Devon Fuller and Tarcilia Castillo DALLAS– When Devon Fuller’s mother enrolled her in the first group of seventh-graders at the Irma Lerma Rangel Young Women’s Leadership School, she was sure she would not like the school.  Six years later and graduating with a 3.8 grade average and an associate’s degree from community college, 16-year-old Devon Fuller has a different opinion.

“It’s been tough coming here,” she said. “There’s been a lot of challenges because we were the first ones to open the school and there was controversy whether this would be beneficial. We’ve had to deal with disappointment and adversity for being the first ones, but we shined through.”
Her classmate and best friend, Tarcilia Castillo—whose 3.9479 GPA earned her the spot as school valedictorian-agrees that being the first group of students to go through to graduation at the first public all-girls school in Dallas was difficult at times. But it was all worth it.

The two girls missed the social interaction that comes from being in a traditional high school, but they said that the lack of boys in the school allowed them to focus more on their studies.

“Here, we got to focus more on the classes because we had only girls,” said Castillo, 18. “It’s not that I played dumb because there were males in the class, but society puts males above females. Boys get all the trophies and have a lot of self-confidence. Coming here now, I speak when I have to. I have more self-confidence.”
 Both girls agreed that Dallas ISD would benefit from more single-gender schools and have advice to the first group of students who will attend the district’s all-male school when it opens in 2011: stick with it; it’s worth it in the end. (credits to Dallas ISD).