Pregnant and Raising a Toddler, She Keeps Her Graduation Goal

Roxanna Garcia has had an opportunity to participate in two graduations. She had a good reason for missing the first.

It was her son Cesar Anthony’s second birthday when Operation Graduation, a program for troubled teen-agers, held its ceremonies last Saturday. She opted to throw Cesar a birthday bash instead.

And now Garcia may miss her other graduation, this one from Leuzinger High School in Lawndale, because she is expecting her second child. The graduation ceremonies are scheduled for next Wednesday; Garcia’s child is already overdue.

“Hopefully, my delivery will be on time so I can go to graduation,” she said, glancing down on her softly rounded belly.

But even if she misses the Leuzinger ceremonies, the 18-year-old Garcia has reason to be proud of her academic achievements. With one child to care for and another on the way, the odds against her even finishing high school seemed stacked against her.

Instead, she found a way to take care of the baby while earning the credits she needed to finish high school, and she did it while maintaining good grades.

Garcia credits much of her success to La Vida West, an alternative school for pregnant minors housed at Lloyde Adult School in Lawndale. The program exists as a bridge to help young women make a life for themselves by learning how to set goals, deliver healthy babies and finish high school while gaining marketable job skills and confidence.

Garcia attended the program separately, earning a diploma from La Vida West at the same time she was completing her studies at Leuzinger High.

The pregnant-minor program is one of the alternative education programs administered through Operation Graduation. Run by the county’s Division of Alternative Education, the program serves 80 school districts within Los Angeles County. Each year, the agency helps nearly 50,000 teens who have dropped out of school, spent time in jail or become pregnant.

This year’s commencement exercises, at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion last weekend, were a happy milestone for the lives of more than 300 students and their families who had nearly given up on the dream of a high school diploma.

“These kids were in essence throwaway kids,” said Jennifer Hartman, the assistant superintendent for education programs for the county office of education.

The gang members, dropouts and teen-age parents, Hartman said, are among those who seem to get discarded by society. In her 10 years running the alternative education programs, Hartman said she has seen an increase in the number of teen-agers needing the support of these programs.

“I have seen, in the juvenile courts program, more younger students, more violent offenses. I have seen teen pregnancies on the rise with younger girls.”

The typical age of a pregnant teen-ager today, Hartman said, is 14. She said that’s about three years younger than the average in the mid-1980s.

Garcia’s story is not uncommon for many youths her age. When her other friends started dating in their early teens, Garcia said she stayed at home in Hawthorne with her younger sister and brother because “my mom didn’t want me to go out that much. She was strict with me.”

It was later, when she needed a date for a “sweet sixteen” party, that a cousin fixed her up with a 16-year-old who later became her boyfriend and the father of her children.

A few months after the couple started dating, Garcia, 15 at the time, found out she was pregnant. She was too afraid to tell her mother, so she ran away to her boyfriend’s house and left a note. “I was too chicken to tell her in person,” she said.

Garcia is a soft-spoken, attractive young woman whose view of the world took a hard, sharp turn when her baby was born in June, 1991.

“I used to not go to school, leave with everybody else,” she said. “But when I had my baby, it made me think, what was going to become of me?”

She found out about the pregnant-minor program through her counselor at Leuzinger High and enrolled.

In addition to keeping the girls on track with the basic high school curriculum, the program provides prenatal education, help with obtaining services such as Medi-Cal and child care, training in parenting skills and career planning.

“(The program) offers a place where girls are nurtured and have a safe environment,” said Lena Preer, principal of the county’s Southwest Alternative Education Program. She said that the program aims to help the young women develop respect for themselves and their babies, while dispelling child care myths.

“Most of these girls are still in childhood themselves,” Preer said. “We help them understand that because a baby cries doesn’t mean it’s a bad baby, but a baby that needs holding or a diaper change.”

Some of the girls, Preer said, enter motherhood following clues they learned from their mothers. “They come in with a lot of folklore about child care. They think that if you pinch a baby, it will stop crying. One girl had given her baby honey in bottle as a cure for constipation. So we have them read, and we have discussions to uncover the myths and give them sound (parenting) practices.”

Two semesters after Cesar Anthony was born, Garcia returned to La Vida West. She also attended classes at Leuzinger High while keeping at least a B average, accumulating the credits she needed to finish high school.

Garcia now lives in a three-bedroom house in Hawthorne with her boyfriend, now 19, and his parents, aunt and two sisters. At first, she said, her mother was disappointed and didn’t approve of her living situation. But now, she said, her mother is proud of her achievements.

Garcia plans to attend Bryan College of Court Reporting in Los Angeles this fall. She is determined to create a comfortable life for herself, her son and her second child.

“I worry about my son. I think, if I had dropped out of school and had to work at a job making $4.25 an hour, I might not be able to get him everything he needs.”

Her boyfriend helps with her motivation. “He dropped out of high school and works at a hotel. He says he regrets it, and that’s why he encourages me,” she said.

While she waits for her second child to be born, Garcia stoically makes plans to work hard and do well in court reporting school. She also tries to be an example for her 16-year-old sister.

“She’s seen all I’ve been through,” Garcia said. “I always tell my younger sister, don’t do what I did.”