AISD board discusses single-sex school plans

The Moody Foundation said it will contribute up to $4.6 million for strategic planning and operations at the school for young men, pending board approval, Carstarphen said. First, the board must decide on the right location.

Considering school sites

The five scenarios being considered by the board fall into two distinct "buckets," AISD Chief Operations Officer Lawrence Fryer said.

The first bucket comprises four scenarios using an existing AISD school with low enrollment and extra space. The new school would co-locate with the existing school for up to three years, and then students in the existing school would be reassigned to nearby middle schools.

"The sites with the most space are Lamar, Garcia, Pearce and Covington Middle Schools," he said.

This would establish a $500,000 funding gap for relocating students and providing transportation, and a portion of project funding would be used to bring those costs down, he said.

The second bucket would involve renovating an existing school, most likely the old Anderson High School building that houses the Alternative Learning Center.

Transforming the facility to bring it up to standards would cost up to $12 million, Fryer said, adding the district would need to cover at least half of that cost.

Carstarphen noted that District 1 is already being considered for the Pearce and Garcia design AAFR, and Lamar is involved in an arts design as part of McCallum Fine Arts Academy.

"In the end, we were kind of left with only one middle school site that wasn't in the throes of having something else being considered for its space, and that left us with Covington," she said. "But Covington came with the pros and cons portion of being in a design where you have one school on one side and one school on the other that are offering the same programming design, and our experience in AISD has been mixed on how that has played out over the years."

AISD reinforces single-sex AAFRs are separate

When the 24-member planning team for the school for young men met recently, it was clear that the concept of renovating the Alternative Learning Center site was preferred over co-location and relocating students, "but again the cost was a little bit of a pill to swallow," Carstarphen said.

She also said another AAFR, a potential new south high school, is not one of the locations being considered for a single-sex school.

Additionally, Carstarphen said that the school for young men design is like the Ann Richards School for Young Women Leaders in terms of its district-wide usage and the application process. Pearce and Garcia would be specifically designed to serve their own attendance areas.

Trustee Robert Schneider said he is concerned there has not been enough public engagement on the single-gender school AAFRs, but Carstarphen responded by saying "literally hundreds of meetings" are being held to discuss them.

Single-sex schools would be implemented in District 1 to address gaps in academic performance, the high dropout rate and students' readiness for continued education, she said.

Trustee Cheryl Bradley said single-sex education is the right fit for the district.

"We have to do something differently as we look at educating children. We are continuously speaking of the achievement gap, and yet still we do not change what we are doing to eradicate it," she said. "I believe this is the model to do it."