DECATUR – At first glance, it could have been any classroom of students discussing Truman Capote's “In Cold Blood,” under the guidance of their teacher.
But then you notice two jars of Gerber beef and gravy on the table between two of the students and a pair of pink pacifiers strewn across the open notebook in front of another, a young woman sitting in the back, holding a tiny baby in her arms.
Welcome to Foundations, a special school inside Central Christian Church that helps teenage moms and mothers-to-be earn their high school diplomas.
You might think it's a new program, but it's just a new name. It reflects Baby TALK's partnership with the Macon-Piatt Regional Office of Education after Decatur public schools had to drop out as co-provider of Phoenix II after a nine-year partnership, ending after the 2013-14 school year.
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This is the second year under the new arrangement.
Due to give birth to a boy in May, Emma Veech, 17, of Cerro Gordo said the program will allow her to graduate on time and enroll this fall at Richland Community College as planned.
At Foundations, she's found the acceptance she fears she would not have found at her high school.
“At first I wanted to leave school right away but decided to stay until the end of the (first) semester because I wasn't showing,” Veech said. “It's better to be surrounded by girls who are in the same situation as me.”
She's also getting a closeup look at what it's like to be a mom. “Babies need a lot of attention,” Veech said.
The biggest change caused by the switch in program partners is that Foundations is open to students at any high school or middle school in Macon or Piatt counties and not just to those attending Decatur public schools.
Rachael Wiley, coordinator of Baby TALK's Family Literacy, STEPS and Pre-K programs in addition to Foundations, said she enrolled a student from Mount Zion last year and so far this year has had students from Sangamon Valley and Cerro Gordo and plans to take one from Maroa-Forsyth this spring.
Foundations also follows the same schedule and educational model as Futures Unlimited, another alternative school operated by the regional office of education, which makes transfers between the two schools almost seamless.
Both Regional Superintendent Matt Snyder and Claudia Quigg, executive director of Baby TALK, say the partnership is working well and allowing students to succeed. “We had girls out in the county really needing this service,” Snyder said.
Quigg said the Futures model, which allows students to move through the curriculum more quickly but is strict on the attendance requirement, is just what the students need.
“The other thing that makes it work is the deep relationships the staff develops with the mothers and their infants, which gives them a sense of being connected and valued,” Quigg said.
Chloe Jones, 18, completed the credits she needed to graduate this spring from MacArthur High School two months before her son, Miles Tyus, was born Dec. 14, but returns regularly to encourage the other girls.
She said she felt especially close to her English teacher, Carolyn Jameson, who taught her a life lesson almost every day.
“When I got pregnant, I thought my life was over,” Jones recalls. “Coming here made me realize a lot of people have gone through what I've gone through, and it taught me to grow up.”
