After advocates spent two years demanding equal programming for minority girls in response to an all-boys public school, Mayor Muriel Bowser and D.C. Public School officials announced today a program dedicated to girls of color.
The new initiative is called “Reign: Empowering Young Women as Leaders.”
“As we continue making the investments necessary to give every student in DCPS a world-class education and the resources and support they need to reach their full potential, Reign will ensure that our young women of color are not left behind,” Mayor Bowser said in a release.
The program kicks off on June 3 with a citywide conference for girls of color and will continue with workshops throughout next school year, according to the release. It will also provide gender and racial equity training to teachers and staff, expand DCPS’s health and gender curriculum, and offer grant opportunities to groups that can help improve academic and social outcomes for young women of color.
In February of 2015, Ward 3 Councilmember Mary Cheh questioned the fairness of opening the Ron Brown College Preparatory High School—D.C.’s only all-boys public school that opened last fall.
According to a U.S. Department of Education regulation, if a school system creates a same-sex public school for one gender, they must also provide substantially equal opportunities for the other gender.
Councilmember Cheh asked the Office of the Attorney General to examine the issue. And her concerns were echoed by the American Civil Liberties Union, which has brought lawsuits and filed complaints with the U.S. Department of Education to block single-sex schools in several states that they believe violate its policy.
The ACLU later released a report noting that girls of color suffer from many of the same problems as their male counterparts “including poverty, a highly racially segregated school system, overpolicing, racial bias, and high incidence of family violence and trauma.” They also face “unique obstacles, such as gender-based violence, teen pregnancy, and family obligations that undermine their academic progress,” the report continued.
After looking into the plan for Ron Brown, D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine said that opening the school appeared to follow the letter of the law, and his office would defend it if challenged in court.
The school opened in August as part of Mayor Bowser’s Empowering Males of Color Initiative, which also includes grant opportunities, fellowships for male teachers of color and recent DCPS graduates, and a mentoring program.
On the first day of school, then-DCPS chancellor Kaya Henderson said that the system planned to create new resources for girls as well—whether they be in the form of a school or another type of program.
The system’s new chancellor Antwan Wilson was questioned about the issue at a public meeting earlier this month. He said that he wanted to “make sure that we have an effort focused on young women that is unique to their needs—we need to design a program that’s specific to the issues that matter to them that are going to make a difference to them.” He followed up with “just be looking for that information because it’s coming.”
For the past year, DCPS held “listening sessions” with dozens of female students to assess their needs, DCPS spokesperson Janae Hinson told DCist. Some students said they wanted spaces to talk about their feelings and learn how to work in groups and relate to one another, while others requested sessions to learn about confidence building, according to the release.
The outcome of those conversations has resulted in what Chancellor Wilson calls “a critical socio-emotional investment across health, wellness, and identity for our young women of color, which will allow us to better support our students as we work to close the achievement gap.”
But Councilmember Cheh told DCist that while socio-emotional support is “very positive,” the school system should beef up the program’s academic offerings because “many of these at-risk girls are really struggling” in terms of educational performance.
“This should only be viewed as a first step—it’s not the answer to what we see as real academic needs and that has to be the main focus here,” Cheh continued.
Hinson told DCist that establishing an all-girls school was not a priority for students who participated in the listening sessions. Cheh said, in response, that a separate school doesn’t have to be the only option. However, the programs for girls should be comparable to the academic rigor and mentoring that Ron Brown offers its students. And currently, Reign does not offer the same quality of academic resources, she said.
But this is just the beginning, Bowser said in the release, adding that the program will be expanded based on feedback from young women in the school system.
