
Tootie Ramsey ( Kim Fields), the youngest gossip girl of the group (who lost her trademark rollerskates as part of the retool, but kept her braces and pigtails).Troubled, but Cute tomboy Jo Polniaczek ( Nancy McKeon).Funny but insecure Natalie Green ( Mindy Cohn).


Garrett in the cafeteria and sleeping in a spare room next to hers. The canon reason for the cast change was that the four core girls were caught getting up to some illegal activities, and rather than expelling them the school placed them on probation by working with Mrs. The cast was thinned down to four "core" girls, and almost nothing was ever seen again of their classmates. Starting in Season 2, though, the show was retooled. In later seasons, they went to college and beyond, but kept living together under the watchful eye of Edna Garrett ( Charlotte Rae), formerly of Diff'rent Strokes, and in later seasons her Suspiciously Similar Substitute sister, Beverly Ann Stickle ( Cloris Leachman).ĭuring its first season, the show had a large ensemble cast of seven girls, including one played by a very young Molly Ringwald. Initially they were students at a boarding school. The (familiar) first verse of the theme song, written by Alan Thicke and sung by Gloria LoringĪ sitcom (with some teen drama elements) on NBC from 1979 to 1988, about the heartwarming adventures of a group of female students.
