Teen parents ask legislators to help them stay in school

While the issue of teen pregnancy can be controversial, keeping teen parents in school seems to be an area of consensus; memorial would create a task force to study barriers to educational success

Dozens of teen mothers and fathers gathered at the state capitol on Tuesday to encourage lawmakers to help improve graduation rates for pregnant and parenting teens. Nationwide, only 38 percent of teen moms graduate high school by the time they’re 22.

The event was organized by several groups, including Young Women United, the Southwest Women’s Law Center and the American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico. The groups are supporting two memorials, including one (SJM 23) that would create a task force to study barriers to educational success.

Several of the teens spoke at a news conference in the Roundhouse.

Brianna Miranda, an 18-year-old from Las Cruces, told the crowd that her 2-year-old helps motivate her to succeed in defiance of those who say she can’t.

“I want to turn around and tell them, ‘I want to prove you wrong,'” Miranda said at the event. “I’m proving everyone wrong by graduating this May… .”

Watch the video of Miranda for more.

Part of the problem is that students who leave school for six to eight weeks to give birth have a hard time catching up,the memorial’s sponsor, Sen. Cynthia Nava, D-Las Cruces, said in an interview with NMPolitics.net.

“Once they lose contact, they never come back,” she said. “This is about giving students more options.”

Bishops agree on help for teen parents

While the issue of teen pregnancy can be controversial, keeping teen parents in school seems to be an area of consensus.

“The way you break the cycle of teen pregnancy is to make sure the mother gets an education, the baby gets to school ready to start, and kids that are in school now are not getting pregnant,” said Allen Sanchez, executive director of the Conference of Catholic Bishops and the president of St. Joseph Community Health.

Although he has not endorsed any specific legislation, and did not attend Tuesday’s rally, Sanchez told NMPolitics.net that both organizations generally support help for young parents and families.

Cutting red tape for teens

The American Civil Liberties Union also wants to help.

“When young women get pregnant, obviously they have to take time off from school, they need tutoring, they need to make up classwork. Sometimes that’s just not happening. There’s just administrative barriers, there’s rules, there’s red tape. We want to see if we can get rid of that red tape,” Steven Robert Allen, director of public policy for ACLU-NM, told NMPolitics.net. (More from Allen in the video.)

“We just want to make it as easy as possible for these young women to have access to  tutoring, to get access to their assignments, to be able to work from home, to stay up with the rest of their classmates and not have administrative procedures get in their path,” he said.

Teen parents face steep hurdles

Want to know more about these issues? Two recent episodes of KNME’s “Public Square,” (disclosure: both were produced by this reporter) tackled the intersection of teen pregnancy and the dropout rate — both of which are alarmingly high in New Mexico.

Watch previews of both shows in this post, or watch the full episodes here and here.

In the October episode, a dozen teen parents talked about how their lives were improved by becoming parents, but also about how they’ve struggled with school, work and family.

Other guests included Sen. Mark Boitano, R-Albuquerque; Sylvia Ruiz of the Teen Pregnancy Coalition; and Dr. Wanicha Burapa of the Department of Health.

In September, a different group of teens talked about why they dropped out and what got them back into school.

Several said they had to leave school when they became parents, but were able to go back thanks to day-care programs at charter schools and other community supports.

Guests on that show included Department of Education head Hanna Skandera, education expert Franklin Schargel and Albuquerque City Councilor Rey Garduño.