The population of women in jail is much smaller than the population of men, so our Women’s Program has grown more slowly than our Men’s Program.  Last year, we didn’t even have classroom spaces to teach in and had to deliver instruction in the middle of the pod (housing unit), surrounded by a myriad of distractions.  Nonetheless, we found the women that we did work with to be highly motivated and capable students and we resolved to make the development of the Women’s Program a top priority for the 2009-10 school year.  This year, we have managed to locate two classrooms within the D wing at the Metropolitan Detention Center and have increased enrollment to close to the fifty student maximum that those two classrooms can accommodate.  Students are pulled out from three different pods each day to attend school.  To allow our students to participate in school and also other programs within the jail (such as the PB & J parenting program), we have scheduled classes to take place from 2:30pm-6pm, with dinner brought to our students while they study.  The Women’s Program has given us a new perspective on ways to educate within the correctional setting and some of the successes and ideas that have come out of it will soon be implemented in our other campuses.