Local publisher Todd Godbey has been named to oversee the development and opening of an all-girls charter school planned for Wilmington.

As president of The Leadership Academy for Young Women (LAYW) and its nonprofit foundation, Young Women Leading Inc., Godbey will lay the foundation for the school’s opening in the fall of 2016, pending approval of its charter application by the N.C. Board of Education, according to a news release Tuesday from Young Women Leading.

The new president sees his primary responsibility as “putting some organization around [the school] and making it real for August 2016,” he said Wednesday, adding that part of that mission is to educate the Wilmington community about the benefits of such a school.

Godbey is publisher and owner of Nancy Hall Publications, which produces six monthly publications covering southeastern North Carolina. One of them is Kidsville News, which reaches some 60,000  young readers and their families and is distributed through elementary schools and community racks throughout the region, the release stated.    

Since 2011, Godbey has served on the board of an existing charter school: the Cape Fear Center for Inquiry, the release stated. He currently chairs the board of the school, which covers kindergarten through middle school grades. Godbey has also served on the boards of Carousel Center and the North Brunswick Chamber of Commerce Education Committee. He is currently a board member of Communities in Schools in Brunswick County.

Further progress on the school, of course, depends on getting the state board of education’s approval.

Young Women Leading board member Margee Herring said Wednesday that the board is “optimistic” about that approval, given the unanimous and “enthusiastic” thumbs-up the school application received from the charter school advisory board. State approval would be forthcoming in July or September, Herring said, adding that the state school board likes to give newly approved schools a full planning year after approval.

Envisioned more than a year ago by retired television executive and local resident Judy Girard, along with Georgia Miller, wife of then-chancellor of University of North Carolina Wilmington Gary Miller, the LAYW plans to target girls from low-income backgrounds who will be the first in their families to attend college, according to the release. The school, which will be the first single-gender public charter school in North Carolina, will offer “a rigorous STEAM and inquiry-based academic curriculum, with college preparatory, healthy life skills and leadership classes enhancing the learning environment both in and out of school,” the release stated.

STEAM education adds an "A" for art to a STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) curriculum, Herring said. She said that LAYW plans to open with as many as 85 sixth graders, and add one grade level each year until the school covers middle through high school grades.

In addition to Girard and Herring, directors of Young Women Leading are Robert Tyndall, co-chairman; Sandra Crumrine, treasurer; Dorothy DeShields,  Don Hayes, Katherine McKenzie, Deloris Rhodes, Edelmira Segovia and Gayle Van Velsor.

“Georgia and Judy and Deloris and other board members have done a phenomenal job to get the school to where it is now,” Godbey said. “Now it was time to bring someone in who has experience with leading nonprofits.”

An affiliate of the Young Women’s Leadership Network, Wilmington’s LAYW follows the successful model of The Young Women’s Leadership Schools (TYWLS), a network of all-girls public schools that began in New York City in 1996 and has since inspired the opening of “dozens of single-sex schools nationwide . . . for predominantly low-income girls who will be the first in their families to attend college,” according to the release.

Godbey said he is excited at the prospect of organizing North Carolina’s first public charter single-sex school and being part of the Young Women’s Leadership Network.

“The network has a remarkable track record of high school graduation and college acceptance for its students,” he said.