Good morning Chairman Mendelson, committee members, and staff. Thank you for the opportunity to testify today at the Performance Oversight Hearing for the District of Columbia Public Schools. My name is Mary Katherine West, and I am a policy analyst at DC Action and a Ward 1 resident.
DC Action uses research, data, and a racial equity lens to break down barriers that stand in the way of all kids reaching their full potential. Our collaborative advocacy initiatives bring the power of young people and all residents to raise their voices to create change. We are also the home of DC KIDS COUNT, an online resource that tracks key indicators of child and youth wellbeing.
DC Action’s Youth Economic Justice Coalition advocates for young parents in the District, building on the work and research of DCNEXT! DC Network for Expectant and Parenting Teens connected researchers, service providers, and young parents in the District to develop and conduct research on the experiences and needs of young parents.
My testimony today will provide an overview of how the proposed FY26 Budget for the District of Columbia Public Schools will impact students who are expecting a child or parenting and their ability to access school and other resources and achieve their educational and further career and financial goals.
The District should support the unique circumstances of young parents.
In 2023, 243 babies were born to parents between 15 and 19 years old and 887 babies were born to parents between 20-24 years old. At that age, these parents should be in high school, learning and preparing for their future, or transitioning into adulthood starting off in a career or pursuing post-secondary education or training.
While many of these parents are in high school, some are as young as middle school, and many are often already disconnected from school and experiencing homelessness or other forms of instability. For some disconnected young people, having a child is a source of motivation to strive for and achieve a brighter future for themselves. In a DC Action focus group one young parent shared, “So my had the mindset that was like, just focus on my baby… Pushed her out and realized, I’m trying to get that diploma, like, I ain’t trying to be young, no diploma, no nothing. I mean, how long can you keep a job? When you sign up and it says diploma or GED required and if you don’t have your diploma or GED with you? That’s what I was focused on after I had her.”
However, there are many barriers to accessing education for parenting students, including medical complications during pregnancy and postpartum, access to child care, managing and attending their child’s pediatric appointments, and ensuring that their family has sufficient financial resources.
Many systems that parents navigate through are complex and opaque, they are not designed for young people. Another young parent shared, “I didn’t even know you could get vouchers for a daycare. I thought you had to really pay out of pocket. And so my son wasn’t going to day care.”
Young parents want to succeed, but face challenges. One student shared that during her pregnancy, “I was turning work, doing work. And I didn’t get credit for it at all. I had stopped going to school when I was pregnant because I had such a high risk pregnancy. I was in and out of hospital and it’s like [the school] didn’t care.” Without supportive adults in school to work with parenting students, it is hard for them to succeed in the face of all the barriers, even if they are trying their best to keep up with their academics.
The New Heights Program is a critical and effective support for young parents
The New Heights Program supports parenting students’ attendance, graduation, and execution of a post-secondary plan by providing workshops, 1:1 case management, and as a liaison to services internal and external to the school. In FY24, the program served 132 students, and we believe this figure increased in FY25 – and we urge the Council to ask about the New Heights Program’s current case load.
When fully funded, the program achieved strong results. A rigorous evaluation of the program, published in 2017 indicated positive results in decreasing unexcused absences per semester, increasing excused absences per semester, increasing days attended per semester, increasing credits earned per year, and increasing semester graduation rate.
The relationship with a New Heights Coordinator can be transformative for young parents. The coordinators listen to and support young parents, and advocate for the students with their teachers who might not understand what a young parent is going through, and the responsibilities they face.
When talking about the New Heights program, one student shared, “I was hesitating to really coming back to school ’cause it’s like, I don’t know how to balance all of that. Like me being homeless, me trying to find housing. I gotta go to school, get my high school diploma, take care of my baby. It was just a lot until I actually sat down and went to school and I should talk to people here and I saw that [New Heights] was like really caring. It was actually willing to help ’cause I didn’t have all of that support… It was actually real lifesaving because I was like, I don’t know how I’m gonna do this by myself. I didn’t.”
In the FY24 performance oversight responses, DCPS wrote, “DCPS finds that the more services a student in New Heights receives, the more likely they are to graduate, attend school more frequently, and earn credits.” To truly understand a students’ needs and inform and enroll or refer to services like SNAP or WIC, the Child Care Subsidy Program, mental health or housing requires time and trust between the coordinator and students.
However, as District investments wane year to year, staff caseloads increase and are not able to provide the same level of support as they once could when they were in one school every day. Although increased staffing capacity would support the program outcomes, coordinators continue to effectively implement program components for as many students as they can, and many young parents in the New Heights program will be graduating later this month.
DCPS’s FY24 performance oversight responses reported “the 4-year graduation rate for those students was 56% (20 of 36 students). This is a promising statistic when compared to the national statistic that “only 51% of teenage mothers earn a high school diploma by age 22.”
Changes in the budget structure and budget cuts limit New Height’s ability to support parenting students
Through FY25, the New Heights program was funded through DCPS Central Office, with a staff of one program manager and four coordinators. For years, funding for the program has consistently waned, and the District no longer funds resources for these parents, including diapers, wipes, other essentials parents need, or incentives within the program. Staff salary is the only budget for the New Heights program, and the current staff work to provide support like diapers, wipes, and other essentials for parents through external funding.
Over the years, the program has not been able to back-fill positions, so the number of staff has declined over time from 16 to four coordinators and a manager in FY25. In FY25, the DCPS Central office funded six coordinators and a program manager to serve students across the District, but two of the coordinator positions are currently vacant. For four coordinators, they hold an average case load ratio of one coordinator to 33 young parents spread across multiple schools who all have acute need for time- and emotionally-intensive support.
For FY26, rather than being funded centrally, DCPS required individual schools to support these positions within their own budgets. Individual school budgets are already unable to accommodate hiring for sufficient teaching and support staff, or behavioral health, arts, sports and enrichment staff or programs – it was not realistic for them to also budget for their own New Heights coordinator when they had to prioritize the needs of their larger student body.
Many schools have 5-8 young parents enrolled, but some have between 10-20. Only Garnet-Patterson STAY, with over 50 expectant and parenting students prioritized funding a New Heights coordinator on its own. This means that next school year there may be over 100 parenting students across the District without dedicated support in their school. These students will be less likely to be able to stay connected to school, consequently harming these students’ futures and goals they have for themselves and their young children.
In the District, there are few programs that specifically support young parents. The New Heights program is one of the few that works alongside parenting students, and across systems, to support parents to complete high school and access the support they need. The limited staff are highly dedicated to these students and will continue to do all they can to support them.
While full time embedded support in each school is an ideal model for serving pregnant and parenting youth, within the reality of budget constraints, preserving a centralized model for FY26 would allow us to preserve the greatest level of support for these students.
DCPS’s FY26 budget should retain the manager role at Central Office and restore at least 4 coordinators to the program to work in schools across the District. The Council should also retain the stand-alone coordinator at Garnet Patterson STAY to be a fully embedded resource for their students.
With cuts to social services across federal and District programs, young people will have decreased access to health services and information, contraception and more, which will likely cause pregnancies among young people to rise. If funding for programs like New Heights continues to diminish, the District will fail to give these students and their children the support they need and deserve to achieve their goals and build a bright future.
In the future, the Youth Economic Justice Coalition will continue to advocate for increased funding for the New Heights program alongside other programs that support young parents in the District.
Thank you for the opportunity to testify, I look forward to working with you on this important issue, and I welcome any questions.