All-girls public elementary school set next year

Lola Sanchez, 16, didn’t fully appreciate how much her years at the Young Women’s Leadership Academy had helped her until she began tutoring a sixth-grader from another school. Sanchez, an 11th-grader at the girls-only school near Woodlawn Lake for grades six through 12, put together a quiz to test her pupil’s basic multiplication and division skills. The younger girl’s smile vanished as she stared at the paper, then explained that math confused her but she never felt comfortable asking questions in class. “She was disappointed in herself,” Sanchez said. “No one, throughout her education, told her that she could do it.” She spoke at a news conference Wednesday at the library of Page Middle School, where next August the San Antonio Independent School District will open Bexar County’s first all-girls public elementary school. “No young girl will ever feel left behind” at the new school, Sanchez said. “Instead, they will have a family, a sisterhood, a community of older sisters to help guide the way and teachers to give them the necessary tools to succeed.” The district wants to build on the success of the YWLA, and create a pipeline to the well-regarded academy, a 2015 National Blue Ribbon School that received a score of 98 out of 100 under the state’s new rating system. It has a 100 percent graduation rate and students generally score above the national average on the SAT, SAISD Superintendent Pedro Martinez said, adding that most go on to attend top universities.

Proponents of single-gender public schools, which are regaining popularity nationwide, say boys and girls learn differently. Keeping genders separated removes social pressures that interfere with learning, they say. Critics dismiss the claims of learning differences as junk science and say such schools do not adequately prepare students for an integrated world — but enough local families are interested in them to spawn wait lists at both the decade-old YWLA and the newer Young Men’s Leadership Academy on the East Side. The state gave the boys’ school, which teaches grades four through high school, an 81 percent grade this year and a distinction for academic achievement in science. The district, meanwhile, has been phasing out Page and other underperforming middle schools and grappling with wait lists for the lowest grades at its new, innovative “schools of choice,” including the Twain Dual Language and Steele Montessori academies. Single-gender public schools waned in popularity after Title IX, enacted in 1972, banned gender discrimination in federally funded education. Under the law, public school districts that run singlegender campuses must offer comparable programs to both genders. Although no one keeps national statistics on it, experts say such schools have made a comeback in recent years, especially as a model for low-income students who need extra support. YWLA Primary at Page, as the school will be called, will be the eighth campus, and the only elementary, in the statewide Young Women’s Preparatory Network, said Berta Fogerson, the network’s chief academic and accountability officer. At least one other all-girls public elementary school has opened in Texas, in Dallas ISD. “I think it’s a great opportunity for our students to experience a single-gender school in a foundational capacity,” Fogerson said. YWLA Primary will open next year to kindergarten and first grades. It also will focus on STEAM — or science, technology, engineering, arts and math — as well as social-emotional learning and college preparation. It will benefit from a districtwide fine arts expansion, offering chorus, strings and dance electives, said YWLA Principal Delia McLerran, who will oversee both schools, with an associate principal at each. Classes will be rigorous and all girls will be expected to achieve at or above their grade levels, she said. “Our vision is for a strong next generation of female leaders — women of character, women of integrity and women of action,” McLerran said. “Our team commits to preparing our young girls starting as early as kinder, educating the whole child, the curious mind and the compassionate heart.” The Texas Education Agency has given SAISD a $1.5 million grant to fund planning and technology for the new school, Martinez said. A planning team will visit top schools with the same focus as YWLA Primary to learn “what is working across the country,” McLerran said. “We know that every school is not going to fit every family.” The Young Women’s Preparatory Network includes schools in Lubbock, Dallas, Fort Worth, Grand Prairie, Austin and Houston. SAISD’s chief innovation officer, Mohammed Choudhury, said the planning team also will visit Solar Preparatory School for Girls, the Dallas ISD school for kindergarten through eighth grade. At YWLA’s upper school, teachers and administrators work long hours to prepare girls for college, opening the school on weekends and over the summer if necessary. The curriculum emphasizes science, technology, math — and, as the school’s name suggests, leadership. There’s also a health and wellness component, which manifests itself in the foyer between classes as girls snack from a bowl of fruit. Connor Caldwell, 17, has been at YWLA since the sixth grade and will graduate in the spring. She said the school offers challenging courses and visits to colleges all over the country. “Learning positive habits at an earlier age, such as how to be a leader, how to be a sister and how to be a champion will undoubtedly create even greater successes for San Antonio,” Caldwell said at the news conference. “It is wonderful to see a group of strong women working together to effect such positive change.” Many YWLA graduates pursue engineering and technological careers in which women generally are underrepresented, Martinez said. Administrators tried to choose between a math and science or a fine arts focus for the new girls’ elementary school and ended up picking both. The success of YWLA’s upper school shows what’s possible for an all-girls elementary campus, Martinez said. “It’s going to be a strong academic program based on best practices and research,” he said. Andrea Pitts, former assistant principal at SAISD’s Martin Luther King Academy, will run YWLA Primary as associate principal, while Regina Arzamendi, who has been an assistant principal at YWLA for the past three years, will oversee the upper school. The elementary school will have a minimum of two classes per grade next year, but that could expand based on interest, administrators said, noting the Page campus is larger than most elementary schools. YWLA Primary will add a new grade each year, topping out at fifth. Students will be accepted by lottery, without academic prerequisites. SAISD hopes to offer priority admissions to East and South Side neighborhoods that have fed into Page, then to students within school district boundaries, while setting aside seats for Bexar County students from outside SAISD, Choudhury said. “We always want to promote socioeconomic diversity because those are optimal learning environments, but this community has first preference,” Choudhury said. Students at the YWLA elementary school will not be granted automatic admission to the secondary school, but they will be better prepared should they get in, Martinez said. Applications for YWLA Primary will be accepted from Nov. 26 to Feb. 8. The district will hold several information sessions at Page beginning next month. For details visit saisd.net/ywlaprimary