During a recent tour of the Ann Richards School for Young Women Leaders in Austin, Texas, Todd Godbey met a 10th grader who was the first in her family to ever finish elementary school.
Now she plans to become a nuclear engineer.
“To see that is awe inspiring,” Godbey said.
As president of the Leadership Academy of Young Women, a proposed local charter school, he hopes to be telling similarly inspiring stories about Wilmington-area students soon.
If approved, the academy would open in 2016, joining four existing charter schools in New Hanover County and becoming the only one with a single-gender focus.
“There’s most likely an advantage to not having the distraction of a co-educational classroom and you have more of an opportunity to create a culture of sisterhood,” Godbey said of the girls-only model.
The proposed school would also target students with low-income backgrounds who would be the first in their families to attend college. It would open with 75 sixth graders and add one grade each year, eventually serving about 550 students in grades 6 – 12.
The North Carolina Charter School Advisory board gave unanimous approval to the charter application in February. The proposal now awaits a vote by the State Board of Education later this summer.
The planned academy is part of a network of girls-only schools that started in East Harlem in 1996. The network now includes 16 other affiliate schools including the Ann Richards School in Austin.
Godbey said the Wilmington school would center around science, technology, engineering and mathematics, also known as the STEM fields, as well as arts education.
“These things are typically taught more to males,” he said of STEM subjects, adding female students “have 100 percent of the capacity as their male counterparts, when given the opportunity.”
Godbey points to the success of other schools in the Young Women’s Leadership Network as further evidence that single-gender education works.
But while some single-gender schools tout positive results, ACLU attorney Galen Sherwin said, “There’s no proof that they’re effective because of single-sex education.”
Sherwin said she is not familiar with the Leadership Academy for Young Women proposal, but the ACLU has previously spoken out against other single-gender schools and programs across the country, including in Wake County.
A 2012 report by the organization said public single-gender education is often “based on discredited science and gender stereotypes.”
Though some studies seem to favor a single-gender approach, Sherwin said when study methodology is taken into account those arguments fall flat.
“The research has not supported single-sex education,” she said.
Here in Wilmington, Godbey said response has been positive and he has encountered no pushback to the proposal.
“I have personally not experienced any at all,” he said. “None whatsoever.”
New Hanover County School Board Member Lisa Estep expressed concerns that preliminary discussions about a bus-sharing arrangement with the New Hanover County public schools did not include the full county school board, but said she is “very impressed” with the concept for the charter school.
The Leadership Academy plans to offer transportation for its students, but those details have yet to be ironed out.
Contracting with the county school district to use its buses “is certainly one of the possibilities on the table,” Godbey said, however it would only work if the academy’s school day starts and ends late enough to avoid interfering with the district’s existing routes.
Perhaps more pressing is the need to find a facility for the planned school. One possibility, renting a portion of Gregory Elementary School, is now off the table because Godbey said it doesn’t appear Gregory will have enough available space.
Godbey said he wants the school to be centrally located but he is open to more traditional facilities as well as the idea of repurposing a large vacant storefront or warehouse-type space.
He said he wants a setting that can foster a very hands-on type of education, “not rows of desks in a classroom.” But although starting with a blank slate has its appeal, readying a wide-open space could prove pricey.
“In a warehouse space the board would have an opportunity to raise a whole lot of money sooner,” Godbey said.
