New Hanover County’s first all-girls public charter school is one step closer to opening following a unanimous vote of approval by the North Carolina Charter School Advisory Board.
While the North Carolina Board of Education must still approve and grant the school’s official charter, the unanimous vote puts The Leadership Academy for Young Women on track to open for the 2016-17 school year, according to a news release from school officials.
Read related story: All-girls school planned for Wilmington area
Leadership Academy for Young Women will provide a rigorous STEM-based academic curriculum, with college prepatory, healthy life skills and leadership classes enhancing the learning environment both in and out of school.
An affiliate of the Young Women’s Leadership Network, Wilmington’s Leadership Academy for Young Women follows the successful model of The Young Women’s Leadership Schools (TYWLS). In 1996, Ann and Andrew Tisch partnered with the New York City Board of Education to open The Young Women’s Leadership Schools of East Harlem–the first public all-girls school to open in the United States in 30 years, according to the news release.
Judy Girard, a Wrightsville Beach resident who presided over the Food Network from 1998-2004 and later headed up HGTV, is a co-chair and founder of Young Women Leading Inc., the school’s supporting foundation.
“This unanimous vote from the Charter School Advisory Board was a great vote of confidence in our ability to deliver on our mission,” Girard said. “With the state’s support and the support of our YWLN affiliate network, we look forward to changing lives and breaking the cycle of poverty through education here in Wilmington.”
Girard’s co-chair is Robert E. Tyndall, former vice chancellor and associate provost at UNCW, and former dean of the university’s Watson School of Education. Tyndall supervised the charter’s written application and its academic design. Plans are for the school to open with 75 sixth grade girls in 2016, adding a similar-sized class each year, thereby reaching full enrollment and its first graduating class by 2022.
“In their homes, they’re less likely to have a culture that says you can go to college. We’re going to find a way to get you to college,” Girard told Port City Daily in 2013. “You can be anything you want to be. You can be empowered. You are in charge of your own life.”
TYWLS is a network of all-girls public secondary schools (6th-12th grades) that provide a single-sex, college preparatory choice to underserved families. TYWLS are open to girls of all academic abilities who aspire to a post-secondary education, according to the organization. Since 2001, TYWLS alumnae have achieved a 95 percent high school graduation rate and a near 100 percent college acceptance rate. Data supported by an independent evaluation show that TYWLS alumnae achieve four-year degrees at approximately triple the rate of their peers.
For more information about Young Women Leading, visit: youngwomenleading.org. For more information about the Young Women’s Leadership Network or The Young Women’s Leadership Schools, visit: ywln.org.
