Wheelchair athlete Tatyana McFadden sued for the right to share the track with her high school teammates in Howard County. She brought home gold medals from a national Paralympic track meet, setting an American record along the way.
Yesterday, the Atholton High School senior asked lawmakers in Annapolis to help ensure that other athletes with disabilities get their chance to compete.
"No student should have to fight to be accepted in high school," McFadden told a state Senate committee.
The bill, she said, "is making clear that all students should have the opportunity to be involved in school sports."
McFadden was among those who spoke in favor of a bill that would require schools to allow athletes with disabilities to play wheelchair basketball or tennis, to swim or to otherwise play sports among themselves or side-by-side with able-bodied students.
Sen. Jim Rosapepe, a Prince George's County Democrat who is sponsoring the legislation, said schools need a statewide approach.
"These individual students are no less deserving than others," he said. "We have to start somewhere."
Local school systems would have to submit their plans for disabled athletes to state education officials, who would investigate complaints - and who could sideline noncompliant teams or withhold money from schools or school systems.
The State Department of Education opposes the legislation because it would require school systems to pay for additional employees - at an estimated cost of $2.8 million statewide - to ensure that the systems are in compliance.
Possible impact
"We are working with funding that we have," said Carol Ann Baglin, assistant state superintendent for special education. "If there is [financial] impact at the state and local level, it will be difficult to implement that."
The State Department of Education also argues that school systems have not had enough time to implement a December recommendation by the state school board that school systems adopt a policy to allow students with disabilities to try out for athletic teams.
At that time, the board also said it wanted to amend state regulations so that school systems can form teams made up of students with disabilities from more than one school when there are low levels of participation.
"The school systems have not indicated that they are not interested," Baglin said.
Supporters of the proposed bill say that it is needed because the state board's actions in December did not go far enough.
"This bill puts the money where the mouth is," said Lauren Young, director of litigation at the Maryland Disability Law Center. "It says, 'Deliver the programs.'"
As she awaited her turn to testify, McFadden said she knows what it is like to be denied a chance to play.
"It didn't feel so good," she said. "You are not appreciated. People should not have to go through this."
She later told the Senate committee about being excluded from the track team her freshman year of high school.
"Imagine my shock and sadness when I was told that I could not have a uniform and could not be on the team," she said. "I did not understand."
McFadden was born with spina bifida. In 2004, she won two medals in track at the Paralympics in Athens, Greece.
Wins court order
Two years later, as a sophomore at Atholton High in Howard County, she obtained a federal court order to let her take part in the same races as her fellow students.
Her mother, Deborah, said she is pleased with how Howard County schools have worked with students with disabilities.
"They get it," she said. "Unfortunately that doesn't relate to the rest of the state."
Tatyana McFadden, who said she is weighing athletic scholarship offers to Division I colleges, said she will continue to fight so that all students with disabilities have the same access to athletics that she now has.
She said she wants a better athletic experience for younger students with disabilities, especially for her sister, Hannah, 12, who has a prosthetic leg.
"My sister can now try out for tennis, or play volleyball or track," she said.
john-john.williams@baltsun.com