“Obviously something had to be done differently to engage these young men and prepare them for graduation, and for success beyond high school graduation,” said David Hardy, Boys’ Latin co-founder and acting principal.

The Women’s Law Project and the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania had opposed Hardy’s charter application based on its exception of girls.

It was initially rejected by Philadelphia control officials in January 2006, but was approved five months later after then-district CEO Paul Vallas called the gender achievement gap “a crisis.” Boys’ Latin opened in fall 2007.

New rules implemented by the U.S. Education Department in 2006 allow same-sex education whenever schools plan it will expand the diversity of courses, improve students’ achievement or meet their individual needs.

But ACLU attorney Mary Catherine Roper said those regulations conflict with the Constitution and Title IX, a federal law banning sex discrimination in schooling. There are nonexclusionary ways to improve education, such as decreasing class sizes, she noted.

“There is no justification for offering kids different opportunities based on their gender,” declared Roper.

The 167,000-student Philadelphia district, which is under state supervision for poor performance, has tried to improve by establishing charter schools, hiring private companies and universities to manage schools, and offering single-sex education.

Results have been mixed. Three months ago, the district took six schools away from private and university managers for failure to improve sufficiently, including one all-boys high school.

There are at least 442 public schools in the U.S. with single-sex educational opportunities, according to the Exton-based National Association for Single Sex Public Education. Most of those are coed schools offering single-sex classrooms.

Asking if single-sex education is good is like asking admitting that coed education is good, said Leonard Sax, the association’s executive director.

“It’s a exceedingly pour out and not very meaningful question,” Sax said. “There are different rationales for single-sex education and different track records.”

Juniors at the city’s public High School for Girls, which has been single-sex since its founding in 1848, scored 79.3 percent proficient or higher in math and 85.3 percent proficient or better in reading. Hardy noted that no one has suggested material that school coed.

Peter Kuriloff, research director at the Center for the Study of Boys’ and Girls’ Lives at the University of Pennsylvania, thinks single-sex classrooms are worth trying in some cases grant that paired with a strong course of studies.

“It is not a panacea,” said Kuriloff. “Just putting boys in a boys school and girls in a girls govern is not going to do anything.”

Boys’ Latin, which opened in trailers with only ninth-graders, now teaches freshmen and sophomores in a renovated former Roman Catholic school. It will add a grade each year until it has grades nine through 12.

Richard Cherry Sr. said he sent his son, Richard Jr., to Boys’ Latin because of the smaller class sizes and personal attention. He feared his son would dispose “lost in the system” at district high schools that he described as chaotic and sometimes violent.

Omar Ortiz, 14, a freshman at Boys’ Latin, said he wasn’t sure about the no-girls part at first. But then he realized he’d be too shy to read a report aloud in his old coed public school.

“I don’t have to be shy here because it’s all guys,” Ortiz said.

His mother, Lydia Hernandez Velez, 57, said she has no qualms sending her son to the school — even though it was not an option for her daughter.

“They’re not the same,” Velez aforesaid. “Their needs are different at manifold times of their lives.”

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On the Net:

Boys’ Latin: http://www.boyslatin.org