Gloucester Mayor Sheds Doubt on High School Pregnancy Pact
by Matt Margolis, June 22nd, 2008 at 09:36pm
The Associated Press has the story.
School counselors, teachers and families of students the principal said made a pact to get pregnant and have babies together have no information to back the claim, the mayor of Gloucester said Sunday.
Mayor Carolyn Kirk plans to meet Monday with school, health and other local officials after Gloucester High School Principal Joseph Sullivan was quoted by Time magazine saying the girls made such a pact.
The meeting will discuss the alarming rate of teen pregnancy. Seventeen girls in the high school became pregnant this year — four times the usual number. The girls are all 16 or younger, and nearly all of them sophomores.
Kirk told The Associated Press that Sullivan has told officials in this hard-luck New England fishing town that he can’t remember his source of information.
“The high school principal is the one who initially said it, and no one else has said it,” Kirk said. “None of the counselors at the school, none of the teachers who know these children and none of the families have spoken about it.
“So, my position is that it has not been confirmed,” she said.
So then, what’s the explanation?
Entry Filed under: News, Uncategorized
1 Comment
1. Amanda Rekonwith | June 23rd, 2008 at 4:56 pm
The pact would have been better. The fact that any random group of ~300 girls, (in grades 9 & 10) could be pregnant at a rate exceeding 5% says that the problem is even deeper. A town with million dollar houses, within an hour of Boston, is living like the 3rd world.