Marking its third year educating girls in New York City, Girls Preparatory Charter School at 333 E. Fourth St. held a Superstars Breakfast on Tuesday. The gathering’s “superstars” included about a dozen students wearing uniforms emblazoned with the Girls Prep logo. They were the envy of the grown-up women at the event, among them Elizabeth Rohatyn, Wendy Lehman Lash, Ann Tisch, and Celerie Kemble Curry.

Though none are past the third grade, the Girls Prep students already have plans to be dancers, doctors, artists, and teachers. And in Terra Nova tests administered in the fall and spring of the previous school year, 83% of the students scored at or above grade level in reading, and 79% in math.

What makes the school special? “Our school is neo-traditional,” the executive director of the city’s first all-girls public elementary school, Miriam Lewis Raccah, said.

She described how Girls Prep combines a new, holistic approach to education, which includes daily art or music classes as well as daily gym or yoga classes ,withtraditional “firm and consistent” expectations for academics and behavior. Every classroom is named after a great woman.

“It’s about scholarship, merit, sisterhood, and responsibility,” Ms. Raccah said.

It seems to be an attractive proposition for both teachers and students. The school, which pays its teachers 15-20% more than the New York City Department of Education, had 85 applications for each of its four new teacher positions this year. And it had six applications for each of its 48 new student spots.

The board of the school, led by an investor, Bryan Lawrence, is planning to open a Boys Prep in the next two to three years, and more Girls Prep-formula schools after that. Although the city leases the school its space for $1 a year and Girls Prep receives $12,000 per student from the state, it spends about $1,000 additionally per student to cover its costs. The breakfast event raised $125,000, which will send 125 students to the school. “The beauty of this is that every dollar raised privately is leveraged 12 to 1 by the government,” Mr. Lawrence said. The students received advice from two speakers: a Harvard MBA and former chief executive of the New York City Investment Fund, Janice Cook Roberts, who is joining Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. next week, and a former senior executive at the Clinton Foundation, Maggie Williams, who now runs a management consulting firm.

“Develop strong relationships and always take responsibility for your actions,” Ms. Roberts said.

Ms. Williams told the girls not to let obstacles prevent them from pursuing their interests. She gave each girl a copy of a childhood photograph to prove her point: it showed her with her brother’s Cub Scout troop, where she learned “soap-carving with real knives,” a topic not covered in the Brownies.

agordon@nysun.com