Education

When Leslie Grant found out she was pregnant in January 2003, the 15-year-old girl was already in trouble at school. Just a year earlier, she had arrived at Herbert H. Lehman High School in the Bronx as a promising 9 th grader—her grades in middle school had qualified Grant to take advanced classes in the high school’s college-prep program.

But Grant felt overwhelmed by the size of Lehman, which has 4,200 pupils. Frustrated with her poor grades and unable to adjust, she had begun cutting classes and was placed in an alternative-to-detention program. Three months later, she was pregnant. In March, her family was evicted from their apartment and moved to a shelter in Brooklyn. A social worker told Grant she would be placed in the Martha Neilson School for Pregnant Girls, located in the Bronx.

“I wouldn’t have just let them railroad me,” she said of her regrets about transferring to the pregnancy school. “I would have found out more about what the school was about.”

Looking back on the year and a half she spent at Martha Neilson, Grant sees only time wasted. In her three semesters at the school, from April 2003 through June of 2004, sheearned a total of two credits. She had trouble finding child care and making the hour-and-a-half commute each day from Brooklyn, and her teachers did not prepare the take-home work she needed. While Grant was at Martha Neilson, the school went without a math or an English teacher when teachers who left were not replaced. In June 2004, Grant finally fought for her transcripts and discharged herself from the pregnancy school. Discouraged and unable to face the prospect of yet another four years of high school, she enrolled in a GED program.

Grant’s experience offers more than a personal critique of Martha Neilson. It points to a pattern of low achievement, poor organization, and squanderedresources in New York City’s four public pregnancy schools – the “P-schools,” as they are commonly known.

All are operated by the Program for Pregnant and Parenting Services, which was created by the Board of Education in 1966. Martha Neilson was named for an educator who threatened to sue the city in the early 1960s for discriminating against pregnant students, who were routinely dismissed from public schools. To avoid controversy, the Board of Education gave Martha Neilson a grant to start her own separate facility, said her daughter, Roxanne Neilson, a construction manager, in a recent interview.

That pilot program inspired the creation of three other public pregnancy schools now located in downtown Brooklyn; Central Harlem; and Jamaica, Queens. Today, the four P-schools enroll 500 students.

But the P-schools are only transitional programs that students attend for up to two years. The program is supposed to be a temporary safe haven for pregnant students, providing a single-sex environment with small classes, parenting instruction, and a standard high-school curriculum. Most students stay at Martha Neilson for about a year. After they give birth, they are supposed to transfer back to their regular high schools.

Some educators believe the pregnancy schools are a holdover from another era and should be phased out, in favor of improving services for pregnant students within regular high schools. A growing number of New York City high schools now provide in-school day-care programs, with parenting instruction and social workers. Others say P-schools should be restored to full-length, diploma-granting programs. Educators and students alike have said that New York’s pregnancy schools, as they exist today, are academically inferior to regular high schools.

“It’s a big problem for the Board of Ed,” said Roxanne Neilson of the school her mother founded, which for years has been rumored to be on the verge of closing. “I don’t think my mother would be satisfied at all.”

“You see Martha Neilson isn’t everything it’s cracked up to be,” said Grant, of her reaction after transferring to the school. “I didn’t want to stay in my high school, but then I get to Martha Neilson and they’re not offering me what I need.”

Martha Neilson does not offer a complete high-school curriculum or guarantee students child care after they give birth. Students in the 11 th and 12 th grades must travel outside of the program to find courses at the appropriate grade level, since Martha Neilson only offers 7 th to 10 th grade classes. While 106 students are currently enrolled at the school, there are only about 18 slots in its day care center. Students are placed on a waiting list and must find day care centers in other high schools or leave their children with family members. And the school’s own day care center does not accept children until they are two months old. “If we don’t have child care at home, what do we do for the weeks in between?” asked Grant.

