Oakland Unified Initiative for African-American Girls Follows Years of Focus on the Boys

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Nzingha Dugas, director of the Oakland Unified School District’s new African-American Female Excellence initiative, helps girls at West Oakland Middle School work out a dance routine to go with a chant they wrote together. Photo by Lee Romney/EdSource

By Lee Romney, EdSource

Ever since the Oakland Unified School District launched its African-American Male Achievement office eight years ago people have been asking, “What about the girls?”

Among them were community leaders like Nzingha Dugas, who under contract to the district for many years ran academic enrichment programs and a basketball league that she says kept more than a few girls out of trouble — and in some cases out of the grasp of sex traffickers.

Read the complete story at EdSource. 

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