About one in eight girls at Robeson High School are pregnant. Officials say a variety of factors are to blame. There's more than one way to get stagnant? Who knew?
All those young ladies are moms or moms-to-be at Paul Robeson High School. Young ladies? That's a good one. They may be young but these ain't no ladies, bub. There's a word for 'em but it begins with "s", ends with a "t" and has four letters. It's not a school for young mothers, it's a neighborhood school. And all of the pregnancies have happened, despite prevention talk.
If you want to know why, the people closest to the situation say there's no simple explanation.
Chicago Public Schools says it does not track the overall number of teen moms in the district. But Robeson Principal Gerald Morrow knows the count at his school in Englewood: 115 young ladies who are expecting. To put it in perspective, their school pictures would fill roughly six pages of their high school year book.
Why is it happening at Robeson?
I'd say there's a lotta humpin' going on. What's your guess?
"It can be a lot of things that are happening in the home or not happening in the home, if you will," Morrow said. Absentee fathers are another factor, he said.
More happening than not happening, natch...
LaDonna Denson and two other Robeson students say parents not talking to teens and, in some cases, the pursuit of public assistance also factor into the pregnancies. None of them thought they'd be moms at such a young age.
"All I did wuz take my pants off and suddenly -- baby bump!
They said they have support at home. But not all girls do, they said. In fact, some girls get thrown out of the home.
"... and never darken my door again!"
Not on Morrow's turf. "We're not looking at them like 'Ooh you made a mistake,'" he said. "We're looking at how we can get them to the next phase, how can we still get them thinking about graduation?"
So there's help in a teen parent program. And coming soon, right across from Robeson, developers are turning a one-time crack house into a day care for student use. "We have to provide some type of environment for them and some form of support for them," Van Vincent, CEO of VLV Development, said.
It's all made an impression. "Just cause you have a baby, that doesn't mean your life is over," one student said.
One thing they might not know about their principal: His mom had him when she was 15. That's why accepting the problem -- and working through it -- is so important to him.