Now a sophomore at Touro College in Manhattan, Grant, 18, is a member of Sistas on the Rise, a Bronx activist group for young women of color that is seeking to reform New York’s pregnancy schools. In addition to child-care problems, members of the group say, P-schools lack math teachers, English and parenting classes and gym facilities. The schools provide inadequate guidance counseling, as well. “They didn’t want anybody holding them accountable,” Grant said of the Program for Pregnant and Parenting Services. “They were slacking.”

The city spent an average of $20,619 per student at the four pregnancy schools in 2003—close to twice the per-student average spent at city schools, which was $12,510, according to the 2003-2004 annual school report for the Program for Pregnant Students. At the P-schools, about 47 percent of the total was spent on classroom instruction. At city schools, about 54.7 per cent was spent on classroom instruction, according to the school-based expenditure report for the 2003 fiscal year. But the average daily attendance at the four P-schools in 2003 and 2004 was only about 40 percent, as compared to an 86-percent average attendance at city schools.

Per-student spending and attendance aren’t the only differences. In the 2003-2004 school year, 51 students in the four P-schools took the Global History Regents exam and only 27.5 percent passed with a score of 65 or above, a score high enough to earn a Regents diploma. In city schools, 60.6 percent did well enough on the same exam to earn Regents status. In math, 61 P-school students took the Regents exam, but only 29.7 percent passed with the 65 or above needed for the Regents diploma. In city schools, 67.8 percent did so.

A student who scores between 55 and 65 on the Regent exams can graduate, though without a Regents-endorsed diploma. Of the 51 P-school students who took the Global History Regents exam in the 2003-2004 school year, only 49 percent passed with a score of 55 or
above, compared to 73.9 percent in city schools. Of the 61 P-School students who took the math exam, only 62.3 percent passed with a 55 or above; in city schools, 86.9 percent passed.)

“We provide test scores based on schools but not based on programs, and Martha Neilson is a program and not a school,” wrote Board of Education representative Marge Feinberg, in response to a request for the Regents scores of Martha Neilson students. She went on to add, “Many students are successful in their stay at The Program for Pregnant Students because it is an environment with small classes, a host of resources, and support from families.”

But some experts say the very fact that pregnancy schools are non-degree “programs” makes them impediments to academic advancement.

“A non-degree-granting program that doesn’t have the offerings that students need for graduation and for applying to college is like a double whammy,” said Professor Wendy Luttrell of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, author of a 2003 book on the education of pregnant teens. “It’s not just the high school diploma; it’s also the college diploma.”

Students often make little or no academic progress at P-school, according to current and former Martha Neilson students. "Some of the people I know, they didn't do any work at all," said current student Michele Lopez, 16. When the students return to their regular high schools, she said, "they're still in the same grade."

Grant echoed that assessment. “If you’re pregnant for nine months, you could be there for nine months and only earn 2-3 credits per semester,” she said. “You could take four or five classes and only earn one credit.”

When Shaquasia Williams became pregnant in 2004, during the 10 th grade at Morris High School, the 14-year-old girl was given a brochure for the Martha Neilson School. It was a better option for her than staying at Morris High School, Williams recalled the guidance counselor telling her. Yet after just a week at Martha Neilson, Williams came to the conclusion that it was even worse than Morris. She immediately sought transfer back. Recalling her brief time at Martha Neilson last year, she shook her head and said, “You don’t do nothing in there.”

These days, Williams leaves Ahnyla, her 7-month-old daughter, at day care on the first floor of the Morris High School building. Called the LYFE center (Living For the Young Family Through Education), it is the same day-care program available to some students at Martha Neilson. The LYFE center is offered through the Department of Education at 35 sites throughout the city—mostly regular high schools—free of charge for public school students.

The LYFE program also provides parenting instruction and social workers who closely monitor students, said Sharon Cook, a social worker at the Morris High LYFE center since 1998. Many pregnant students choose to stay in regular high schools that provide in-school LYFE programs, said Cook. As to what pregnancy school offers students that Morris High’s LYFE program could not, Cook said, “I don’t see anything—except it’s a homogenous setting.”

