Segregated Learning?

Our two newspapers have reported that Westside Elementary will be conducting same sex classroom education next year. Please pinch me and tell me I have been dreaming because they cannot actually be considering a segregated learning environment for our children, again. I say again because I lived through that experience in the 1960's during my school experience. Yes, I'm old (older, oldest, whatever) to have gone to school in the 1960's but this was the era of the Civil Rights movement which guaranteed equal rights to everyone, from minorities to women, of all genders. I went to Dixie Hollins High School in Pinellas County which was a industrial arts school, similar to that of our Nature Coast High School. I had to fight to get into classes reserved only for the male students like Industrial Electronics, Drafting and Shop class. I remember vividly asking my guidance counselor why they were trying to push me into classes, like sewing and cosmetology, when my interest clearly was in the electrical field. My poor guidance counselor looked flabbergasted when I cited the 1964 Civil Rights Act when explaining my position on the subject matter reserved for males only. I requested to be placed in the Industrial Arts program, reserved for male students only, and I am proud to say that I was the first female student to enter, and complete, the Industrial Electronics program at Dixie Hollins High School in 1969. Incidentally, these class requirements included higher math like Algebra II and Geometry. These math classes were thought to be above the female learning experience at the time which had been explained with a left-hand, right-hand brain theory, by some survey of experts. I'm proud to say I graduated on the Dean's list to shoot a hole in the theory that women could not learn in a mixed, male environment. Our school board members should reconsider this segregated learning experience being proposed at Westside Elementary. Teaching, by segregation, in my opinion, is a step back in time that we do not need to take in Hernando County.