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January 11, 2009

Terre Haute nursery helps teen mothers continue educations

By Arthur Foulkes

TERRE HAUTE — Having a baby can mean the end of an education for some young women, but at the Alternatives for Living and Learning nursery, help is available for high school girls who want to stay in school.

“She loves coming here,” said Destoni Cobb, a senior at the Booker T. Washington High School, speaking of her 3-year-old daughter, Dy’Jheri. “They learn a lot coming here,” she said.

“It’s kind of like a family here,” said Sheri Montgomery, a teacher and director of the nursery, which has been a United Way agency since 1983.

The nursery helps around 20 young mothers each year receive their high school diplomas, she said.

The ALL nursery is in the basement of Washington High School on South 13th Street. It employs nine child care providers who look after typically between 30 and 35 babies at any given time. The nursery opens at 8:30 a.m. and closes at 3 p.m. when school ends for the day. The nursery allows young girls to attend high school classes while keeping their babies nearby.

“They are right downstairs so we don’t have to worry about them,” Cobb said, adding that her daughter has made friends, learned her ABCs, her colors and about dinosaurs at the ALL nursery.

Cobb, who plans to train to become a neonatal nurse at Ivy Tech, started bringing her daughter to the ALL nursery around two years ago. If not for the nursery, Cobb said she would not have been able to graduate.

The United Way provides around 65 percent of the ALL nursery’s $100,000 annual budget, according to Montgomery. “They have been very generous with us,” she said. The Vigo County School Corporation provides the physical space for the nursery and also significant funding, Montgomery said. Donations raised by the ALL nursery’s volunteer board of directors and other community donations also provide significant funding, she said.

The teen mothers served by the ALL nursery are required to pay $2 per day for the service. They are also responsible for their baby’s bottles, changes of clothing, diapers and other supplies, Montgomery said. The teens, many of whom start attending Washington High School while still pregnant, are also required to attend a prenatal class, which Montgomery believes contributes to healthy babies in the nursery.

“They have very healthy babies,” Montgomery said of the teens using the nursery. “They want to be in school and they want their babies to be healthy,” she said.

Child care providers in the nursery can call mothers out of class if their babies are ill or other problems arise, Montgomery said. However, most of the time the mothers remain in class until lunchtime, which they are required to spend with their babies, or until the end of the school day, she said.

“It’s really important for their bonding” that the mothers be close by, Montgomery said.

Jessica Tipton, also a senior at Washington High School, started attending the school even before her son, Tysen, was born around a year ago. Tipton, who wants to study photography, said she, like Cobb, would have been unable to graduate from high school if not for the ALL nursery.

“You can raise your baby and go to school,” Tipton said. Her son cries sometimes when she leaves him in the nursery, but, overall, “he likes it,” she said.

Once in a while the babies’ fathers also take courses at Washington while their babies are in the nursery, Montgomery said. But most of the time, the fathers are “long gone,” she said.

Without the nursery, many young parents would face serious difficulty attending school and raising their children, Montgomery said. The nursery, which started operation in the 1970s, fills an important need for many young mothers and their children, she said. “Who needs a high school diploma more than a parent?” Montgomery said.

Arthur Foulkes can be reached at (812) 231-4232 or arthur.foulkes@tribstar.com.

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