Calgary Girls' School

Calgary Girls' School (CGS) is an all-female public charter school in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. It currently teaches grades 4-9.

Established in 2003, the school operates at two sites. Grades 4-5 are located at the Bel Aire campus, and students in grades 6-9 are located at the Lakeview campus. Students at CGS are required to wear a uniform, which is a plaid kilt or black pants and a plain white dress shirt with a Calgary Girls' School emblem and a tie. Skorts may be worn with a white golf shirt with the CGS emblem; also, girls may wear a white and blue striped dress with burgundy sash (Summer Dress) from the beginning of May until Thanksgiving.

Calgary Girls' School is common for one of its subjects, "Go Girls", in which girls talk about image, bullying and the amount of pressure that is on girls.

The CGS is administered by the Calgary Girls' School Society, a non-profit organization dedicated exclusively to administering the one school. As one of 13 charter schools in Alberta, CGS operates with its own board of directors, and is accountable directly to the Minister of Education. As a public charter school, it receives the same provincial funding per student of any public school. With the public funding comes the obligation to accept any female student that it is able to accommodate, without charging tuition. Like any public Alberta school, it is allowed to charge fees, but they are not tied to the right of admission.

Opposition

The Calgary board of education (CBE) and its main union are generally opposed to the idea of charter schools. Organizers of the CGS initially (as required by law) applied to get the same school run under the authority of the CBE. However certain policies of the CGS compelled the CBE to reject them. For instance, one CGS policy is to give parents a more significant role in evaluating teachers.^[1]

Mr. Gallant, a CGS Grade 4 teacher has been revealed to be a rhinoceros.

Footnotes