On the first day of orientation for her all-girls school on Wednesday, Principal Liz Hicks seemed relatively calm. She personally answered her phone at her office as she was in the middle of preparing for the high-profile school celebration coming up Friday morning. “I’m feeling a little pressure, but I’m mostly excited because this dream...

More than 100 girls and their parents gathered last Thursday to sign up for the first all-girls charter middle school in LA Unified. They were nervous, excited and wary as they lined up to get their pink T-shirt emblazoned with “Power, Flexibility, Focus, Balance” on the front and “GALS” on the back. GALS — short...

The problem for girls is boys. Several years ago Elizabeth Hicks, a counseling coordinator for LA Unified, had an idea, to open the first all-girls traditional public school in California in more than a decade. It would be a rigorous STEM academy, requiring girls to take science, math and computer classes from sixth grade through...