Being a teen parent is hard enough without a decent education, and getting that education is constant battle between health concerns, child care needs and the judgmental attitudes pregnant teens often face at school. But is the solution to that problem segregating teen parents from other students into charter schools like the proposed New Directions school in Brooklyn?
“A lot of times when they go back to the regular school setting, there’s a lot of stigmatization,” nonprofit consultant Jacquelyn Wideman, who submitted the charter application with the Faith Assemblies of God Church, which would run the school, told the New York Post. “The goal is for them to perform at the same optimum level as regular high schools.”
If its charter is approved, the New Directions Charter School will open in 2012 and offer education, and free child care, to 300 teen parents, boys and girls. The biggest problem it faces will be recruitment. This isn’t the first time someone has tried to open a school designed for young parents. The city closed its four remaining high schools for teenage moms in 2007 due to poor attendance. Now it runs thirty eight day care and healthy care centers for teen parents on campuses, or near them, throughout the boroughs.
“I don’t think that we should be creating schools that segregate young women or men based on their parenting status,” Benita Miller, executive director of Brooklyn Young Mothers Collective told the Post. ”We don’t need them to graduate as good mothers — we need them to graduate as educated young women who can head to college.”
But Asenath Andrews, principal of the Catherine Ferguson Academy for pregnant and parenting teens in Detroit, stood by the disappearing model. ”I think they need to exist — but they need to exist with an expectation of excellence, not just warehousing,” she told the Post.
What do you think? Should teen parents be offered the option of attending specialized schools?
