Reporting Red Hook

This year, for the first time since the 1960s, young women in New York City public schools who become pregnant while still in high school won’t have the option of enrolling in special schools for pregnant students, commonly known as P-Schools. The P-Schools closed their doors for good at the end of the last academic year, and many people were happy to see them go. But others say that the city shouldn’t have closed them without better alternative for pregnant teens in place.

Most administrators, students and advocates agree that the P-Schools were failing the young women who attended them. The four schools did have some valuable offerings, including women’s health classes and flexible schedules that allowed for doctor’s appointments and morning sickness. But the schools had abysmal records. Daily attendance rates hovered at around 48 percent. The P-Schools were considered transition schools, which means that they did not graduate students, and the majority never transferred back to a diploma-granting school. Students that didn’t return to regular high schools either tried to pass high school equivalency tests or simply dropped out.

Representatives from the city’s Department of Education say that new programs created to serve all “over-age, under-credited” students offer better options for pregnant and parenting teens, who often fit into this category because they get behind in school when they miss days due to pregnancy-related sickness and giving birth.

There are about 7000 pregnant teenagers in the city, according to heath department estimates. In recent years, the P-Schools only had around 300 students per year.

The P-Schools were often used as a repository for students who were pushed out of their home schools when they became pregnant, according to Benita Miller, founder of the Park Slope-based Brooklyn Childcare Collective, an organization that offers counseling and advocacy for pregnant and parenting teens.

Samora Coles, now the reproductive health coordinator at the Red Hook Health Initiative in Brooklyn, attended a P-School herself. She says that students often turned to the P-Schools because they were made to feel unwelcome in regular high schools. “Some teachers look at them like ‘oh, you disgusting little thing you’,” she says.

Brooklyn resident Jelysa Roberts attended a P-School from 2004-2005, because at the time, she thought it was her only option. “My school convinced me that that would be the best thing for me, and I didn’t know that I could choose to stay in my home school, so I just went,” she says.

Pregnant girls have the right to attend their regular local schools, according to a 2004 Department of Education regulation. According to Miller, however, teachers and administrators would often encourage students to transfer to P-Schools or drop out, especially if the students were low performers. “The schools deliberately decided not to support them,” Miller explains. “They’re afraid of looking like they’re promoting teenage pregnancy by doing anything to help these girls.”

“There are a lot of things we’ve done to help these students,” says Debra Wexler, a spokesperson for District 79, which administers alternative high school programs. “One of them is recognizing when programs are not succeeding and closing them down,” she says.

While few regret the demise of the P-Schools, advocates such as Donna Lieberman of the NYCLU are concerned about the lack of an alternative. “The Department of Education has a legal obligation to ensure that pregnant and parenting students are provided with full and equal access to both the educational opportunities and the support services that these students need to succeed,” she says. “The city’s ‘pregnancy schools’ provided neither—but in closing them the DOE has not solved the problem and may have made it worse.”

The education department counters that pregnant and parenting teenagers can attend transfer schools designed for all “over-age, under-credited” students, since 75 percent of these students fall into that category. These programs offer smaller classes and more personal attention for students who have gotten off track and are at risk of dropping out. Wexler points out that these schools have a 56 percent graduation rate, compared to only a 19 percent gradation rate for students who stay in their regular schools after falling behind.

But when considering only pregnant or parenting students, it’s difficult to measure the effectiveness of the transfer schools, because no one tracks the educational paths and graduation rates of these students. “We don’t flag students for being pregnant or parenting because of privacy considerations,” Wexler explains.

Advocates for pregnant teenagers see this as a major problem. “The real issue is, they don’t track cause that would mean they’d have to take responsibility for it,” says Miller.

Both Miller and Coles say that the education department still fails to offer pregnant and parenting students sufficient counseling, support, day-care services and assistance in navigating the system. They also criticize the reproductive heath education curriculum, which, if effective, could help prevent teenage pregnancy in the first place. “Right now, the first class about reproductive health—which they call hygiene—is taught in 11th grade,” says Coles. “By that time, they might have had sex thousands of times.”

Coles and Roberts are both success stories. Coles dropped out of high school after her baby was born, but passed the high school equivalency test three years later. Now, at age 33, she expects to graduate from the College of New Rochelle in the spring. She tells young women who come to her for advice to make education a priority. “You can’t support a family on the money you earn from the kind of job you’ll get without a high school diploma,” she says.

Coles was raised by her grandparents, who instilled her with old-fashioned values yet supported her during her pregnancy. She credits them for her success. As for the schools, “they are negligent, and at the same time, they point the finger at the kids,” she says.

Roberts, who turned 19 this past Sunday, now juggles college, work, and caring for her 2 1⁄2 year-old son. “Every girl that has a baby would be able to do that if she had the support,” Roberts says.