Gloucester plans teen pregnancy forums
Two weeks removed from the eye of a media firestorm over the spike in teen pregnancy at Gloucester High School, city officials plan to address the situation through a series of neighborhood meetings.
They also plan to seek advice on teen pregnancy from a panel of specialists and to seek state or federal funds aimed at mentoring youths and preventing pregnancies.
But the city's response cannot focus only on contraception, said Jack Vondras, Gloucester's public health director. "We could give out all the condoms we want for the rest of our lives and still have a problem," Vondras said in a telephone interview.
Gloucester made headlines when it became known that 17 girls at the 1,200-student Gloucester High had become pregnant in the last school year, more than four times the number the year before. The media attention built into a frenzy when the school's principal said some of the girls had plotted to become pregnant together, an allegation that has been contested.
Now that much of the clamor has subsided, Mayor Carolyn Kirk said she plans to hold as many as seven neighborhood "listening post" meetings this summer, to let residents, in a relatively open forum, weigh in on the issue.
The School Committee will listen on July 23 to a panel of specialists, including Dr. Karen Hacker, executive director of the Institute for Community Health in Cambridge; Patricia Quinn, executive director of the Massachusetts Alliance on Teen Pregnancy; and Dr. Lauren Smith, medical director of the Massachusetts Department of Public Health.
Both Kirk and Vondras said they are also looking for several hundred thousand dollars to start an effective teen pregnancy prevention program. But where that money will come from is unclear.
"The state budget has been hacked up so much since 2001. . . . Most of the state dollars have been given out; they've already been targeted," said Vondras, who plans to look for federal grants.
State funding for teen pregnancy prevention dropped from $5.4 million in 2001 to under $1 million in 2004. This year, it is up to $4 million.
"The current funding is distributed at this point," said Tom Lyons, spokesman for the state Department of Public Health. Communities apply for funding through a competitive bid process, Lyons said, which happens on a multiyear basis. More than 20 communities are receiving funding; Gloucester is not among them.
The state evaluates which communities receive funding based on a number of criteria, Lyons said, and a "big part" is which ones have the highest teen birth rates. In 2006, Gloucester's teen birth rate was 21.1 among 1,000 women ages 15-19, below the state average of 21.3.
Kirk said Wednesday that she had not set a time or place for the neighborhood meetings, which may be limited to residents.
"I'm a little nervous about the media getting in the way," she said. "Obviously we're smarting from the worldwide attention that was given on this and misplaced."
The opinions voiced at the neighborhood meetings, Kirk said, will be shared with the School Committee. The seven-member committee, which includes Kirk, will then decide on a course of action. That could include offering contraception at the Gloucester High clinic, which Kirk said receives its money from the state but is controlled by the School Committee. About a third of the 47 school clinics funded by grants from the state Department of Public Health prescribe contraceptives.
"It's a range of abstinence-only to the other end of the spectrum, prescribing contraception without parental consent," she said. "In between those extremes are a number of options."
The city must act to curb teen pregnancy, she said. "I think there needs to be change," Kirk said. ". . . Something's not working right."
Maddie Hanna can be reached at mhanna@globe.com.
