Summer outing with new GALA students at Will Rogers State Historic Park. (Courtesy: GALA)

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 is really coming true,” Hicks said.

The Girls Academic Leadership Academy, known as GALA, is a middle and high school that will be the first traditional single-sex school in LA Unified. It’s also the first to open in all of California in nearly 20 years, according to LA Unified’s communications office.

“I guess I’m not too nervous because I’ve had such tremendous support from the community and the school district,” Hicks reflected.

Among her biggest supporters are those planning to come to the Friday morning grand opening: Superintendent Michelle King, school board President Steve Zimmer and school board Vice President George McKenna, who also encouraged a new district all-boys school to be opened by next year. Those school leaders will attend the launching of the school along with State Sen. Holly Mitchell, State Assemblyman Sebastian Ridley-Thomas and Mount St. Mary’s President Ann McElaney‐Johnson. The keynote speaker addressing the faculty and students will be Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti’s wife, LA’s First Lady Amy Elaine Wakeland, another longtime supporter of the all-girls school.

“We are so honored to have (Wakeland) speak because she will talk about the status of girls in Los Angeles, and she is such an inspiration for the girls,” Hicks said. “And so is Michelle King.”

GALA Principal Liz Hicks. (Courtesy: GALA)

At her State of the District speech on Tuesday, King mentioned GALA and its STEM program that will introduce girls to science, technology, engineering and math and encourage them to pursue degrees and professions where females are underrepresented. King did not mention in her speech that the first all-girls charter middle school, GALS, which stands for the Girls Athletic Leadership School of Los Angeles, is also starting up in the district this year.

Both all-girls schools can use a few more students on their rosters, and they have developed a unique positive coalition of cooperation between charter and traditional schools that seems to be rare at LA Unified.

“We help each other as much as possible, it’s not a typical model in LA where we’re thought to be in competition with charters,” Hicks said. “It’s to our benefit that we both succeed.”

Carrie Wagner, CEO of GALS, said the girls charter school was created in the wake of GALA’s formation. “There’s no doubt that Liz and GALA helped pave the way for us to exist, and she’s always there to take my call,” Wagner said.

GALS needs about 20 more students to hit their maximum of 125. GALA, which is opening with grades 6 through 9, has a waiting list for 6th grade but could use about 15 more girls for their 9th grade class to get to a total of 100 students. Both school leaders are aware their schools are very often confused, and both feel comfortable about hitting their maximum enrollment numbers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yffMQ0pQuy8

“Carrie and I talk and if I get girls who may feel like they will be traveling too far, then we tell them about the other school, and she does the same if the Valley is too far for them and are closer to us,” Hicks said. “We are trying to develop some reciprocal cooperation.”

GALA is co-located on space shared by Los Angeles High School in the Mid-Wilshire district. GALS is located in Panorama City in the northern end of the San Fernando Valley sharing Vista Middle School.

“Maybe the biggest difference that I see with being a district school rather than a charter school is that we have so much support,” Hicks said about GALA. “I know who to go to when I have a question or problem.” GALS has a board of directors locally and is based on a program in Denver.

For the girls of GALA, today is a day of learning about their dress code, getting books and understanding what to expect when the doors open for the entire district next Tuesday. On Friday, after the ceremony that is open to the public, the girls will take a tour of the USC campus.

“We want to establish the idea of higher education and going to college from day one—even before day one—and instill that idea constantly,” said Hicks, who has set a goal of 100 percent acceptance into higher education.

The inaugural class of GALA brings together girls from 69 public and private schools from 49 ZIP codes throughout Los Angeles. The breakdown is fairly diverse at about 30 percent Latina, 30 percent white, 23 percent African American, 10 percent Asian and 7 percent other. While serving only grades 6 though 9 this year, the school will expand one grade a year until it serves grades 6 through 12 by the 2019-2020 school year, when it is expected to reach its capacity of 700 students.

The district points out that research shows that all-girls schools provide a culture of academic achievement and self-confidence that results in 30 percent more females graduating than in co-ed settings, while sending 50 percent more female graduates to college.

“We are offering this all for free, and the district didn’t have that before,” Hicks said. “This was only available before at a private school. I know people are looking at this as a model, and that is an awesome responsibility, but I am sure that it will be a phenomenal education for these girls and it’s real exciting for me.”

GALA will start later in the day than the traditional school it is co-located with, and end later in the day, Hicks said. That allows for a little more sleep.

“Right now, everyone is being so supportive, and when I get a chance, I will take a deep breath and take it all in,” Hicks said.

