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By Beth Fertig

New York City public school students don’t head back to class until next Wednesday. But some charter schools have already opened, including a new one in the Bronx just for girls. As WNYC’s Beth Fertig reports, Girls Prep Bronx is part of a movement to expand single sex education.

JENKINS: OK, every team go ahead pick a book

The 19 first graders in teacher Lois Jenkins’s class are all sharply dressed for the first day of school. Their hair is neatly pulled into pony tails, or braided with beads. Their school uniforms are fresh navy jumpers with clean white shirts, no wrinkles.

Jenkins is teaching the girls to use the classroom library. She also teaches them how to encourage each other.

JENKINS: Turn to the girl next to you and tell her “you did a good job.” GIRLS: You did a good job!

CARBONE: One of our core values is sisterhood.

Josie Carbone is the principal of Girls Prep Bronx, which opened yesterday in Hunts Point.

CARBONE: And so what we’re trying to foster is this idea that we all get better by supporting one another. And that it’s not about a competition but about lifting every one up.

Girls Prep is among three single sex charter school operators in New York City. There are also about a dozen regular public schools that are single sex – most for girls.

Reasearch compiled by the National Coalition of Girls Schools finds girls can benefit from single sex education. Some believe that’s because they have fewer distractions, without the boys. Miriam Lewis Raccah is the CEO of Public Prep Network which operates Girls Prep.

RACCAH: We definitely have a lot of girls who, in a co-ed environment, would be the girl who falls through the cracks. Because she’s quiet to begin win, and you add to that she may have a lot of rambunctious boys in the class who need more of her teacher’s attention.

Girls Prep also has a school on the Lower East Side, serving grades K through five. This year, 98 percent of third graders and 92 percent of fourth graders passed their state math and reading tests.

TEACHER: What color is this that they’re wearing? GIRL: Yellow raincoat.

Some charter schools can be very demanding, with long days and Saturday classes. Girls Prep has a longer than average school day – beginning with breakfast at 7:20 and ending at 4 –with an extra period for reading. But its students also get gym or yoga on a daily basis, as well as art or music. And classrooms are named for leaders such as Bronx sustainability activist Majora Carter and Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Principal Carbone says role models are important in low income neighborhoods like Hunts Point.

CARBONE: So there are like, high rates of teen pregnancy and prostitution and drug use and we want to counter that.

More than 700 families applied for the 132 openings in kindergarten and first grade and were chosen at random, with priority given to those in the neighborhood.

As school let out yesterday, a neighbor across the street blasted music from an open window. Batesheba Baskin asked her daughter Paris about her class.

MOTHER: What’s your best part you had today? GIRL? Reading

Baskin said she wasn’t happy with her daughter’s kindergarten experience last year in a regular public school, which was why she looked into charters.

BASKIN: A all girls school is even better I wanted her into an all girls school. REPORTER: why? BASKIN: I don’t know why, I just feel like better. No boys. All girls and they focused more.

Some parents did deliberately seek out a girls school. But several said they preferred a charter, even if their local schools had a good reputation. Robert Andrews wanted his daughter Katherine to go to Girls Prep for those reasons.

ANDREWS: It’s not really about the all girls. All girls you don’t have to worry about chasing the little boys.Which is good. But it really doesn’t matter. She go to school to learn, not here to make friends or with the girls and the boys, she’s here to learn. That’s my main concern to learn.

The organization that runs Girls Prep says that sentiment explains the growing interest in its schools. It’s planning to open three more in the next two years, one of which will be just for boys. For WNYC I’m Beth Fertig.