Posted on 05/23/2007 10:18:04 PM PDT by neverdem
A dozen girls, some perched awkwardly with their pregnant bellies flush against the desks, were struggling over a high school geometry assignment on a recent afternoon.
No pencils, no textbooks, no Pythagorean theorem. Instead, they sewed quilts.
That is what passes for math in one of New York City’s four high schools for pregnant girls, this one in Harlem. “It ties into geometry,” said Patricia Martin, the principal. “They’re cutting shapes.”
Created in the 1960s, when pregnant girls were such pariahs that they were forced to leave school until their babies were born, the city school system’s four pregnancy schools — or P-schools, as they are obliquely referred to — have lived on, their population dwindling to just 323 students from 1,500 in the late 1960s.
They have been marked by abysmal test scores, poor attendance and inadequate facilities, and even some of their own administrators say they suspect that most of their students are pushed there by other schools because they are failing academically. In place of proms and computer labs, they have Mother’s Day parties and day care centers with cribs lining the walls.
Now in recognition of their failure, the city plans to shut them down at the end of the school year as part...
--snip--
It’s not for lack of spending: the Education Department spent $33,670 on each student this year, a cost of more than $10.8 million — more than double the citywide average of per-pupil spending. Ms. Anderson, the superintendent, said she hoped that starting next year, pregnant girls would remain in their regular high schools or switch to small specialized high schools designed for struggling students. “The most powerful thing we can do for parenting teens is help them get their diplomas,” she said. “Your brain does not die when you become pregnant.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Relevant portion below:
Some District students with special education needs attend private schools because they are not able to receive adequate services within the DC school system. The District pays both transportation and tuition costs for these students. The number of students attending private schools increased by 25 percent between fiscal years 2002 and 2006, from 2,068 to 2,589. The average per pupil cost for these students is $70,000 per year, including more than $20,000 per pupil just for transportation.
2589 * 70,000 = 181.2 million dollars. Total DC school budget for 2006 was 832 million 2007 dollars, 815 million 2006 dollars. 181.2/815 = 22.2%.
It’s probably a good thing that this school is being closed down, especially because of the high cost!! But more because NYC schools running some kind of program like this is always a lose-lose situation. This is again another great argument for vouchers. The Sisters of Life who have a home for pregnant moms in NYC would no doubt do a better job educating young women than the public schools which are wrought with self serving, self acclaimed liberal thinking, pro-abortion, anti-Christian school teachers.
Don’t be so hard on those teen moms!! Yes, they should of kept their “legs closed” but then again you have to give them credit for not aborting their innocent child as so many other young women do. I was a teen mom in NYC in the 80s. I got my GED and went on to college, graduating cum laude at the age of 25. I did it through hard work, not welfare or not because I was a rich kid. I just used my God-given brain and followed my heart.
NYC cost per pupil now for K - 12 is about the same as the cost of medical school in the late 1980s, less than $15,000 a year, depending on the school. I Thank God that I got a scholarship from the U.S. Army.
You want to know how I got my two kids through a Catholic School education (mortified by the idea of sending them to condom distributing, liberal indoctrinating, failing public schools), 3 jobs!!
Yes, it does take two, which some people would like to forget. Something makes me think that this school is being closed for other reasons.
Raquel, you are so correct. The legislature increases the money for the public schools but refuses to give a tax break to those of us to send our kids to parochial schools.
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