Janet DeClet, assistant principal at the Martha Neilson School, said the pregnancy school provides the same educational services as a regular high school and more parenting instruction. “Young ladies come to us who are pregnant and don’t want to stay in their home school,” she said. Students attend parenting class for one period out of an eight-period school day, she said; during that class, they learn how to change a diaper, and about nutrition and breast-feeding.

But the teacher of her parenting class never showed up, said Williams. There were seven or eight students in the class and the girls “sat around eating ice cubes.” Williams guessed they were given ice cubes because they are good for pregnant girls, but she was not sure. “If we’re not eating ice, we’re just talking to people that we know,” she said.

When asked why a student was eating ice cubes in the parenting class, DeClet asked for the name of the student who had spoken with this reporter and said students at the school were not allowed to speak to reporters.

Although pregnancy school is intended to be a safe haven, Williams said there was “screaming and cursing and carrying on” in classes at Martha Neilson. “There’s actual physical fist fights,” said Grant. “I was scared. I was like, wow, that’s serious.” Students are told fighting will not be tolerated at the school, said Grant, but “they don’t really kick you out—where are they gonna send you?”

Because the school has ongoing registration, students are constantly joining and leaving the classes. “It’s very difficult for our teachers,” said DeClet.

Little is accomplished in class, said Grant. “The girls don’t listen to the teachers,” she recalled. “They get up, walk out, listen to their headphones.”

When she sought to transfer back to Morris High, Williams did not recall receiving any guidance from Martha Neilson. This is not unusual, according to a survey conducted last year by Sistas on the Rise and the Urban Justice Center, a non-profit community service organization, which found that the system of transferring students from pregnancy schools back to their home schools is disorganized and confusing to the students.

The survey of 123 current students in all four pregnancy schools and 55 former students found that three out of four students enrolled in the New York pregnancy schools had not yet been contacted by anyone at their P-school about plans for returning to a regular high school.

In addition, 48 percent of the students in pregnancy schools at the time did not know when their last semester at P-school would be, and 42.3 percent of former students said they received no support from school staff when transferring out of pregnancy school.

“I’m not really a big fan of theirs,” DeClet said of Sistas on the Rise. She acknowledged that there are transferring problems. “The high schools refuse to understand that this is a transitional program,” said DeClet. “It’s a lack of communication, I guess.” She went on to add, “They know that it’s a transitional program, the problem is lack of space perhaps.”

At Martha Neilson, one school guidance counselor is responsible for transferring all the students back to their regular high schools. “She’ll do individual counseling, group counseling,” said DeClet. “Sometimes it’s very difficult to meet with every student.”

But the school is not planning to hire another guidance counselor. “I don’t think there’s necessarily a need for it,” said DeClet.

She is seeking to hire an additional social worker; there are currently two. They work with the families, said DeClet, because many students at the school come from “broken homes.” “There are problems financially, emotionally,” she said. “Those are the kinds of problems that we deal with.”

Yet the stakes for the city as a whole are great. Female high-school graduates earn an average of $6,136 more annually than female high-school dropouts, according to a 2003 report by the New York City Comptroller’s Office. An emphasis on counseling over academics in pregnancy school can hinder students’ future access to resources or jobs, said Deirdre Kelly, author of Pregnant With Meaning: Teen Mothers and the Politics of Inclusive Schooling. “What good does counseling do,” she asked, “if you’re just going to live in poverty?”

According to Title IX of the Education Amendments, which first took effect in 1975, a student cannot be excluded from any education program or extracurricular activity on the basis of pregnancy. While schools may provide separate programs for pregnant and parenting teens, they must be completely voluntary and comparable to the educational programs provided to every other student.

But experts on high-school “push outs” question how voluntary pregnancy schools actually are, since students report being pressured by teachers and school counselors to transfer and are often unaware of the academic consequences of that decision.

