For nearly 15 years, the Memphis Grizzlies Preparatory Charter School has leveraged community partnerships with the Memphis Grizzlies NBA team and other organizations to provide students in grades 6-8 opportunities to engage in hands-on learning, with a focus on building strong foundations in literacy and math. Now, building off of the success of the all-boys public charter school and a growing interest among parents and education policymakers in career and technical education (CTE), the school is looking to extend those opportunities to local girls via the establishment of the Memphis Grizzlies Preparatory STEAM School for Girls.¶
According to Grizzlies Prep Executive Director Tim Ware, the proposed school would eventually serve 525 female students in grades 6-8 if approved by the school board this week. He said the girls’ charter school would look to provide an education model that focuses on closing the gap for the underrepresentation of women of color in STEAM-related (science, technology, engineering, arts and math) careers. Charter schools are free public schools operated by an independent contract or “charter” with an authorizing agency.¶
Ware said the boys’ school currently serves about 350 students each year “from 28 different zip codes in Memphis,” with more than 90 percent of those students being African American and 4 percent Latino. In addition, he said, most of the students in general are considered economically disadvantaged or underserved.¶
“We anticipate that the vast majority of our students [at the girls’ school] would come from an economically disadvantaged household. Obviously, if the population mirrors the boys' school, it will probably be 80-plus, 90-plus percent African American,” he told Tennessee Firefly. “So, in terms of the students we would serve, it would tend to be those students who have been historically marginalized.”¶
Among the boys’ school's most notable successes in recent years, Ware said, the school has generated students' interest in STEAM skills and careers through immersive learning activities and mentorship, which has in turn helped to improve test scores and students’ general academic proficiency. He noted that the school has witnessed “continual” improvement on Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program (TCAP) test scores over the past several years as well.¶
Ware noted that the school's relationship with the NBA team is key to their work.¶
“We have a good partnership with the Memphis Grizzlies Foundation and have access to players who come in and provide anything from field trips for students to stopping by the school to engage with kids,” he said.¶
“Having a relationship with the NBA team just provides us with a platform where we can do the incredible work of educating our students, but we also have an opportunity to highlight it in a different way,” he later added. “They provide us with opportunities to engage with players and Grizzlies personnel in a way that is exciting to the students and keeps them active and engaged in the school day itself, and then there's the [financial] resources and experiences that they help us leverage. An example of a resource would be the NBA Grizzlies Foundation's partnership with Code Crew, which is a technology-based coding program. … Coming back from COVID [19], we were able to offer many of our students - about a hundred of our students - coding classes.”¶
Ware said he's hopeful that the proposed girls’ school could provide those types of opportunities to girls in the area if approved by the Memphis-Shelby County School Board Tuesday.¶
Ware said the launch of the new girls' school would come about at a time when state education policymakers and school districts continue to increase their support for science, technology, engineering and math related programming in order to prepare more students for a changing workforce and tech-integrated job market. He believes the new school could also take advantage of a growing interest in science more generally today.¶
“You can think about this blockbuster movie, ‘Black Panther’ … One of the main characters was a princess named Shuri who was a scientist,” he said. “Stuff like that has really sparked a type of interest amongst children in what we as educators call ‘STEAM’ careers, and that type of exposure, in this case through Hollywood, has sparked that interest.¶
“Now, there are conversations about this supercomputer from Elon Musk's [AI company] XAI that's coming to Memphis. There's just a lot of interest among families about things like, ‘How do we access those types of jobs?’ All of this has happened to coincide in recent years, where we were thinking about opening a [new girls’] STEAM school,” he continued. “It’s a great opportunity to provide pathways that historically just haven't existed.”¶
While Grizzlies’ initial application for a proposed school for girls ultimately failed, Ware said administrators took the feedback given to them by school board officials then to improve their proposal. He believes the school’s ability to be receptive is part of what ultimately led the Memphis Shelby County Schools’ charter school review team to recommend its approval of the all-girls’ school last week.¶
Ware said he’s feeling “optimistic” about the chances of establishing a new all-girls charter school in the area, as the school board looks to make a final decision at its next meeting.¶
“You never want to count your chickens before they hatch, but I think that we have been very responsive to the feedback given by the Memphis City Schools’ Office of Charter Schools, and I think we've been very responsive to the feedback that was provided at the April 30th meeting by board members,” he said. “Acting as a good faith partner, we feel pretty good about our chances to get this approved.”¶
