The principal at Gloucester High School, John Sullivan, has resigned his position; if you remember he was the principal that made news headlines a few months back by allegedly, claiming that there was a pregnancy pact at his school when pregnancy rates climbed to four times the norm, in his school…17 young women were pregnant, during the school year. To the best of my knowledge the idea of a “pact” has not been proven; in fact, some of the girls actually denied the claim. The former principal says that he often relied on information gathered through his staff and from monitoring student chatter which when put together was generally reliable and he chooses to keep that information confidential.
John Sullivan appears to feel somehat betrayed by the mayor of the town because when all of this hit the media…he made some statements that criticized the principals ability to “remember” who told him about the alleged plan to become pregnant. He also says that the superintendent remained silent in the rush of public opinion to condemn him for alluding to the girls deciding to become pregnant. He feels that both the mayor and the superintendent allowed him to take the brunt of the news reports without standing up for him.
He says he does not remember using the word pact…however, he still is convinced that the young woman became pregnant on purpose. He resigned he said because he does not feel that he has the confidence or support of the leadership in his community. John Sullivan was at a place where he could have retired, so he did. However, he did so while at the same time encouraging the students “to continually check their moral compass and do what is right even when swimming against the tide”.
Regardless of whether the young women became pregnant by choice or not…the school system and community leaders would do well to increase it’s preventative educational programs. This trend is one that we all pay a price for…with our taxes, with our young people, with social services, and in the short and long term with our families. The school system is review it’s policy to ban distributing contraception in school.
In my opinion, the school system should work closely with parents groups, clergy, health care professionals, school counselors, and the students themselves while drafting a plan to combat the increased numbers sexually active students and occurances of teen pregnancies.
With the recent culture of movies that tend to gloss over teen pregnancy and all of the complications that go along with it; we need to examine how our environment/culture encourages our young people to engage in sexual activity, and begin to discuss ways to educate and combat all of the mixed signals that our youth are exposed to in this area of life. Exposure to STD’s is rising in certain parts of our population, the AIDS numbers are climbing; and with the difficulties in the economy, and cut backs in programs that help to educate and help prevent exposure for our young people; we are waging a war for the health and well being of our children.
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