Baby steps or deaf ears?

Andrew Glazer

She’s told hundreds of children how tough it is for a child to raise a

child -- a truth she knows firsthand.

But Colleen Allen and other young Orange County mothers have had a

difficult time taking their message to Newport-Mesa schools, the closest

campuses to the “Teen Voices, Teen Choices” program’s offices in Costa

Mesa.

“It hurts me that anybody would have to go through what I went through,”

said Allen, 20, who gave birth to her daughter when she was a high school

junior. “I want to help other people avoid it.”

Allen is one of about 20 young mothers -- most of whom are still

teenagers -- who share the confusion, betrayal and frustration of teen

motherhood with Orange County junior high and high school students.

They have told and retold their personal, often painful stories to more

than 3,200 students at county schools since July, said Bridget Reilly

Walin, the peppy director of the program founded more than five years

ago.

But Newport-Mesa schools have not been as eager as campuses outside the

district to welcome the speakers, Walin said.

“I call them, I pitch the program, I send them fliers, but they’re just

not interested,” Walin said in a classroom at Bolsa Grande High School in

Garden Grove, where she led a panel featuring Allen on Tuesday.

Lynne Bloomberg -- head of the local district’s Safe and Drug Free

Children program -- said Walin’s fliers just aren’t compelling. She said

poor salesmanship, not district prudishness, has kept the speakers out of

Newport-Mesa schools.

“She’s not trying hard enough,” Bloomberg said. “There must be some sort

of communication breakdown.”

Walin, who has had no problem selling the hourlong discussions to

classrooms outside of the district, said she isn’t convinced.

“It’s very unusual,” she said.

Walin held the first “Teen Voices, Teen Choices” workshop in several

years at a Newport-Mesa school last week, at Estancia High School. “And

even then, we went under the guise of another program,” she said.

Walin said she isn’t sure why her group hasn’t been invited to

Newport-Mesa schools. Perhaps residents don’t think teen pregnancy is an

issue here, she said.

In 1996, there were 186 teen pregnancies in the Newport-Mesa school

district, compared to Garden Grove’s 482 and Anaheim’s 941, according to

the National Center for Health Statistics.

But another program volunteer, 20-year-old Lorraine Guerrero, said she

thinks the district is being irrationally conservative.

“They think that it’s not an issue there, that they’re all good kids,”

said Guerrero, who became a mother when she was 17. “But I know plenty of

straight-A students who have children.”

John Carney, head of physical education at Costa Mesa High School, said

he didn’t know anything about the program but would welcome the speakers.

“I might have looked at the letter and thrown it in the trash,” he said.

“But I don’t think I would. I know those types of things are important.”

They are especially important to Walin, who graduated from Estancia High

School in 1986.

“It’s personal for me,” she said. “Maybe the need isn’t as high as other

areas we focus on, but I’m from Costa Mesa. I was born at Hoag. I’d

really like to get into this area.”