GALA’s grand opening ceremony will take place Friday from 9 to 10:30 a.m. at the school in the northeast corner of Los Angeles High School at 1067 West Blvd. Local District West Superintendent Cheryl Hildreth and LA Sparks Chief Operating Officer Christine Simmons are also among the special guests expected at the ceremony.

Joya, Hattie and Chandler Weinroth at the GALS orientation.

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 for the Girls Athletic Leadership School of Los Angeles — is based on a highly successful school in Denver which focuses on the physical, emotional and psychosocial needs of female adolescents.

“Welcome, it’s so good to see you,” said Carrie Wagner, the executive director who helped pass out papers that needed to be signed and was flanked by her teaching staff and a few board members. The girls then stood in line to get a breakfast of scrambled eggs, sausages, fruit and pancakes.

“I’m nervous,” a girl almost in tears told operations manager Kelly Snyder as they took a tour of the classrooms.

Snyder smiled back and put her hands on the girl’s shoulders and said, “I know, I am too.” The girl smiled and cheered up.

GALS is co-located at Vista Middle School on Roscoe Boulevard in Panorama City, in the heart of the San Fernando Valley. They have four classrooms on the second floor that were opened to the charter school staff only the day before the students came to tour the school. The host school’s principal greeted the new teachers with doughnuts to welcome them.

Wagner said the school has spaces for 20 more girls to reach their maximum capacity of 125. So far, the population of GALS is about 80 percent Latina, and 70 percent are low income, with more than half from the Panorama City area, but the rest coming from every corner of the Valley.

Lorelei and Martina Eberhart

Same-sex schools are relatively new to LA Unified. The first all-girls district school, GALA, the Girls Academic Leadership Academy, is also opening this year on Aug. 16 as an all-girls middle and high school. There are two other traditional district schools specifically for pregnant students and young mothers, and Young Oak Kim Academy is a traditional middle school that has had boys and girls separated in classes since 2009. Next year, an all-boys district school will open, and GALS hopes to eventually ask for an all-boys charter school to open in LA Unified.

“I’m a little nervous, but excited, I think it will be a challenge,” said Hattie Weinroth, 10, who came to the orientation with her mom, dad and little sister, Chandler, who isn’t in school yet. “But, there are no boys here, yay!”

Her mother, Joya Weinroth, said, “This is an amazing time in history where we have the first female presidential candidate. It is great to have a place where girls can learn to use their voices.”

Weinroth also mentioned how Ava DuVernay of “Selma” fame became the first female director to recently get a movie with a $100-million budget for “A Wrinkle in Time.”

“Los Angeles has its share of sexism, and it’s changing,” Weinroth said. “I want my daughter to be a part of these things.”

It’s about a 25-minute drive one way to the school from where they live in Studio City, where Hattie attended an affiliated charter district school, Carpenter Community Charter. The decision to come to the all-girls school was completely Hattie’s decision.

“Hattie liked the idea that the school gives the chance for special help for students who may be falling behind in a certain subject,” such as math, Weinroth said.

The school bells for GALS will be different from the middle school that they are sharing space with, and the school day will start earlier and end later. Because exercise and movement are important to the school, every day will begin with warm-ups.

“The teachers all got together to do some movement,” Warner said. “The team that sweats together learns together.”

Wagner said research shows that young women attending all-girls schools have higher self-esteem and stronger academic performance, especially in math and science.

“I expect to get more interested in math and science,” said 11-year-old Lorelei Eberhart, who is entering 6th grade.

Her mother, Martina Eberhart, said an administrator from their charter elementary school, Our Community School, sent her daughter to the GALS school in Denver and loved it.

“We have followed the school for a few years as it was being created and wanted to go to a single-gendered school,” Martina said. “We liked the mission statement and how the focus is on movement and concentrating on math and science.”

English teacher Lauren Pinto and math and science teacher Michelle Acosta crowded more than 30 parents into a classroom during a tour. About a dozen were still outside in the hall.

“We can get everyone inside, keep moving up to the front,” Acosta said.

“We can get everyone in,” Pinto added. “GALS culture is, ‘We can do it,’ and this is the start of a new day for the school.”

New Village Girls Academy

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 high school, and based in one of the district’s neediest neighborhoods. It would be a place where girls would learn and practice social and emotional skills and be encouraged to develop as independent, analytical thinkers — just as her daughter had become at a tony all girls private school.

But that idea, which was formalized into an application for the Girls Academic Leadership Academy (GALA) as a district experimental Pilot Schools, has been in legal limbo two years running.

“The stumbling block and the reason we’ve been stymied is the fear that there might be a lawsuit,” a frustrated Hicks told LA School Report.

