School nurses say they rarely enforce a disputed San Diego Unified policy that requires school staff to call pregnant students’ parents. But some teens are aware of the policy — and they aren’t pleased.
I talked with La Jolla High senior Olivia Jones, who learned about the rule in a writing class. Students’ class journals would be totally private, her teacher said — unless someone wrote that a student was pregnant.
“It really caught everyone in my class off guard,” said Jones, 18. “I’d never even heard of it before. Everybody was asking, what if we write about drinking, or drugs? Could we get in trouble?” La Jolla High occasionally brings in drug-sniffing dogs, Jones said. “[The teacher] said no. But she would report it if we were pregnant, or someone else was. No one could believe it.”
Jones said the policy worried her.
“It’s a bad idea,” she said. “It’ll keep people from being responsible and talking to an adult who might give them advice. … You wouldn’t be able to go to a counselor. If you didn’t have that policy, a counselor could still convince the student to tell their parent.”