Whitney McIntosh, founding principal at Young Womens Leadership Academy of Las Vegas, talks with prospective students Fabiola Arenas, left, and Kelly Ramirez before an open house meeting at Winchester Cultural Center Thursday, Dec. 16, 2021. The all-girls charter school is scheduled to open next school year on the east side.
Sunday, Dec. 26, 2021 | 2 a.m.
Whitney McIntosh says the girls of east Las Vegas deserve a quality education, and she wants to give it to them at the Young Women’s Leadership Academy.
The tuition-free public charter school is set to open in fall 2022 with McIntosh as its principal, her focus on high achievement — not just high school graduation but college success. Uniquely, it’ll be a mostly single-gender setting that embraces the “whole girl” and empowers her personally and civically. Enrollment opens Jan. 3.
“A lot of parents that seek us out, they’ve been looking for something different,” McIntosh said.
One of the students who’s ready to make the switch is Kelly Ramirez, 13, who wants to make more girlfriends and grow her character. “I think this school will help me grow into a better person,” she said.
Ramirez — who hopes to start her own business, maybe a restaurant, one day — is an eighth-grader at another small, all-girls charter middle school in Las Vegas, the Girls Athletic Leadership School in central Las Vegas.
“Guys are a distraction,” she said. “I’m going to be honest.”
The leadership academy will open with up to 150 students in sixth and ninth grades and add a grade per year until it is a full middle and high school. It will focus on science and the arts and be capped at 600 students when fully phased in.
“We’re going to have a robotics program, because we’re really focused on” science, technology, engineering and math, McIntosh said. “We’re going to have an arts program. We really want to prepare students, even if they would like a career in the arts. So we’re looking at having a dance program for our scholars.”
At an open house this month at the Winchester Community Center — a short walk from where McIntosh has tentatively secured a campus at Desert Inn Road and McLeod Drive — McIntosh told parents that most of the schools in the area earn only one or two stars in the state’s accountability rating system. And girls score even worse on state exams than boys, especially the older students.
The leadership academy will be different, she said. Her goal is at least a three-star rating, ideally five stars. In addition to rigorous science and math classes, she’s considering an all-girls mariachi band, dual-enrollment opportunities with the College of Southern Nevada, and sports teams that can compete in community leagues.
McIntosh said parents are more interested in how the smaller school can give their daughters individualized attention to make up for pandemic-induced learning loss. They want to know about academics and extracurriculars more than the single-gender setting, although she touts it as a research-proven way to give girls success on standardized tests and personal confidence.
The school will follow a model set by The Young Women’s Leadership School, which started in New York in the 1990s and has sister schools across the country as part of the Student Leadership Network. All of the affiliate schools boast 100% high school graduation and college acceptance rates.
Though the school is geared toward girls in Vegas’ low-income and working-class east side, students from all over town can enroll — including boys. There are no application requirements and boys are welcome, along with transgender students. All students will follow the girls’ empowerment philosophy.
Brochures for the Young Women's Leadership Academy of Las Vegas are displayed on a table during an open house meeting at Winchester Cultural Center Thursday, Dec. 16, 2021. The all-girls charter school is scheduled to open next school year on the east side.
McIntosh, who has been a classroom teacher, school-level administrator and principal coach, has worked in traditional and charter schools, all of them turnaround schools or in high-need areas. Her career included stops in Houston and Chicago, and earlier in her career she was an assistant principal at the charter Mater Academy Mountain Vista, also on Vegas’ east side.
When her first leadership academy student graduates in 2025, McIntosh wants the families and community partners who have been with the girls over the years to be there, and for every girl to have her college picked out — “and that they’re able to speak with confidence of who they are, how they define themselves and the vision that they have for their individual future. That’s my dream.”
The Rhynes family is considering its high school options for Devin, 13, who is halfway through her eighth-grade year at Sedway Middle, a Clark County School District campus in North Las Vegas.
Mom Dennise said the academy’s science focus is appealing, as Devin has a knack for computers and hopes for a career in cybersecurity. Dad Phillip said he likes the success in tests and college preparation at sister schools.
Both parents grew up in Las Vegas and attended traditional public schools. So did their two older sons. They said with all of the valley’s resources, little seems to get put back into the schools — not even nets for the basketball hoops at Devin’s elementary school.
Janet Crosswhite has a son, no daughters. She wants to support the leadership academy as a community partner. Her contribution is the mobile dental clinic she founded and takes into high-need communities.
She said her background made it a challenge for her to complete college, but she did. She is now a dental hygienist.
“Coming from the inner city of Detroit, it hit me in the heart,” she said. “It hit me where I was.”
Fabiola Arenas, also an eighth-grader at Girls Athletic Leadership School, thinks the new academy will provide a calm, positive learning environment. She said a promotional video with testimonies from proud students and alumni of other schools in its network grabbed her.
“It made me tear up, knowing I could know my worth,” she said.
Learn more at ywlalasvegas.org.
