An external Title IX gender equity review identified “a number of substantial issues” at Idaho State University, according to the agenda for Thursday’s State Board of Education meeting in Moscow.

The State Board said to remedy the problems, ISU “must immediately begin to demonstrate progress toward expansion, with the goal of adding a women’s sport in the near future.”

The board’s agenda states that the proportion of male and female student-athletes at ISU is “below the exact proportion of equity by 3.9 percent.” The agenda reports that “intercollegiate athletics at ISU included 192 opportunities for men and 191 opportunities for women” for a nearly even 50-50 split. However, ISU’s full-time undergraduate student body is comprised of 2,869 men (46.1 percent) and 3,350 women (53.9 percent), thus creating the unbalanced and inequitable share of participation numbers.

The federal compliance requirement is a variance of no more than 1 percent, meaning that, in ISU’s case, no less than 52.9 percent of the school’s student-athletes must be women.

ISU must increase its participation opportunities for female student-athletes by 2.9 percent to meet the federal compliance requirement.

ISU currently offers 15 NCAA Division I teams — six for men and nine for women. The men’s football team accounts for 92 of ISU’s 192 male participants, per State Board records. The highest-represented women’s sport is indoor track and field, with 38 participants, according to the State Board.

Adding a women’s sports team may occur at some point at ISU, but it’s not imminent, ISU officials said. In the meantime, ISU needs extra funding to begin remedying the inequality issues being experienced by its female student-athletes.

The State Board’s agenda states ISU “requests a one-time exception to the State General Fund athletic spending cap ... to allow an additional $125,000 in appropriated funding to the (ISU) athletic department to assist with these corrections in fiscal year 2020.” The funding has been recommended for State Board approval at its Thursday meeting.

That one-time distribution “will offset measures taken in fiscal year 2019 to address areas of significant concern related to Title IX gender equity compliance,” the State Board’s meeting agenda said.

The agenda states that ISU’s athletic department has “placed a high priority on identifying concerns and generally addressing gender equity” at ISU since President Kevin Satterlee relieved former Athletic Director Jeff Tingey of his duties in August 2018.

“The university is developing a new five-year plan for gender equity to address current issues and present a path forward that expands opportunities for women,” ISU Athletic Director Pauline Semons Thiros said.

As far as adding a new women’s sport, ISU said in a statement that it will first conduct “a series of surveys to determine interest, feasibility and availability of competition. For the sports identified in that evolving process, ISU will need to gauge the level of interest, determine who else in our conference participates in the sport, evaluate what the participation opportunities would be, assess the financial feasibility, and develop a sound strategy for adding the program over time.”