New Wilson Middle School in Youngstown to be gender-specific

By Harold Gwin

YOUNGSTOWN — The new Wilson Middle School will become the city school district’s gender school when it opens in the fall of 2009.

The school, part of a $190 million school rebuilding program, was originally destined to be a traditional middle school building housing sixth-, seventh- and eighth-grade boys and girls in combined classrooms.

That plan has changed, and the school district now intends to move its Alpha: School of Excellence for Boys and Athena: School of Excellence for Girls into Wilson when it opens.

The two schools now occupy their own buildings with about 200 seventh- and eighth-graders in each, Alpha in the old Princeton building on Hillman Street and Athena in the old Hillman building on Myrtle Avenue.

They will be in the same building, but separated, with the boys occupying the north end of the structure and the girls in the south end, when the schools move to the new Wilson facility.

Dr. Wendy Webb said declining pupil enrollment in the city schools and the need to close some old buildings as a cost-saving measure were factors in making Wilson a gender school.

The pupils will get a prelude to being in the same building, but still be separated by gender, this fall, she said.

Read the full story Monday in The Vindicator and on Vindy.com.