, it got transferred to Eagle Academy,' said Ruslan Yakovlyuk, coach of the Medgar Evers girls varsity soccer team, the Cougars.
The girls, 'from poor neighborhoods,' Yakovlyuk said, were forced to play on distant fields across Brooklyn, miss afternoon classes to make games on time, and got home late from pactice.
'Once the facility was transferred to them, they basically said, 'It's ours,'' he said of Eagle Academy. 'My guess is that Mr. Banks gave it to them somehow. It's all politics.'
Before Mayor Adams named him schools chancellor in January 2022, Banks served 13 years as president and CEO of the Eagle Academy Foundation, which supports a network of five public schools in NYC, and one in Newark, for boys of color in grades 6 to 12. Before that, Banks was founding principal in 2004 of the first Eagle Academy in the Bronx, which formed in partnership with 100 Black Men of New York.
Shani Nakhid-Schuster, who coached the Wingate Lady Generals soccer team, was also frustrated by Eagle Academy's takeover.
'Somehow they got the field, and all the teams that played there had to be moved,' she said.
Officials offered an adjacent baseball/softball field, but athletic directors deemed it unsafe for soccer because of the pitcher's mound and cut-outs of dirt around the bases.
'A lot of our games were rescheduled. We went all over,' Nakhid-Schuster said, recalling that girls traveled up to an hour or more to home games on other Brooklyn fields.
'All I know is that the girls were really put at a disadvantage, and I don't think it was fair for them. It was a huge disservice to women's sports.'
Kenneth Bigley, a sports coordinator for NYC's Public School Athletic League, filed a sex-discrimination complaint on Sept. 30 with the US Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights.
'Taking a DOE-owned facility that was used by students of both genders, renovating it, and then giving exclusive use to a small all-boys school seems the type of situation Title IX is meant to prevent,' Bigley wrote.
In December, the federal office confirmed it had opened an investigation.
The girls' soccer players weren't the only athletes evicted.
In July, the Caribbean Premier League Soccer (CPLS), which had hosted annual tournaments featuring teams representing Caribbean and African nations for 35 years, was forced to cancel all games after the Eagle Academy denied it permission to use the field pending the renovation, BKReader reported.
When work was done, Eagle Academy refused to grant the league a permit to use the field on Sundays from May to September, claiming soccer cleats, though less destructive than football cleats, might damage the field's 'integrity.'
Besides the football field, the sports complex includes a track around the baseball field and basketball courts.
A DOE spokeswoman said management of the field 'was turned over to Eagle Academy stewardship in April 2023 on the grounds of it being the school closest in proximity with the largest number of athletic teams.'
But the Eagle Academy, with four athletic teams, is farthest from the field. The three closest co-ed high schools and complexes list a total 32 teams.
Both DOE and SCA spokespersons refused to explain who requested or approved the $4 million renovation, and how it was awarded to Eagle Academy.
The DOE denied that Eagle Academy barred any school or community group from using the field,
Banks did not respond to a request for comment.