Accept Grant to Aid Teens Moms

Among the questions to be decided in the Nov. 3 election, none is more immediate than the fate of a state grant to expand a county schools program to educate teen mothers and help them raise healthy babies.

School officials applied for the grant and were awarded $370,000 a year. But they may have to turn it down because two members of the Ventura County Board of Education belatedly developed moral and financial concerns.

Expanding the program, said board member Ron Matthews, “would be like we were rewarding these girls for having these babies out of wedlock.”

Matthews and member Marty Bates reversed their earlier votes after the application went in. That left the board deadlocked 2-2--and unable to accept the grant. The upcoming election will fill the board’s vacant fifth seat and could also replace Bates.

But it shouldn’t be necessary to wait even a week to rectify this. Matthews and Bates should join the 20th century (before it’s too late) and get behind this worthy program that the state is willing to fund.

The program currently provides high school instruction, child care, classes in parenting and other programs for teenage parents at three Ventura County high schools. The grant would increase the number of teens served from 55 to 100 and would expand child care to five days a week at all three sites.

This is a program for which, unfortunately, the need is all too great. Denying this help to teen moms does nothing to undo the fact that they are mothers; it simply helps doom their futures as students. The best hope for these children with children is to give them the tools they need to manage their double challenge and break the self-defeating cycle.

The board should vote unanimously to accept the grant money and expand the program.