Sid DeBarathy, Mike Foley, Jamie Decker and I spoke up for Butte’s high school girls’ softball players — past, present and future — in front of the school board during the June 16 meeting at the East Middle School library.

None of us have daughters playing softball. We just want to see the girls in Butte treated equally, and that does not seem like too much to ask 53 years after the passage of Title IX.

Title IX, remember, was a landmark federal civil rights law that prohibits sex-based discrimination in any school or education program that receives funding from the federal government.

After the board unanimously voted, and without discussion, against the girls, the four of us looked at each other in disbelief. We thought there would be at least a few words said before they told the girls to go jump off a cliff.

We were also a little taken aback by how board chairwoman Ann Boston, who talks to meeting guests the way Roz talks to Mike Wazowski in “Monsters, Inc.,” could cut off Mike and Sid mid-sentence because they talked one second longer than her who-cares-what-the-public-has-to-say 3-minute time limit.

As if it would have killed the board to let them each talk for 5 more minutes. The board meets once a month, so it can afford to let that meeting go a full hour from time to time.

Jamie broke the silence with the same sad question we have all asked ourselves many times. “Why can’t we ever just do the right thing in Butte?”

Time after time in the Mining City, citizens pack meetings only to see the various boards vote against the citizens time after time. Almost always, that vote is unanimous.

With little exception, we have seen this same scenario play itself out over and over as board after board serves as a proverbial rubber stamp for a government and school district run by last names and favors.

Citizens must beg our local government to not dump toxic waste across the street from houses. We must beg our zoning board of adjustments to not build a truck stop next to the state’s only remaining drive-in theatre, a move that the drive-in owners felt would have forced them to close.

In 2024, we had to pack the chamber for a Butte-Silver Bow Council of Commissioners meeting to get the government to allow Top Deck Medical Aesthetics, an office that serves so many patients with special needs, to build a handicap ramp to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990.

Almost every time, questions from the public are met with accusations and slander, even though the public is simply asking that same old tired question. “Why can’t we ever just do the right thing in Butte?”

The latest fight involves the softball fields at Stodden Park. While the boys on the high school baseball teams get to play in the beautiful confines of 3 Legends Stadium, the girls play softball in a dusty sand trap a mile away.

Sid and Mike, a couple of former assistant Butte High softball coaches, first raised the issue more than 20 years ago because they saw the inadequacies of the fields at Stodden.

After about a decade of battling, the duo filed a Title IX complaint — which found the school district had shortcomings when it came to equity. As part of the settlement following that complaint, the county and district agreed to redo the infields and dugouts at Stodden.

While they might have spent good money on that project, it was done so incredibly half-assed that it proved to be a colossal waste of time. Even though they were repeatedly told they were not doing it right, they rushed the job and never correctly mixed the clay and sand, making infields that are horrible to play on. They are also safety hazards.

The dugouts are still just a chain-link fence, and the rest of the fencing was put up in the mid 1970s. Some of it is broken, curled up and dangerous.

Over the last few months, I have talked to countless players, coaches and parents about the softball fields. Every single one said the fields stink. Every single one.

The only people saying otherwise are the decision makers at the school district. They are either lying or choosing to be ignorant on the issue.

One mother of a player recently asked me, “Who do I sue when my daughter blows out her ACL?” This mother, who works in the medical industry, did not say “if,” she said “when” her daughter eventually gets hurt playing on those fields.

Back in October, Sid and Mike once again decided to file a grievance with the school district, which announced that it was building two fields for the girls when the MHSA basically forced the district to finally join the rest of the Class AA and offer softball for the girls in July of 1990.

The ground was flattened for two fields to be built just to the south of Butte High. Backstops were ordered, paid for and signed for on delivery.

However, those fields were never built, and the backstops are nowhere to be found 35 years later.

Instead, that area serves as a congested loop — for parents to drop off and pick up their children — circling around a football practice field. The softball team was sent off to play on fields built for slow-pitch softball at Stodden Park.

Sid and Mike are not asking for a replica of 3 Legends Stadium for the softball team. They simply want a field that is safe and playable. They want the infields done right, and they want outfields without potholes.

They want permanent seating that is accessible for everyone, and they want dugouts that protect the players from the cold.

Again, not too much to ask. They can file another Title IX complaint, but they are trying to let the school district do the right thing.

Superintendent Judy Jonart, whom I have never seen at a softball game, told MXLF-TV that the fields are adequate, somehow forgetting Bulldog Memorial Stadium was a more-than-adequate facility for the football team before the district spent a ton to rebuild Naranche Stadium.

Jonart added, “funds available to the district are barely adequate to meet our student’s education needs — a new softball facility financed with education funds is simply not financially feasible.”

You will have to excuse us for not buying the crying-poor argument. The school district will be paying two — yes two — superintendents for a full year starting on Sept. 1. Apparently, one will handle day-to-day operations, while the other will focus on big-picture stuff.

The line they are giving is that Jonart will “mentor” incoming superintendent Keith Miller, a talented-and-seasoned educator who will be the first “mentored” superintendent probably in the history of superintendents.

You do not have to be Jo Bennett to see through that load of bull. It is as insulting to my good friend Mr. Miller as it is to the taxpayers.

Making things even more insulting — and probably illegal — is that we do not even know exactly what the board voted for because all their deliberations have been in secret. There is no record of minutes kept of any discussion by the board making this decision. 

That includes an April 3 meeting that the board closed because of “litigation,” even though there is no litigation involved. A school board trustee acknowledged to me that the complaint filed by Sid and Mike was discussed at the closed meeting.

Here is all we know. The board voted unanimously to approve the following one-sentence recommendation from a letter signed by Boston: 

“The Panel herby recommends the Board reject the Foley/deBarthy grievance and accept and adopt the decisions of John Metz and Judy Jonart.”

If this recommendation was not formed in secrecy, as trustee Tom Billteen said, pushing back at my accusations of illegal meetings, then why do we not know what recommendation was made by Jonart and Butte High principal John Metz?

As far as we can tell, the recommendation is to tell the girls to get bent, and that recommendation was passed unanimously by the school board. Without discussion.

So, here we are, once again left scratching our heads, asking that same sad question while another generation of girls get by with less than what we give the boys.

It is time to just do the right thing. Our girls deserve it, and the law demands it.

Maybe it is time for another Title IX complaint.

 — Bill Foley, who is not a lawyer but he once stayed at a Holiday Inn Express, can be reached at foles74@gmail.com. Follow him at twitter.com/Foles74 or Bluesky at @foles74.bsky.social. Listen to him on the ButteCast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you find your favorite podcasts.