“There’s supposed to be a dedicated staff person that advises them about the educational impact of transferring to a P-School,” said Lee Che Leong, director of the Teen Health Initiative at the New York Civil Liberties Union.

School staff may believe pregnant students set a bad example, said Leong, or fear that their absences—due to doctor’s appointments and child-care problems—or test scores will affect school evaluations, which ultimately determine the amount of funding a school receives.

“Some girls are being told that they have to transfer. Other young women are really sold on the program,” Leong said of pregnancy schools. For instance, school staff might ask, “Wouldn’t you feel safer here?” Those are “softer tactics,” Leong said, “but still amount to [students] not being told what their rights are.”

“They said that it’d be better for me to go over there, because there’s more pregnant girls over there,” Williams recalled of Morris High School’s guidance counselors. When she transferred to Martha Neilson, Williams did not understand she could not get her diploma from that school.

She is not the only one to transfer under that misapprehension. “I didn’t know that,” said former student Jennifer Sandino, 18, who learned Martha Neilson does not grant diplomas only after she had already transferred to P-school from Evander Childs High School in the Bronx last April.

"I had no idea," said current student Michele Lopez, 16, of the fact that Martha Neilson is only a temporary program. "I thought that you could stay there." Most students at Martha Neilson find out the program is temporary only after they have already transferred, said Lopez.

“That is a good example of discrimination,” said Harvard’s Luttrell. “They need to know what the consequence is of being moved.” Transferring students in and out of pregnancy schools can interfere with their ability to graduate from high school, she said. “The cost of it is the shuffling around of coursework that interrupts their basic learning.” After being transferred in and out of Martha Neilson last year, Williams was ultimately unable to earn enough credits to pass the year at Morris High—she is now repeating 10 th grade.

Students whose regular high schools do not provide LYFE centers have little choice but to transfer, though they might not obtain day care at P-school, either. A guidance counselor at Evander Childs High School in the Bronx told Sandino she could stay at that school if she got a babysitter, since the school has no day-care facility. But Sandinosaid that was out of the question. “I’m not gonna pay for no babysitter,” she said.

“When the resources are all located in the alternative school and there is pressure coming from all types of people, teachers, guidance counselors, it puts young women under a lot of pressure to go to an alternative school,” said Kelly, the author.

Title IX experts also question whether the educational programs offered by pregnancy schools really are comparable to those of regular high schools.

“If there is inadequate access to day care, access to classes at the appropriate grade level, all of this is evidence that the program is not a comparable one—it doesn’t pass muster—even if it is a voluntary one,” said Jocelyn Samuels of the National Women’s Law Center.

Despite its problems, some students said they are thankful Martha Neilson exists at all. The school kept them from dropping out and provides emotional support, they said, while in regular high schools there is discrimination and stigma surrounding pregnant teenagers.

And the vast majority of pregnant students receive no services at all from New York’s public school system, according to a 2003 report by the city comptroller. An estimated 20,000 mothers under age 21 have yet to complete high school. Of those 20,000 mothers, 8,368 are mothers under the age of 18 who are required by law to be in school. Yet only about 150 pregnancies are reported each year to the Department of Education. No one in the school system knows if the remaining students are in school, in a GED program, or have simply dropped out.

The community surrounding Morris High, where Williams is back in school, has one of the highest teenage pregnancy rates in the city. Williams’ mother and aunt had also each given birth while still in high school. With her grandmother’s assistance, both had continued to attend classes and earned their diplomas. Because of their support and the LYFE day care center, Williams said she never considered dropping out of school.

Waiting for the bus home from Morris, Williams turned Ahnyla, strapped in front of her, away from the noise and exhaust of passing vehicles. As usual, she had exited the school later than other students to avoid crowded hallways with the baby. Williams said she is glad to be back in classes at her regular high school, though the experience of transferring in and out of pregnancy school last year was disruptive.

“They say education is very important,” she said of her mother and grandmother. “Now that you have a little girl, it’s not about you.”