When Josie Lerma became pregnant at 16, staying in school required more than determination for teen parents. She was balancing classes at Harlingen High School along with motherhood, while her newborn baby received specialized care at Driscoll Children’s Hospital.
It was an on-campus childcare program that gave Lerma a safe place for her daughter while she attended class. The support helped her stay in school during a time when one missed ride, one day without childcare, or one family emergency could have pushed her further behind.
That was in 1992. Thanks to that program, Lerma graduated high school and later earned a bachelor’s degree.
Today, more than three decades later, she is helping offer a new generation of Harlingen students the kind of support that once made a difference for her.
This school year, Harlingen Consolidated Independent School District and Niños Head Start launched a coordinated program at Jefferson Head Start Academy for pregnant and parenting high school students.
The first-year partnership brings transportation, Early Head Start care, and family services together for young parents. Lerma is Niños’ program director at Jefferson.
“They believed in me,” Lerma said about the school administrators. “That’s the support and belief that I want to give to the teen moms. We believe in them, and we got you. We’re right behind you. You just take the step. Don’t be scared. We’re here.”
The arrangement is designed around one of the most basic obstacles a student parent can face: getting both them and their child where they need to go. HCISD transportation can pick the student up anywhere within the district and take them and their child to Jefferson. The child remains at the academy for Early Head Start services while the district takes the student to and from high school.
The program is open to student moms and dads at no cost. Three babies are currently enrolled, and Niños staff said two more are in the process of joining the program. There is no waitlist, and organizers said additional spaces are available.
Teen births have fallen. The need for support remains
Cameron County has historically had a higher teen birth rate than Texas and the nation. The CDC’s latest county estimate, from 2020, put Cameron County at about 34 births per 1,000 girls and young women ages 15 to 19. That year, the rate was about 20 in Texas and 15 nationwide.
Statewide averages also mask a significant racial and ethnic disparity. In 2023, Texas’ teen birth rate was 27.9 births per 1,000 among Hispanic youth, nearly three times the rate of 10.5 among non-hispanic white youth, according to Healthy Futures of Texas. That statewide disparity is especially relevant in Cameron County, where most residents are Hispanic or Latino.
Even as the overall teen birth rate has declined, those disparities add context to the continued need for support in the area. School systems still face the question of how to help pregnant and parenting students stay on track to graduate.
South San Antonio ISD, for example, provides transportation and childcare assistance, counseling, and academic support. Nearby neighbor Brownsville ISD uses a different model at Lincoln Park High School, an optional alternative campus with childcare on site.
(Mary Avila-Shears/Courier Texas)
Harlingen’s model differs in one important way: Students do not have to transfer. They remain at their home high schools while their children receive Early Head Start care at Jefferson, with transportation and family services coordinated through the partnership.
The help extends beyond a place for a baby to stay. Children receive early learning opportunities, health and developmental screenings, nutrition support and other Early Head Start services. Meanwhile their parents can receive parenting guidance, family services, individualized goal setting, and connections to resources such as WIC (the federal Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children) and mental health care.
Pregnant students can also begin receiving support before their babies are born.
David Kowalski, CEO of Niños Head Start, said the partnership grew from a roughly 15-year relationship between Niños and HCISD. The organizations spent about a year working through how responsibilities would be divided at Jefferson.
HCISD provides the school-day structure, certified teachers, and transportation. Niños provides Early Head Start care and family support. Niños said funding for the collaboration comes from the two organizations.
“We’re assisting [student parents] in all their needs so they don’t feel that their world is crumbling down,” Lerma said. “They feel that support.”
Noelia Garza, an HCISD department specialist, said school counselors and Niños family service workers form what she called “a whole army” around student parents.
“It makes them feel like, ‘Man, these people are for me,’” Garza said. “There’s a whole army of people here that are just rooting them on.”
A shared campus, with results still to come
The teen-parent initiative is part of a broader birth-to-5 model at Jefferson. One part of the campus serves Niños children from infancy through age 2, including babies as young as about four weeks. HCISD operates three Pre-K 3 classrooms on the same campus, with 96 students enrolled out of a capacity of 102 for the 2026–27 school year.
The shared campus is intended to concentrate early childhood expertise and family services while making better use of existing facilities and resources. HCISD plans to move additional Pre-K 3 classrooms from other campuses into the Jefferson model next school year.
Because the teen-parent partnership is in its first year, it does not yet have attendance or graduation results. Niños said it plans to track whether student parents remain enrolled, attend school, earn credits, and graduate. For their children, the organization plans to monitor attendance, developmental progress, and school readiness.
Niños previously served teen parents referred by Santa Rosa ISD, but the organization said attendance, credit, and graduation outcomes were not tracked under that arrangement. Officials described the Harlingen program as a different and more coordinated model because transportation, childcare, education, and family services are built into the plan.
How teen parents can get help
Student parents interested in the program can begin by speaking with a counselor at their HCISD campus. Counselors work with district staff and Niños family service workers to connect eligible families with services. Families may also submit a pre-application through Niños or call the organization at 956-399-9944. Participation is subject to Early Head Start eligibility and program requirements.
For Lerma, the program’s potential cannot be reduced to a future spreadsheet. She sees it in her own life. The teenager who relied on on-campus childcare went on to earn a degree and build a career supporting families. Three of her children attended Head Start, and she now has six grandchildren.
She also sees that possibility in a current student who believed childcare would end when she finished high school. Lerma told her the support could continue, as she moves into college.
“We’re here for every step of the way,” Lerma told her.
That is the message Lerma wants every young parent to hear when pregnancy or parenthood makes graduation feel farther away.
“We believe in them,” she said. “We got you.”
