Orange County to Try Single-Gender Academies

Eighty girls and 80 boys from Orange County’s last-chance schools will be offered a new way to learn under a program considered unprecedented here: single-gender schools bankrolled by the state.

The Orange County Department of Education announced Monday that it has won a $500,000 state grant to launch all-male and all-female academies in Fountain Valley.

The two academies are expected to begin in four to six weeks, said Susan M. Condrey, a principal in the department who will head them. Enrollment will be voluntary and open to any student in grades seven through 12 in the county’s alternative and correctional school system.

The county’s education department is the fourth agency to receive such a grant since the first state-sponsored academy opened in Stockton in August. It is the first in Southern California. Others are in Siskiyou County and San Francisco.

Gov. Pete Wilson proposed the academies in 1996, saying he wanted to reduce gang violence among boys and help nurture math and science skills among girls.

Single-sex academies are common among private schools but rare among public schools in the United States. To guard against lawsuits, state education officials insist that boys and girls get equal treatment in each academy and that no child be forced to attend.

Word of the new academies, which have been in the works for several weeks, has spread rapidly among Orange County parents.

“They’re calling me from everywhere asking, ‘How can I get my kid in your school?’ ” Condrey said. “There’s tremendous parent interest in this.”

The principal also has broached the idea with students.

“I find that the kids themselves first say, ‘That’s lame,’ and then the second thing they say is, ‘Huh. Tell me more about that,’ ” Condrey said. “They’re kind of interested and they seem to like it, but they don’t want to admit it too freely.”

The academies are planned as a two-year trial. Students will be chosen by lottery if applications exceed available space. The state is expected to pay each academy $249,243 in the first year and the county education department an additional $162,370 for each school.

State funding is not guaranteed for the second year.

Two members of the county Board of Education, which oversees the education department budget, said they support the tryout.

“I think this is a good, common-sense approach,” trustee Ken Williams said. “This is not for everybody. But what I like here is there will be options in public education. That’s what I think is exciting. We’re expanding parental choice.”

Trustee Elizabeth Parker said she experienced gender discrimination as a student. A high school math teacher, Parker said, told her that she shouldn’t bother with calculus because girls didn’t have the aptitude for higher mathematics. She took the class with another teacher.

“I got an A, an absolute, resounding A,” Parker recalled, “and I went into UCLA as a math major.”

Parker said she has “mixed feelings” about single-gender academies even though she endorses the new program. Ideally, she said, girls and boys should receive equal educational opportunities from a coed environment.

Condrey said the two year-round academies, yet to be named, will share quarters in an office park on Harbor Boulevard. Girls and boys will not be on campus at the same time.

On half the days in each two weeks of the school calendar, boys will take classes from 8 a.m. to noon and girls from 1 to 5 p.m. The schedule will flip on the other days--an arrangement that will pose separate but equal transportation challenges. Eight teachers will cover the middle and high school curriculum, Condrey said.

The alternative and correctional school system handles more than 21,000 students referred each year by school districts, probation officers, social service agencies or parents. It is the county’s educational safety net. Some have been expelled, some arrested. Most are considered at high risk of dropping out before they obtain a high school diploma.

Pledging to choose “the cream of the crop” for her faculty, Condrey said she aims to increase attendance, reduce violence and raise performance among students. They will take a basic skills examination as soon as they enter an academy and will be tested again before they leave.

But she said her main goal is to offer students a stimulating and supportive learning environment.

“I want it to be, from the minute they walk in, a place where they feel good and they feel safe,” she said. “I want them to learn how to work with other people and feel the self-esteem that comes from really doing well, and knowing it.”