DALTON, Ga. — Fifty-two teenage mothers have walked the halls this year at Dalton High School.
In Northwest Georgia, youth advocates say, teen pregnancy has reached epidemic proportions and has robbed girls of childhood.
A community collaborative called Visions of Hope for Healthy Youth is calling for sex education that will curb the high teen pregnancy rates in Whitfield and Murray counties. Last month, Visions of Hope held a teen pregnancy prevention forum at Dalton State College.
“This is a direct response to the evidence out there that what we’re doing doesn’t seem to be very effective,” said Craig Pressley, a Whitfield County School social worker, who said he sees the effects of teen pregnancy every day.
Whitfield County has one of the highest teen pregnancy rates in the state, according to the Georgia Campaign for Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention, averaging six per day.
Advocates like Mr. Pressley say Whitfield needs to use sex education curricula that have already been proven to reduce teen pregnancy in other areas. The sexual education curricula here follow state guidelines. But the specific lessons vary from classroom to classroom, according to Whitfield County Schools spokesman Eric Beavers.
In middle school, students first learn about pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. High schoolers are taught a sex education unit during their one semester of health — which may or may not cover the use of contraceptives.
“That would be on a class-by-class basis,” Mr. Beavers said. “It’s not required.”
Georgia requires districts to form a committee to choose sex education materials, and schools spokesman Mr. Beavers confirmed that such a committee in Whitfield exists.
But he couldn’t name anybody on the committee, nor could he say how often it has met this year.
Sex education curriculum in Whitfield County Schools is “under review,” Mr. Beavers said.
“We realize that teen pregnancy is a concern in Whitfield County,” he said in an e-mail message.
On May 8, at the Visions of Hope forum, a panel of teen mothers spoke. Christy O’Neal, now in her 20s, explained why she had teen sex. “It feels good at the time ... And you don’t really know what’s going to happen later — until the later happens.”
At Southeast High School, family and consumer sciences teacher Brandy Trammell’s child development class teaches students the consequences of teen sex.
Students take home a “Real Care Baby,” which Ms. Trammell programs to awake “crying” at night.
Ms. Trammell believes this baby simulation — and sleep deprivation — effectively helps prevent teen pregnancy. Not everybody gets this reality check, though. Whitfield high school students aren’t required to take the child development class.
