Looks like Mississippi will jump ahead of Louisiana in sex education!

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May 29, 3:28 PM EDT

*Fighting US's worst teen pregnancy rate in Miss. *

By LAURA TILLMAN
Associated Press
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   MARKS, Miss. (AP) -- With her hair in a ponytail and her smile quick and
wide, it's hard to tell that high school junior Donyell Hollins has been
pulling all-nighters for most of the semester to take care of her infant
daughter.

Her situation isn't unusual in the small Delta town of Marks, home to one
of the highest teen pregnancy rates in the state that leads the nation in
the statistic. But unlike teen mothers in previous decades, 18-year-old
Hollins is benefiting from a change in attitude that's paving the way for
frank discussions about parenting skills, career goals and contraception.

Instructors from the Delta Health Partners Healthy Start Initiative come to
Hollins' high school monthly to teach lessons that incorporate some of the
newest theories on the relationship between poverty and teen motherhood.
It's a far cry from decades past, when women in Hollins' situation were
given little guidance and often left to drop out and languish.

Part of the goal is to change patterns of communication about sex that have
persisted for years.

"I'm going to talk to her more about it, inform her," Hollins said of her
5-month-old daughter. "'Cause I didn't have that talk with my mom. I had to
learn on my own."

The Delta Initiative, run through Tougaloo College since 1999, is a
forerunner in the state's changing attitude toward teen pregnancy. Next
year, a new state law will require schools to teach sex education, and
they'll have more leeway in how much information they can incorporate about
birth control. Schools previously had to get special permission to teach
anything but abstinence. Delta Health Partners' classes are run
independently of the school districts' curriculum, though they use
classrooms at welcoming schools to make it convenient for the girls to
attend.

Republican Gov. Phil Bryant has also created a task force to discuss ways
to reduce teen pregnancy - considered an important acknowledgement of the
problem in a state where elected leaders were once loathe to discuss it.

Mississippi's teen birth rate declined modestly over the past decade as
rates around the country fell. But Mississippi still has 55 births per
1,000 15- to 19-year-old girls, compared to a national average of 34.3,
according to the most recent figures from the federal government's National
Center for Health Statistics.

Experts say there was a culture of silence around the issue for decades in
Mississippi, allowing the problem to build. Teen mothers were expected to
drop out of school, or even leave town.

Delta Health Partners work in one of the poorest sections of the poorest
state in the U.S. Recent research by economists Phillip Levine of Wellesley
College and Melissa Kearney of the University of Maryland challenges the
long-held assumption that pregnancy is a deciding factor in whether a young
woman slides into poverty.

"If two identical people going down a path in life, did the one who had a
baby do particularly worse?" Levine asked. "It's hard to find evidence
that's true."

In the Marks classroom, more than a dozen girls told Delta Health Partners
caseworkers about their plans to become nurses, pediatricians and
cosmetologists.

When asked how their pregnancies have impacted their lives, 19-year-old
Shalendrick Tribble said things are largely the same.

"There's just certain things at certain times you can and cannot do," she
said.

"For me, it got harder," Hollins chimed in. "My mom, she helps me to a
certain extent. But she's trying to make me responsible, so she makes me do
everything."

It was clear from the girls' stories that life has become more complicated.
Some parents gave them the silent treatment. Others had watched boyfriends
promise support, and then ignore them when asked to take on the
responsibility of fatherhood. They also told of friends who dropped out of
school when they couldn't arrange childcare.

Delta Health Partners is not the only initiative aimed at addressing teen
pregnancy. The Mississippi Department of Human Services lists more than two
dozen resource centers that provide education on teen pregnancy, and some
districts work with the girls to keep them in school.

States such as Idaho and Texas have public schools designed specifically
for pregnant and parenting teens, which provide in-school daycare. Deborah
Hedden-Nicely, head teacher at the Marian Pritchett High School in Boise,
Idaho, says schools designed specifically for teen parents make a
difference by pushing them to finish high school and go to college.

"Our mascot is a mortar board and a diploma," Hedden-Nicely said. "We have
speakers who come in and tell them, `yes, life is going to throw down
roadblocks. You've got to get around them.'"

Advocates say that fighting teen pregnancy ultimately requires a lot more
than sex education classes.

"It really circles back to education and job opportunities, it circles back
to health care, to generational poverty," said Jamie Bardwell of the
Mississippi Women's Fund. "These are all interconnected issues with lots of
different players. Good people are working on it, but we have to realize
for the teen birthrate going down, we need more than people talking about
it. We need legislative action. We need more funding for this issue."

Research by Levine and Kearney underscores this message. When poor young
women are pessimistic about their chances of reaching the next economic
class, researchers say they tend to care less about whether they'll get
pregnant.

The Delta Health Partners know they must fight this ambivalence and instill
in the girls hope that they can accomplish their goals. To do this, they
visit the girls both in 17 Delta high schools and at their homes.

A recent visit to Hollins' school, Madison S. Palmer High School in Marks,
was the last day the case workers would see some of the girls in school
before graduation.

Jodi Bailey, a nurse and case manager, read off some statistics to the
students. Half of high school students who get pregnant don't graduate.
Three in 10 girls in the U.S. will get pregnant before age 20.

"We want to keep you in high school, we want you to graduate and say `I did
it,'" Bailey said. "If you're having problems, we're here. We'll help you
any way we can, OK?"

For its part, the Marks school district plans to adopt a curriculum to
include more comprehensive sex-education, which will still emphasize the
benefits of abstinence.

Some in the small town about 70 miles south of Memphis, Tenn., still think
teen pregnancy should be addressed in the home, not the classroom. Harold
Smith, a local evangelical pastor, said sex outside marriage is a sin and
parents - not educators - should teach children to avoid it.

"You've got to spread the gospel," Smith said. "If they get a hold of God
just right, they won't have (children)."

But limiting discussion to the home didn't work for Hollins: "I wish my mom
would have talked to me more about sex."

That's why Delta Health Partners is seeking to change the pattern.

"You've got to do something different," said Debra McGee, a social worker.
"You cannot keep doing the same thing and expect a different result."

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