Organizers on Thursday announced plans to pursue a charter school in Wilmington designed for disadvantaged girls.

The announcement by Judy Girard, former HGTV and Food Network president, and Georgia Nix Miller, wife of University of North Carolina Wilmington chancellor Gary Miller, was made at Thursday’s Greater Wilmington Business Journal-hosted Power Breakfast. In July, the two women filed state incorporation papers for a nonprofit organization called Young Women Leading Inc. (YWL) that will serve as the foundation board for the proposed school, to be called Young Women’s Leadership Academy.

“YWL was established to assist economically challenged female students become first-generation college graduates,” Miller said in a news release issued after the event.

Girard, who gave a talk at the breakfast about the status of women’s leadership in the business world, pointed to the critical need to help girls from underprivileged backgrounds gain self-confidence.

“It’s about choice – giving a young woman choices so she can take charge of her life,” Girard said.

YWL is currently working on the charter school application for the academy and will submit it in September, when the state will next consider such applications, Miller said. The goal is for the academy to open in the fall of 2015 with a sixth grade class of about 75 girls and to add one grade per year.

Miller added that she and other organizers have contacted state education officials who oversee public charter schools in North Carolina and will participate in a webinar presented by Office of Charter Schools director Joel Medley to help YWL develop its application.

“We are very positive about this,” she said, noting that YWL already has a tested model for its school – a model that has been implemented successfully in several locations in New York, Texas, Illinois and Maryland.

“From the beginning, we have also been in touch with [New Hanover County Schools superintendent] Tim Markley and the New Hanover County school board,” Miller said. “Ours will be a public school of choice.”

The proposed school will offer the “best practices of single-sex education while supporting the developmental needs of low-income female students,” the press release stated. “Its educational program will support academic rigor, science and math-focused educational opportunities, healthy adolescent development programs, leadership training, connections to the world, early college and career exploration and college access through their College Pathways Program.”