<p>Whats going on with the school and all the pregnant students? Have you heard anymore…I find this so sad</p>
<p>I wondered the same.</p>
<p>I was not even aware of this situation. Was it McKinley high school?</p>
<p>This may seem impossible to you, but its true.</p>
<p>Sixty-five again, 65 of Timken High Schools 490 girl students are pregnant.</p>
<p>Thats a number confirmed by Principal Kim Redmond, whose staff, in less than a week, will inherit a problem it had no part in causing.</p>
<p>Whose fault is it that more than 13 percent of Timkens girls are with child? Some would say fault-finding isnt a fruitful exercise, but in this case, its critical. Suspects range from movies, TV and video games to lazy parents and lax discipline. Only one thing is sure: Schools dont impregnate children.</p>
<p>This has gotten to horrible proportions, said Redmond. I wish I knew the answer to why its happening. </p>
<p>Shes not the only one who should wonder. McKinley Highs numbers arent rosy, either, and its culture is just as ripe for trouble. I recall a day there last spring, while waiting for an English class to let out, that a roomful of kids lauded a boy, no more than 16 or 17, for having become a dad the night before. A paper on the kids desk suggested he might struggle to spell that word.</p>
<p>According to the Canton Health Department, through July, 104 of 586 babies born to Canton residents in Aultman Hospital and Mercy Medical Center the countys largest hospitals had mothers between 11 and 19. Thats nearly 18 percent, or three times the total number of babies born at the same hospitals to teen parents living elsewhere in Stark County and beyond.</p>
<p>These numbers are not aberrations. </p>
<p>The non-Canton rate the year before was 7 percent; Cantons was 15. In 2003, the non-Canton rate was 7 percent and the citys 18, and in 2002, the countys rate was 8.5 percent and the citys just under 17.</p>
<p>Some might argue that the non-Canton rate is also too high, and, indeed, it may seem especially so as the rest of the nation is enjoying a 10th year of decline in teen pregnancy. But Canton City Schools would take Stark Countys rate in a heartbeat.</p>
<p>…</p>
<p><a href=“http://cantonrep.com/index.php?ID=238435[/url]”>http://cantonrep.com/index.php?ID=238435</a></p>
<p>TImken</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.newsnet5.com/news/4885861/detail.html[/url]”>http://www.newsnet5.com/news/4885861/detail.html</a></p>
<p>That is a lot of little tiny babies! My exgirlfriend works for Stark county family services, I will have to ask her about this.</p>
<p>thanks its pretty scary</p>
<p>Ohio High School Has 64 Pregnant Students
AP
Monica Selby is one of sixty-four of Timken High School’s 490 female students, 13 percent, are pregnant.
Talk About It: Post Thoughts</p>
<p>CANTON, Ohio (Sept. 1) - High school senior Monica Selby thought she would be busy this year planning for college, not preparing for the birth of her first child.</p>
<p>“I’ve been crying every day and every night. I keep on blaming myself for this,” said the 18-year-old Selby, who is six months pregnant.</p>
<p>She cries about starting classes this week at Timken Senior High School with a bulging belly, about the emotions of planning an adoption, about becoming part of a statistic that has snagged the nation’s attention: 64 of Timken’s 490 female students - 13 percent - are pregnant.</p>
<p>The statistic at the school in the heart of this old steel city contrasts with a decade of declining teen pregnancy rates nationwide. But teen pregnancy experts say the problem is not exclusive to Timken High.</p>
<p>Experts, parents and students themselves struggle to explain why such pockets of high teen pregnancy rates appear. Are teens getting appropriate sex education? Do they have access to birth control and are they using it consistently? Has the stigma of unwed motherhood lost its edge?</p>
<p>“This might be a school that is forthright with its problems while others are not,” said Jay Green, chairman of the Education Reform department at the University of Arkansas. “But this is a widespread issue.”</p>
<p>Green wrote a study last year for the conservative New York-based Manhattan Institute for Policy Research that found 20 percent of urban teenagers have been pregnant, compared with 14 percent of suburban teens.</p>
<p>Urban teens as a whole don’t use birth control as consistently or often, according to his research, and often have less to lose financially and socially than those in the suburbs.</p>
<p>But Green couldn’t say whether those factors applied to Timken. The school of about 1,000 students draws teens from across the neighborhood and economic lines in the state’s ninth largest city.</p>
<p>“My mom had a kid when she was in school and now I have a kid.”
