Tubman Academy runs on girl power

Diverse single-sex academy puts students on college track

By Jennifer Anderson

The Portland Tribune, Nov 23, 2007, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (8 Reader comments)

KATIE HARTLEY / TRIBUNE PHOTO

Tiffany Pixley paints sculptures made of nylons and coat hangers in her art class at Harriet Tubman Young Women’s Leadership Academy. The school, set up this year as a part of reforms in the Jefferson High cluster, has girls in grades six through nine, and eventually will serve 10th-, 11th- and 12th-graders, too.

In Kathy Smith’s P.E. and wellness class at this North Portland school, girls can shoot hoops, step to the popular “Dance Dance Revolution” game, and hear a lesson on sexual harassment without feeling embarrassed.

There are no boys to be found in the gym, or anywhere else in the building at the new Harriet Tubman Leadership Academy for Young Women, one of the two single-sex academies to open as part of Jefferson High School’s ongoing reforms this year.

Eleven-year-old Shradha Pulla, a bespectacled seventh-grader who aspires to be a climate scientist, finds the environment refreshing. “Boys are distracting,” she says simply.

For the first time in her life, Shradha said, she’s found herself raising her hand in class to speak. She and her classmates say there’s more opportunity, since classes aren’t as boisterous, and they don’t feel as shy when boys are out of the equation.

That was the reasoning behind the creation of this college-prep academy, based at the former Tubman Middle School, 2231 N. Flint Ave., and modeled on others that have shown success in inner-city districts across the nation.

Despite ongoing community criticism of Jefferson’s redesign, the young women’s academy opened its doors this fall with 160 girls in grades six through nine. The plan is to add another high school grade each year until it offers grades sixth through twelve.

So far, everything’s settling into its groove, says Principal Aurora Lora, an enthusiastic young administrator who helped plan for the school since its inception.

She rattles off a list of projects she’s working on: the drama club is about to begin, the Oregon Ballet Theatre just signed on as a partner, and she’s about to begin a collaboration with the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry.

Things aren’t so smooth, however, at the John H. Johnson Leadership Academy for Young Men, the other single-sex academy that opened this fall after a year’s delay.

Based in a wing of Jefferson High, the young men’s academy has just 50 students, and since enrollment is tied to staffing and curriculum, there are just three teachers and limited course offerings.

The academy is supposed to focus on business entrepreneurship, sports and entertainment management, and law and forensics – but not all the programs are in place yet. And with such a small staff, it’s hard to see to needed duties such as hall monitoring.

District administrators say the difference between the two single-sex academies comes from the extra year of marketing and planning the girls’ academy had, since it delayed its opening last year to debut at the same time as the boys school.

Lora, who served as Tubman’s principal last year, had been hired right away to lead the girls’ school, while the district recruited middle school administrator Willie Holmes from his job in Dallas, Texas, earlier this spring to lead the boys’ school.

Holmes and Cynthia Harris, the Jefferson campus principal, did not respond to e-mail requests for comment.

In a Portland Tribune story about his expectations, Holmes said in May: “What we need basically is human resources. It’s not like a telethon – we just need everybody to support us, all the stakeholders. … I think most of the challenge will be telling them who we are, what we’re about.”

Girls taught to have dreams

On a recent morning at the young women’s academy, signs of “girl power” were everywhere. Seventh-graders in a science class were talking about challenging the boys at the young men’s academy in an engineering contest.

Sixth-graders in language arts took turns commenting on their text, while holding a stuffed bunny to command attention. When the speaker finished, all hands shot up in the air for a turn to catch the bunny and speak next.

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