Gender schools to close in '09

The Alpha school for boys and Athena school for girls opened in fall 2005.
By HAROLD GWIN
VINDICATOR EDUCATION WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN -- The city school district's experiment with gender schools is expected to come to a close when the new Wilson and Rayen middle schools open in fall 2009.
Financial problems that put the district into state-mandated fiscal emergency and the resulting districtwide cutbacks mean Youngstown won't be able to continue maintaining separate buildings for the Alpha School of Excellence for Boys and the Athena School of Excellence for Girls once the new middle schools are open.
The district is downsizing and cutting back, said Dr. Wendy Webb, superintendent.
That doesn't mean the separation of programs by gender will necessarily come to a complete halt, she said.
"We will keep the concept," Webb said, suggesting that some gender-specific classes may be built into the curriculum at both Wilson and Rayen.
The idea of opening gender schools grew out of a need for drastic action to address low academic performance at the middle-school level, Webb said.
There is a lot of research that shows boys and girls learn differently, and sometimes lesson plans need to be geared around the way children learn, she said when the gender schools first opened their doors in the fall of 2005.
"It's a pilot program. I just simply believe we needed to do some really intense intervention," she said at the time, adding that the goal is to get the children back on the educational track.
Key focuses
Reading and mathematics have been key focuses of the curriculum, but there also has been significant emphasis put on building social skills.
The programs began with just seventh- and eighth-graders but were expanded to include ninth-graders this year.
Each school, Alpha on Hillman Street and Athena on West Myrtle Avenue, has an enrollment of about 230 pupils, which represents about 25 percent of the district's pupils at those three grade levels.
The other 75 percent attend city schools that didn't have the low academic performances that called for drastic intervention, Webb said.
View on success
"As a whole, I think it's been very successful," she said. "We reduced over 1,000 disciplinary referrals. Attendance has improved, and confidence and self-esteem are up."
The kids have a different sense of self and are accepting the fact that they should be about education, she said.
Academic performance isn't where school officials would like it to be yet, but it has improved, she said.
Webb acknowledged that there have been a number of fights among pupils at Athena.
"Girls tend to be a little more difficult than boys," she said, adding, "We've corrected a lot of that."
Fights can occur anywhere, and they happen when someone doesn't know how to negotiate or respect others, Webb said, noting that conflict resolution has been a big focus in both gender schools, she said.
"Without a doubt," opening gender schools has been a worthwhile effort, she said.