Despite support from Superintendent John Deasy and at least one school board member, Hicks says, “I believe that the district’s legal department is afraid that we would have a challenge from some outside entity or internal entity that would say, you have to have an all boys school as well.”

That’s not the only problem.

It appears Hicks and a group of eight LA Unified teachers, administrators and data analysts who are behind the effort to launch the new academy have stumbled into a legal hornets nest of conflicting federal, state and local policies on the issue of single sex schools in a public school system.

While the federal government encourages them, the California State Board of Education has adopted regulations saying they are prohibited, except for rare instances in which they can demonstrate serving “students with similar therapeutic and educational needs,” according to a 2006 legal opinion from the Board, which sets policies that the California Department of Education (CDE) carries out.

But CDE officials say school districts have the autonomy to open a single sex school.

“That’s because California is a local control state,” Tina Jung, a CDE spokeswoman, said. “So that means the local education agencies, in this case school districts, have more authority to run their own operations than we do here at the state.”

No one at the state or the California Charter Schools Association could say precisely how many single sex schools are operating in California. One, the 100 Black Men of the Bay Area Community School, a public charter school in Oakland, operated from September 2012 through February of this year, when it closed due to financial problems.

The New Village Girls Academy, believed to be the first all girls school in the state opened as a charter school in Los Angeles in 2006 to provide college preparatory work for girls from underserved urban settings.

Jung said the standing ruling on the issue by the State Board of Education is governed by the 2006 legal memorandum.

“This is the latest document we have and it’s up to date so we’re still following what’s in this memo,” Jung said.

New Village said it was told by the State Board the principal legal barrier to opening a single-gender school is California’s Proposition 209.

Passed by voters in 1996, the law says “the state shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting.”

However, three months after the legal memo was written, the U.S. Department of Education amended Title IX laws to allow districts to create single-sex schools and classes as long as enrollment is voluntary, eliminating the requirement to demonstrate a specific need.

The only caveat — and this the problem for the Girls Academic Leadership Academy — is that districts launching these schools “must also make coeducational schools and classes of substantially equal quality available for members of the excluded sex.”

The amendments were designed to allow more experimentation in public schools under No Child Left Behind and several states have embraced the opportunity.

New York was the first, establishing the Young Women’s Leadership Network — a network of five schools all girl schools throughout New York City. Texas then launched the Foundation for the Education of Young Women, setting up schools in Dallas, Austin, San Antonio, Lubbock, and Houston.

Both of these efforts serve middle and high school girls and have impressive academic records. Students at the schools score among the highest on their respective state proficiency exams and the campuses that have expanded to include a senior class  report 100 percent of graduates are accepted into college.

That inspired Hicks and her team at LA Unified to model their pilot school,  GALA, after them.

Hicks says the proposal to start the school has had “no real objections” from the Pilot School Steering Committee or Donna Muncee, who heads LA Unified’s Intensive Support and Instruction.

“Everyone tells us, this is a good idea. That it would be awesome for our girls which data shows take a nose dive in math and science when they hit middle school,” Hicks said.

Data from LA Unified’s 2011-12 state standardized test scores shows the percentage of girls ranked proficient or advanced in science drops from 54 percent in the eighth grade to roughly 27 percent a year later.

That trend continues through high school and on Advanced Placement exams in math and science. Fewer girls than boys take the tests that could earn them college credit, and fewer still achieve a passing score.

Critics dismiss these types of findings as junk science and argue single sex schools reinforce gender stereotypes, and the district may be fearful of lawsuits. Several are in the works.

Earlier this week, for example, the ACLU filed a complaint with the federal Department of Education against Hillsborough County in Florida, saying its single-sex classrooms violate federal law prohibiting gender discrimination in schools receiving public money.

But Hicks says the benefits of the school would outweigh the misgivings. Over the last two years, while waiting for a definitive answer from LA Unified, she has been cultivating potential partnerships.

UCLA’s School of Computer Science, the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, and the National Center for Women and Technology have expressed interest in developing a curriculum for the school.

She adds, “We have a lot of independent companies that would like to invest. We have a relationship with the National Women in Technology. We’ve made a lot of contacts. We’re ready to launch. We’re ready to provide a lot of resources for the girls. We started to reach out to anybody we could think of and asking, If we launch this will you be a part of it? And we have yet to hear a no,” she said.

But Hicks is running out of patience. She says she’ll give “the pilot thing” one more chance, which would mean GALA, won’t open it’s doors until the 2015-16 school year. After that, she says she’ll consider trying to start the school as a charter.

“It’s just so sad,” she said, “that this this great thing is ready to happen but we’re just waiting.”