Pregnant student: seven rights in public school

This is a short bill of rights — three articles — that exists for a concrete reason the law itself explains in its statement of motives: that in many schools pregnant teenagers were pushed into night study or out of the regular curriculum. That is why the central right is not a new service but a continuity: remaining a regular student. It is not a program you apply to or an aid you process; it is a list of obligations on the school and the Department of Education that you can invoke when someone tries the opposite.

Every pregnant student in Puerto Rico’s public education system. The law sets no minimum or maximum age, requires no grade or GPA, and conditions none of the seven rights on a prior procedure. Article 1’s text says "in every school building of the country’s public education system", and the lactation areas in item 7 are created "in the school buildings of the Department of Education": this law was written for public school. If you attend a private school, this particular law is not the one that covers you.

• Being a pregnant student in the public education system. The law requires no procedure, application or prior certification for the seven rights to apply.Verified against the official source

• The law requires no documents to claim these rights. If you are going to request the academic support in item 3, that one is tied to a concrete situation: needing emergency medical or therapeutic assistance.

1. 1

   Step 1: The environment: privacy, dignity and zero pressure

   The first right is to enjoy an environment of tranquility, peace and respect for her right to privacy and dignity, and not to be a victim of physical or emotional abuse or psychological pressure because of her pregnancy in any school building of the country’s public education system. It is written as a place in the plural — "in every school building" — not just the classroom: it applies to the whole campus. And it names three distinct things: physical abuse, emotional abuse and psychological pressure. Repeated insistence that you switch programs, if because of the pregnancy, is exactly the kind of pressure this item names.

2. 2

   Step 2: The counseling has a direction written into the law

   The second right is to receive professional guidance, help and counseling through available programs and trained staff. The law lists the topics: planning and the consequences of teen pregnancy, the medical conditions and possible changes to her health during that period, how to develop an optimal family and community relationship suited to her situation, and the rights, responsibilities and duties she will assume in her role as a mother. And it ends with the phrase that gives all of the above its meaning: with special emphasis on ensuring she can remain a regular student of the public education system. If the counseling you receive points the other way, the law says which way it was supposed to point.

3. 3

   Step 3: Tutors in a medical emergency: a faculty, not a promise

   This is the only one of the seven items the law wrote as something the Department may do rather than must do, and it is worth knowing before asking. The text says the Department of Education may, if available, provide — where emergency medical or therapeutic assistance is needed — tutors or teachers in the various subjects so she can fully meet the curriculum and thus finish her school year. Two conditions in a single sentence: that emergency medical or therapeutic assistance be needed, and that the tutors be available. Ask for it, because that is what it is there for; but the law does not oblige the school to obtain them if it has none.

4. 4

   Step 4: Financial aid and the two coordinations

   Three rights that go together because all three are bridges out of the school. The fourth is to receive all financial aid and guidance on government subsidy programs or alternatives for her full social development and that of her family setting, enabling her to keep participating as a regular student of the education system. The fifth is that effective coordination be established for access to Department of the Family resources, regarding possible family, social or community relationship problems that contributed to her pregnancy or that may affect it or her studies. The sixth is the same effective coordination, this time with the Department of Health, regarding follow-up and proper attention to her pregnancy so as not to affect her capacity as a student of the school curriculum. The law puts the coordinating on the school’s side: it does not say the student goes looking for the resources herself.

5. 5

   Step 5: The lactation area and the restroom rule

   The seventh right was added by Act 178-2016 and is the most concrete of them all. Lactation areas shall be created in Department of Education school buildings where teenage mothers who wish to breastfeed may express their milk privately, bottle it and preserve it at an appropriate temperature, for the benefit of their children, without this affecting or interrupting their academic formation. The law sets three requirements for the area — safety, privacy and hygiene — and one prohibition you can verify by looking: it may not coincide with the area or physical space designated for restrooms. A bathroom is not a lactation area. The law adds a practical out for the school: where a lactation area exists under Act 155-2002, breastfeeding teenage mothers may use it without having to set up a new space.

6. 6

   Step 6: The law had to be published, and that duty is the Department’s

   Article 2 requires the Puerto Rico Department of Education to establish the mechanisms and systems for the general publication and dissemination of the Pregnant Student Bill of Rights, and gave it a start deadline: within thirty (30) days of this Act’s approval, the Department had to publish it in full in at least one (1) newspaper of general circulation for two (2) consecutive days. The thirty-day deadline ran out in 2004; what remains in force is the ongoing duty to disseminate. If nobody at your school knows this bill of rights, that duty is why you can ask that it be circulated.

There is no office to apply to: these rights apply by law at the school where you study, and the obligations fall on the school and on the Puerto Rico Department of Education. The law identifies the Department as responsible for publishing and disseminating the bill of rights and as the one that may provide the tutors in item 3, and charges it with coordination with the Department of the Family and the Department of Health. What we do not publish: which internal unit of the Department a non-compliance complaint goes to, because Act 220-2004 creates no complaint procedure and names no receiving office, and we will not invent an administrative route.

• Accepting a move to the night program as if it were normal: the law emphasizes remaining a regular student.
• Believing these rights must be applied for: they apply by law, with no prior procedure.
• Expecting tutors as a guarantee: item 3 says "may, if available" and requires emergency medical or therapeutic assistance.
• Accepting the restroom as a lactation area: the law expressly prohibits them from coinciding.
• Chasing Family and Health resources on your own: the law puts the effective coordination on the school’s side.
• Thinking this law covers private school: its text speaks of the public education system and Department of Education schools.
• Looking in this law for a fine or a complaint process: it has neither.

These are the government pages this guide is based on.

• Departamento de Educación de Puerto Rico

  Educación

  bvirtualogp.pr.gov

• Puerto Rico Department of Education

  DEPR

  de.pr.gov