Pregnant and Parenting Students Arrested at Peaceful Protest

It seems like everyone has been talking about the Catherine Ferguson Academy in Detroit this week. Okay, maybe not everyone, but the school’s story has jumped all the way from local news to the Rachel Maddow show on MSNBC. So what’s the scoop?

Catherine Ferguson is a high school for pregnant and parenting students. It serves 300 girls every year, has a graduation rate of 90 percent, and reports that every single graduate goes on to enroll in college. It provides on-site child care for students’ babies and young children, among other supports. Some teens travel all the way across the city to get there every day, and many consider it to be their lifeline to a secure future for them and their children. But in the name of budget cuts, the school has been slated for closure. The students were devastated and decided to protest. They held a peaceful sit-in at school during their spring break, which ended with loud police sirens and a number of arrested students. The scene was absurd, with young mothers who just want to continue going to school being put in handcuffs and pushed into squad cars. Makes you wonder.

We admire the courage of these young moms in staging a sit-in to bring attention to how much their school means to them and their children. We applaud their hard work and determination, and we appreciate the role that Catherine Ferguson has played in the Detroit community. The challenge ahead for Detroit Public Schools is ensuring that these teen moms don’t fall through the cracks in their new schools, don’t drop out because they cannot access the services they need – such as child care, to enable them to go to school – and don’t get pushed out by schools with discriminatory policies and practices in violation of Title IX. For the sake of these young moms, their children, and the future of the city, Detroit needs to take the educational needs of pregnant and parenting students seriously and encourage them to stay in school and succeed. A tall order, indeed – especially for a district with an average graduation rate of 62 percent and facing massive budget cuts – but one that upholds the spirit of Title IX’s non-discrimination principles and is just plain smart as a matter of educational policy.