A shocking one in four students at a Bronx high school slated for closure is a teen parent or pregnant, The Post has learned.
That startling statistic is buried in thousands of pages of documents the city Department of Education submitted to the state earlier this year when it initially sought funds to fix the long-struggling Grace Dodge HS in Belmont.
It has since proposed shuttering the school — with, critics charge, no regard to the parenting teens.
In its plea for more than $3 million over three years to help turn the school around, the DOE in May highlighted the school’s challenges to explain years of poor performance.
“Approximately 25 percent of the student populations are teen parents, many of whom receive minimal support from their parents, which contributes to the poor attendance rates at the school,” the DOE wrote.
Yet, after they reversed course this month and decided to shutter the school, officials produced a 61-page fact sheet for the public that focuses solely on why the school is beyond repair.
Gone are the warnings of the effects of sky-high pregnancy rates.
“The 2010-11 attendance rate was 77% compared to the Citywide high school average of 86%, putting Grace Dodge in the bottom 7% of all high schools Citywide in terms of attendance,” the documents read.
Also unmentioned is that Grace Dodge is not one of the 38 public schools that house a day-care unit, known as a LYFE Center, for the children of students.
Last year, the school leadership team unsuccessfully requested one from the city.
“I want to transfer because I’m pregnant,” said 18-year-old Veronica Troche, who is submitting a request to attend Bronx Regional HS in Longwood, which has a LYFE Center.
“If I was in this school, I don’t think I’d be able to finish.”
DOE officials said they don’t have data on the number of parenting students at each school because self-reporting is unreliable — so the issue isn’t factored into annual “A”-through-“F” school report-card grades.
Grace Dodge got an “F” last year.
They said their goal is not to make excuses for bad results but to focus on what can be done to improve outcomes for students.