If you have little background knowledge about girls boarding schools, you may hold an image of college preparatory schools with strait-laced ways. If this is once true, it is true no longer. Read more to understand the wide range of girls boarding schools.
Girls Boarding School Basics
The two main divisions in types of girls boarding schools is that there are boarding schools that only admit girls as students and boarding schools in which girls may be students along with boys. Some of the latter were formerly boys-only schools, and some of them have always been coeducational.
There are other ways of looking at girls boarding schools, too. There are boarding schools that have a religious affiliation and those that do not. There are those that are essentially high schools, and those that serve younger students or an extended age range. There are those that offer a post-graduate year, and those that do not. There are those equipped to assist students with special needs of various sorts, and those that are not so equipped. There are those that offer a 5-day boarding program in which students go home for the weekend, and those that house their students 7 days a week, except for school vacations. And there are those girls boarding schools that are private, and some that are public.
Girls College Preparatory Boarding Schools
The college preparatory boarding school for girls is the most common type of girls boarding school. Whether coeducational or girls only, the best of these schools are well-endowed, well-equipped institutions, with beautiful facilities and very well-qualified faculty.
Girls Sports Boarding Schools
While sports are characteristically offered at girls college preparatory boarding schools, there are also girls boarding schools with an explicit sports focus. For example, Burke Mountain Academy in Vermont—the first sports academy in the US, having been founded in 1970—accepts students for a program that focuses on both ski racing and academics.
Girls Special Subject Area Boarding Schools
Along with the public boarding schools that offer a focus on science, math, technology, and engineering, there are boarding schools for girls that focus on performance and visual arts, for example. Other schools have other focuses, such as Darrow School in New Lebanon, New York, which is focused around its Sustainability Program.
Other Girls Boarding Schools
Other types of girls boarding schools include therapeutic boarding schools, at which students have an academic curriculum, but the school is specially licensed to deal with one or more issues. These issues may include a wide range of situations, including substance abuse, self-esteem issues, pregnancy, defying authority and truancy, poor school performance, poor choices, violence, and more. Programs range from family-style residences to wilderness and other outdoor experiences, and last for various lengths of time.
There are also girls boarding schools that are military academies. These schools, which are always coeducational, having grown out of all-boys institutions, focus on military-style discipline with a college preparatory academic program. They aim to help their students attain leadership skills, and may include a Junior ROTC program.
Sources
http://www.burkemtnacademy.org/podium/default.aspx?t=123649
http://www.darrowschool.org/page.cfm?p=165
http://www.darrowschool.org/page.cfm?p=163
