SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS-NEWS AND MYSA.

COM | Sunday, July 24, 2016 |

A27

FROM THE COVER

YMLA
From page A25
and she wanted to sleep, but
instead she came to watch her
son play. JayQuavion never
used to like school, but now he
didnt want the year to end,
Mabry said.
I like what I saw because
theyre having a good time,
she said between bites of pineapple and watermelon. Im
just impressed. It makes the
kids want to be here.
A national debate
Single-gender public schools
were more popular before Title
IX passed in 1972, preventing
gender-based discrimination in
federally funded education.
Under federal law, single-gender public schools remain permissible as long as districts
offer comparable programs to
both genders, a rule that has
inspired litigation against some
school districts.
In recent years, all-boys
schools have surged in lowincome urban areas where the
student population is mostly
African-American or Latino.
In 2004, when the Eagle
Academy opened in the Bronx,
it became the only all-boys
public school in New York in
30 years and the only all-boys
public high school in the country, said David Banks, the
schools first principal. Since
then, five more schools have
opened in New York and Newark, New Jersey. They serve
almost 3,000 boys from the
sixth to 12th grades. Across the
six schools, 80 percent of students are African-American,
while 20 percent are Latino.
Banks, who went on to be
CEO of the foundation that
supports the schools, said he
and the schools founders were
reacting to a Columbia University report that showed 75 percent of the states prison population came from seven neighborhoods in New York City.
The Eagle Academy schools are
located in those neighborhoods, Banks said. The first
school, in the South Bronx, is
in the nations poorest congressional district.
The high school graduation
rate for African-American boys
in New York City hovers between 45 and 50 percent, but
Eagle Academys graduation
rate is 83 percent, Banks said.
Virtually all the boys who
graduate go on to college, he
said.
Banks is now launching the
Eagle Institute to train educators for the swell of similar
schools opening nationwide.
A Young Mens Leadership
Academy is scheduled to open
in the fall in Crowley, bringing
Texas total of such schools to
seven. In addition to San Antonio, similar schools exist in
Austin, Grand Prairie, Dallas,
Fort Worth and Houston. San
Antonio has the only YMLA
that enrolls boys as young as
the fourth grade.
In Austin, officials decided
to open the Gus Garcia Young
Mens Leadership Academy as
a middle school that feeds into
an early college high school.
Austin ISD is now considering
an expansion to enroll lower
grades, said Sterlin McGruder,
the academys principal.
The school will have about
500 students this coming
school year at its East Austin
campus. It is an opt-in model,
meaning families living within
the school zone can decide
between it and a coeducational
school. An all-boys magnet
school in Austin had failed,
McGruder said.
The students at Gus Garcia
are more than 90 percent economically disadvantaged, 65
percent Hispanic and almost

Photos by Lisa Krantz / San Antonio Express-News

Andres Torralva and Nicholas Silva-Ruiz admire the corn growing in the YMLA garden, built and planted by students and teachers
alike. Some of the gardens produce is being sold this summer at the farmers market at Sam Houston High School.

Principal Derrick Brown runs to home base during a staff vs.

students kickball game at YMLA.

30 percent African-American.
More than 40 percent are English-language learners,
McGruder said. A quarter of
the student body receives special education, compared with
about 9 percent at the San
Antonio boys school. Yet
theyve made double-digit
gains on state standardized
tests, McGruder said.
For every person who praises the success of such schools,
there are plenty who denounce
single-gender education.
Lise Eliot, an associate professor of neuroscience at Chicago Medical School, was the
second author of a 2011 study
titled The Pseudoscience of
Single-Sex Schooling. Eliot
said she decided to examine
claims that boys need more
active learning, are more visual
and mathematical, while girls
are more verbal and auditory.
I dissected the data for
these things and basically concluded that they are essentially
myths, Eliot said. Theres
just much more overlap between groups of boys and girls
than there is separation.
Eliot studies neuroplasticity,
or how the brain changes as a
result of learning and experience. She said social experiences are among the most important factors in brain development, and classrooms are
ideal environments for adults
to teach both genders to respect and lead each other. The
features that make some boys

