Serena, there was a time when a pregnant high school student had to leave school and good luck about coming back.

I have to ask, because my vision is failing,(no it isn't) was the word "parents" or "parenting" used in your commentary? I could not find it and that leads me to believe a piece of the puzzle is missing.

"School and city officials have been discussing...", but where are the parents? Are they as unfit as these girls are to raise children? I know poverty close up Serena, I lived in a Chicago neighborhood that had a lot of teen pregnancy and it was not until it spread to a number of White girls that it got any attention.

It would seem to me that what these girls seek as "unconditional love" from an infant is really a reflection of resentment to any parental control that has been attempted upon them.

I am outraged by this problem as much as you are, but instead of a new government program (that could take years) an organizer needs to appear to galvanize parents into successful ways of communication with their children. The government is not responsible for raising children for it's citizens. Ghetto kids need something to believe in, something that inspires discipline and self identity. An expectation that while today might be crappy tomorrow can be much better. Proper use of contraceptives is part of that puzzle, but not all of it. We need parents!

Thank you for your posting.

I heard about that Time article blaming the school for not forcing pregnant girls to drop out of school, and now I read it.

This is going to be used against schools that want to help teen mothers finish their education, as if it's a common occurrence or the logical result of programs that help them stay in school.

I'm don't know the pactmakers and I don't have any idea why they'd do something like this, but I think that a lot of people are going to assume that they do to advance whatever agenda they have. Teen pregnancy rates are up all over the US, that's something to be addressing. But a strange incident at one high school that hasn't happened anywhere else? That really shouldn't affect policy anywhere outside this school district.

As I am between corporate marketing positions I have been doing a number of things to occupy my time besides job searching. I produce a podcast focusing on the LGBT community called "John Selig Outspoken." One of the other things that I have been doing since January of this year has been substitute teaching in inner city public schools here in Dallas Texas.

The experience I have garnered being in the schools has been one of the most eye-opening experiences in my life. I am trying to get an article published on what I have seen. Our education system is in crisis. The graduation rate for high schools in the public school districts in the 50 largest American cities is just 50%! There are many problems contributing the the problems in our schools including George W. Bush's fiasco "No child Left Behind." Of course, everybody is quick to blame teachers and school administrators for everything.

After four months of being a substitute teacher the biggest problem that I have discovered is lack of parental involvement in their kids' education (in fact lack of parental involvement in their kids' lives in total). I have seen plenty of girls in the Dallas high school nearest to where I live. The story about the group of girls in Massachusetts deciding to get pregnant garnered news because it was a whole group of girls getting pregnant in concert but there are plenty of girls in schools all over the country getting pregnant.

It is easy to put the blame on the schools the blame really belongs on the parents and society as a whole. Far too many parents of kids today just aren't involved in their kids lives. They don't take the time to raise them. So many of the teenagers that I have taught in the high school said to me that they were unable to speak with their parents and that there parents had no idea of who they were. This is so sad. Certainly, intergenerational communication has always been a challenge. It certainly was between my generation, the baby boomers and our parents. Still, the current generation of parents are spending far too little time with their kids. So they blame the schools for everything their kids do wrong. They need to spend more time talking with their kids, far more time parenting their kids which includes discipline along with quality family time.

Society is at fault because it continues to push abstinence alone in sex education. Earth to Society! Teenagers will have sex whether or not religious fundamentalists and the rest of society are willing to admit it. Safer sex and birth control need to be taught along with where babies come from, venereal disease and the other topics covered. Girls are pressured by their boyfriends to have sex without using condoms because it "feels better" for the boyfriends. The girls are worried that if they don't comply with their boyfriends' wishes they will lose their boyfriend. So there are tons of girls having unsafe sex, getting pregnant, having abortions that could have been avoided and contracting STDs.

Teenage pregnancy is so sad and most of it is avoidable but the so is the many other failures in our schools. The worst problems seem to be in the inner city schools but the suburban schools have plenty of their problems as well. Only 70% of high school students in the United States graduate from high school. Sad... very sad.

It is time for this country to wake up to the many social problems facing us that our country has ignored for far too long. I suppose it is much easier fighting an evil war in Iraq and focusing on those gays wanting special rights in California to get married leading to the moral decay of our country (which is falling apart)

I managed a video store for many years, and I had a regular clientele - I watched my customers grow old, and their kids mature. One thing I noticed, and was told by a couple of my still-teen employees that appalled me, was that having a baby was, in the 1990s, considered a status symbol, a prize to be won. Needless to say, by the time they worked for me, they'd had the hard lessons and learned that a baby is no status symbol: it is a human life, a full time job, a mouth to feed and house and clothe, and a massive responsibility for a third of a person's life. Several had lost their kids because they were unable to hold up their responsibilities, and I had to maintain strict rules against employees babysitting on the job (having their kids at work), or I'd have had kids running all over my store. None would say they'd regretted having their child, but nearly all would never have done it twice.

That's the fight that needs to be fought: how do you prove to kids that they're better off waiting for sex, and that, if they make that adult decision to engage in sex, they should use protection/birth control? Forced abstinence programs have obviously worked sooooo well. When someone gets the answer, I'm all ears.

this is so hard on so many levels. Gloucester High school is in a very impoverish, traditional fishing town.

Anyone see the movie "The Perfect Storm?"

That is (and was filmed in) Gloucester.

Is it just about socio-economic realities? Is it about parents not participating? Is it just a single group of girls who are being influenced by ridiculous media images of pregnant Jamie Spears?

or is it a complicated combination of all- and more- of the above?

as a parent? I hear a cry for help. there is a whole community affected by this. because those girls hit the big time of recognition.

what about their peers?

It's time we started educating the parents of these and other children on how to raise their kids. We keep talking about schools informing kids about sex.