10 Jul Kansas City Girls Preparatory Academy (Girls Prep) Receives $1,057,089 Grant from the Department of Education Charter School Developers Fund

Kansas City Girls Preparatory Academy (Girls Prep) was recently awarded a $1,057,089 grant from the Department of Education Charter School Developers Fund to Girls Prep will use grant funds to support three key goals. First, Girls Prep will adopt research-based, CCSS-aligned curricula to ensure the foundations of a guaranteed and viable curriculum are in place for all students. Second, Girls Prep will use those curricula to drive CCSS-aligned Content Knowledge (CK) and Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) for all Kansas City Girls Preparatory Academy staff. Finally, staff will use their curriculum and developmental experiences to dramatically increase high-need students’ achievement in terms of growth and proficiency.

This grant provides funding to address inequitable academic outcomes through professional development (PD) for instructional leaders and teachers.

Girls Prep addresses a community need for more opportunities for young women in neighborhoods that have been negatively impacted by de jure and de facto racial segregation. Young women living in Kansas City’s segregated neighborhoods – and especially young women of color – do not have access to equitable educational opportunities.  One of the most important factors distinguishing high-performing schools is the quality, consistency, and depth of professional development (PD) available for instructional leader and teachers. Girls Prep’s goal is to build deep capacity and institutional knowledge in its early years so as to ensure that all staff experience continued learning and growth in terms of both their Content Knowledge (CK) and their Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK).  Girls Prep recognizes there is a high probability young women living in Girls Prep’s priority zip codes will be one or more years behind their peers academically. Girls Prep is designed to directly address a critical root cause of this consistent low performance: teachers and instructional leaders who are inadequately trained in evidence-based CK and PCK, including support strategies appropriate to high-need student populations.

Girls Prep is a new charter school. It will be the first single-gender, open-enrollment charter public school in Kansas City. It will enroll 100 fifth grade girls beginning in Fall 2019 and grow one grade per year to form a 5th – 8th grade middle school and a 9th – 12th grade high school.  Girls Prep will foster a strong sense of community and a rigorous, college-bound academic culture.  Girls Prep will be an affiliate of the Young Women’s Leadership Network (YWLN), a network of all-girls schools founded to ensure college access for thousands of young women from low-income neighborhoods. In service of its core values of equity, community, and growth, Girls Prep will build on YWLN’s model to create a space where young women develop their voice and build the academic skills and knowledge to go wherever they want in life.