schools successful strong

teachers, individual attention
to students, a college focus
apply across genders, she said.
This is a country and a
values system that increasingly
values diversity, and what
could be more exclusionary
than single-gender education?
Eliot said. Separation by race,
we wouldnt tolerate.
The American Civil Liberties
Union filed a civil rights complaint to the U.S. Department
of Education the day after the
Gus Garcia Young Mens Leadership Academy opened in
Austin.
The complaint accused Austin ISD of relying on discredited stereotypes and flawed science in designing the school
and its companion, the Bertha
Sadler Means Young Womens
Leadership Academy. In the
girls school, students are encouraged to work quietly and
cooperatively and to discuss
their feelings, while students at
the boys school are encouraged
to move around and compete,
according to the complaint.
The ACLU also claimed both
schools rely on generalizations
about black and Latino students, which the complaint
calls illegal because the District intends to treat boys and
girls differently in the classroom because of their sex and
their race.
The Department of Educations office of civil rights
opened an investigation

Fourth-grader Kenneth Broadnax plays during recess. Movement and giving the
boys an outlet for their energy are components for learning at YMLA.

months later into Austin ISD

under Title VI which governs assignment of students
and Title IX, according to Dorie Nolt, the departments press
secretary.
The ACLU has two other
complaints against singlegender schools nationwide and
several more against coeducational schools that separate
students by gender, said Galen
Sherwin, senior staff attorney.
Brown has heard the criticism that single-gender environments harm boys relationships with girls. He said hes
used the guy talks to combat
it. At the assemblies, his boys
have acknowledged playing
with dolls. Theyve talked
about the unrealistic ways
women are portrayed in video
games, misogyny in rap music
and how to approach girls they
like.
Theyre not doing these
things or having conversations
in regular schools, Brown
said. Theyre calling girls
stupid because they like them
and they dont know what else
to say.
Banks, of the Eagle Academy
Foundation, went to coeducational schools and did well. He
agreed that the scientific research favoring single-gender
education resorts to significant generalities but thinks
his boys have an easier time
focusing on school without
girls to impress.
It should be an option,
thats all, Banks said. The
white boys who are in another
part of town, many of them are
going to (private) single-gender
schools and nobodys asking
any question about them. The
question comes up when its
been in a public environment.
When it adds eighth grade,
the school will move to what is
now the campus of Wheatley
Middle on the near East Side,
an area where public housing
is being replaced with mixedincome development. Brown
thinks the new location, off
two major highways, will be
more attractive to higher-income families.
Predicting demand from the
new development at Wheatley,
SAISD Superintendent Pedro
Martinez said he might want a

charter adjustment to enroll

lower grades. Brown said he
thinks younger students
should be in coeducational
classes, but he worries for the
future of his preteens, who
have grown accustomed to
innovations that the high
schools dont offer. Brown
recalled students chasing him
down hallways to show off
games they created on their
iPads, he said.
If that is what we do, who
else is doing it? he said.
Thats the question. For high
school, where do I send them?
Martinez said he is not opposed to upward expansion
either.
I just love what theyre
doing at the school and I want
to make sure whatever we do
makes sense for them, Martinez said. Everythings on the
table.
Whatever YMLAs future
holds, Jacoby wont be a part of
it. The day after school ended,
he finally moved back in with
his biological mother on the
Northwest Side.
Im maturing, so I could
probably get used to it, he
said.
He will attend Pease Middle
School in Northside ISD next
year, where he is looking forward to playing football, a
sport YMLA wont offer. He
knows it will feel different.
Hell probably try to move
around in the chairs. And hell
be at least a grade level ahead
in math and science.
Hes not too concerned about
half of his classmates being
girls. I know you wouldnt feel
nervous, Evans said in the
spring, and they both laughed
knowingly.
Jaydan and his classmates
will also be seventh-graders
next month, still at the top of
the Young Mens Leadership
Academy, forever its first graduating class.
Wherever Jaydan goes to
high school, YMLA is preparing him to socialize with both
genders, Luevano said.
Its been nothing but one
great experience after another
with the school, she said.
Hes growing up.
amalik@express-news.net

Fifth-grader Tristan Ortiz walks across the stage and reacts with teacher Sophia
Gonzalez as a recap of his many activities is read at the end of the school year.