-18-Year-Old Eric Wilson </p>
<p>Eric Wilson, 18, who works at a hot dog shop a few blocks from the school while making plans to get his GED and caring for his 2-year-old son, said the spotlight on Timken is magnifying an old problem.</p>
<p>“My mom had a kid when she was in school and now I have a kid,” he said. “It goes back to how you were raised. Down here, it’s not looked too down upon because a lot of parents had kids when they were kids.”</p>
<p>Last school year, both high schools in the city’s district reported 55 pregnancies. Ninety-nine pregnancies are expected this year, most of them at Timken, where expecting students get six weeks of maternity leave.</p>
<p>“This has gotten to horrible proportions. I wish I knew the answer to why it’s happening,” principal Kim Redmond told the city’s daily newspaper The Repository, which first revealed the pregnancy rate in a column last week. Redmond did not return several messages left by The Associated Press.</p>
<p>Joanne Hinton, whose 16-year-old daughter, Raechel Hinton, is eight months pregnant, said she believes the school’s abstinence-based sex education program isn’t enough.</p>
<p>“It’s time to take the blinders off and realize that these kids are having sex,” she said. “Obviously, abstinence is not working. If we have to, just give them condoms.”</p>
<p>“Obviously, abstinence is not working. If we have to, just give them condoms.”
-Joanne Hinton, Parent </p>
<p>Abstinence-based programs have been growing nationwide at schools over the past few years. In Ohio, the Bush’s administration and the state’s health department have awarded $32 million in grants to Ohio agencies for abstinence education since 2001.</p>
<p>Hinton stresses that she doesn’t condone teenage sex and that her daughter doesn’t fit the mold some may think pregnant teens come from: The Hinton household has two loving parents with a strong relationship who asked the straight-A Raechel “45 times a week if she was having sex, doing drugs, drinking. We were constantly checking on her.”</p>
<p>Raechel, who plans to return to the 10th grade at Timken after delivering and completing an adoption, said many students are sexually active and need more information about birth control.</p>
<p>“It can happen to anybody no matter who you are, not just bad girls,” she said.</p>
<p>Greg Hawk, a Canton councilman who owns the hot dog shop near Timken, said increased attention on the problem has pushed politicians into plans for a more comprehensive sex education program, one he hopes will include more information about contraception as well as abstinence.</p>
<p>Canton is not alone with an adolescent pregnancy problem, Hawk said before launching into a list of improvements at Timken that make him proud: a new media center, restaurant-like cafeteria and college-level technology courses.</p>
<p>He arched his brow when asked if a day-care center was among the school’s amenities.</p>
<p>“No,” he said, noting a below-average graduation rate of about 70 percent that he attributed partly to teen births. “But that’s a good thought.”</p>
<p>09/01/05 15:14 EDT</p>
<p>I’m not from Canton but teen pregnancy has been growing in my home area. I am seeing many more young girls who have babies, many of them with more than one. I think it’s pathetic because with the levels of protection that are available today, there should be no accidental pregnancies. There is only stupidity. I put most of the blame on the girls because they are the ones who carry the burden of being pregnant. These “kids” have sex without protection and then get shocked to find out a baby is being made. The possibility of that happening should have been pretty obvious at the conclusion of the sexual act.</p>
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<p>Isn’t the “protection” you are talking for these female “kids” condoms? And shouldn’t the condoms go on the males? Yes, the poor girls carry the burden of being pregnant and are likely to be left holding the baby, literally. But hey, we’re not talking virgin births here. A little bit of male responsibility would not come amiss.</p>
<p>Of course, the male should be responsible and wear condoms, but it is plainly obvious that the females will bear most of the “suffering” if a condom is not used. Both parties are to blame for a pregnancy, but the parties are not affected equally, at least until after the baby is born. Since the female is the one that gets pregnant, in my opinion, she has the final say in whether or not sex will occur since she is the one who has more to lose. It’s like when these school teachers have sex with students. The teacher has more to lose than the student and he or she should be the one to make the final decision in whether or not to conduct sexual acts. The student gets to go on with his or her life and the teacher goes to prison. Some teens aren’t legally capable of making their own decisions but they make decisions all of the time, but in the case of teacher-student sexual relationships the teacher is seen as the adult and authority figure and is subject to greater punishment.</p>
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<p>Oh, yeah? Rape, anyone? Or just peer pressure and emotional blackmail (“if you loved me you would let me…”)</p>
<p>And what has underage girls being impregnated by boys who are usually older than they to do with teachers? Your logic totally escapes me.</p>
<p>it’s really strange I haven’t heard about this- i’ll ask my neighbor if she’s heard of this (she’s was born and raised there) 
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<p>I’m not talking about rape. That is a special circumstance. I’m talking about consensual sex that results in pregnancy. Peer pressure and emotional blackmail? Not totally acceptable excuses to me. When you start dealing with emotions things can get complicated because some people are too weak to (due to a variety of reasons) combat peer pressure, emotional blackmail, etc.</p>