Bringing Up Baby -- Renton Teen Parenting Program Ensures Both Teen Parent And Offspring Stay In School

Angie Fleming is like many other 15-year-old high school students at Renton High School. Shy, clean-cut and well-liked, she fits in well with her classmates.

But instead of hanging out with her friends during lunch and breaks, talking about the latest Nirvana video, she'd rather spend time with her 5-month-old daughter, Jazmine.

Angie is one of six students at Renton High who use the Renton Teen Parent Child Care Center on campus. With the close of school tomorrow, the center is completing its first five months of operation.

Renton's Teen Parent Program represents an attempt to keep teen parents in the mainstream.

Before the program, options for a teenage girl who became pregnant were limited. If she kept her baby, she was likely to become a dropout or, at best, to attend an alternative school or seek day care on her own.

But Renton High's program has set out to change that. It allows teenage parents, as much as possible, to retain a normal high-schooler's life, by providing child care for them at school.

For Angie, being able to attend school allows her to maintain some semblance of the life she had before Jazmine.

"It's just easier; my friends go there," she said, as does her 15-year-old boyfriend, Jazmine's father.

Walking down the halls on the way to catch the bus home after school, Angie and Jazmine are a popular duo.

Often they are stopped by friends who want to check on Jazmine or hold her.

"I wish I didn't get pregnant in the first place, but now that I have her, I wouldn't give her up for anything," said Angie, who plans to finish high school and talks about possibly going to college.

The program at the Renton school consists of the day-care center and a parenting class - the latter a requirement for those who want to use the center.

Currently, there are more than 50 similar school programs in the state and four others in South King County.

The Renton facility, though, is only the second in the state in a mainstream public high school. The other is in Olympia.

PARENTING CLASS REQUIRED

The Renton program also appears to be a leader in that it provides not only a day-care facility, but couples that with a mandatory teen-parent class and in-school visits with the girls by a counselor.

Mary Ann Liebert, executive director of the Washington Alliance Concerned With School Age Parents (WASCAP) in Seattle, said comprehensive programs such as the one at Renton High are "doing more than many of the other programs put together."

Supporters of the Renton program say placing it in a mainstream high school allows teenage mothers a broader curriculum with a wider variety of classes and the chance to participate in extracurricular activities.

And having a child-care center at a public school adds a "dose of reality to people thinking about having a child at that age," said Rich Brooks, executive director of the Renton Area Youth and Family Services (RAYS), a nonprofit social-service agency.

It was Brooks and 14 other concerned people in the Renton area, calling themselves the Teen Parent Task Force, who got together in 1988 and then began lobby ing the school board to have a day-care center in the public school.They were responding to what they perceived as a growing need for teen-mother services in the Renton area.

The Renton High center includes two rooms - one for toddlers and one for infants.

Money from the city, county, federal government and the school district, as well as private gifts and grants, helped pay for converting the school rooms.

Daily operational costs, including salaries for three full-time instructors, are paid by the state and school district.

COUNSELING AVAILABLE

Use of the day-care center is free of charge.

Laura Miccile, teen-parent program coordinator with RAYS, visits the center weekly to counsel the girls on housing, prenatal care, sex education, birth control and transportation needs.

For students like Sharna Hudson, 17, the program allows her to finish high school with a mininum of problems and hang onto a little of her adolescence at the same time.

"If they didn't have the program, I probably wouldn't be in school," she said.