The statistic at the school in the heart of this old steel city contrasts with a decade of declining teen pregnancy rates nationwide. But teen pregnancy specialists say the problem is not exclusive to Timken High.
Specialists, parents, and students themselves struggle to explain why such pockets of high teen pregnancy rates appear. Are teens getting appropriate sex education? Do they have access to birth control, and are they using it consistently? Has the stigma of unwed motherhood lost its edge?
''This might be a school that is forthright with its problems while others are not," said Jay Green, chairman of the education reform department at the University of Arkansas. ''But this is a widespread issue."
Green wrote a study last year for the conservative Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, based in New York, that found 20 percent of urban teenagers have been pregnant, compared with 14 percent of suburban teens.
Urban teens as a whole don't use birth control as consistently or often, according to his research, and often have less to lose financially and socially than their counterparts in the suburbs.
But Green couldn't say whether those factors applied to Timken. The school of about 1,000 students draws teens from across the neighborhood and economic lines in the state's ninth-largest city.
Eric Wilson, 18, who works at a hot dog shop a few blocks from the school while making plans to get his GED and caring for his 2-year-old son, said the spotlight on Timken is magnifying an old problem.
''My mom had a kid when she was in school, and now I have a kid," he said. ''It goes back to how you were raised. Down here, it's not looked too down upon because a lot of parents had kids when they were kids."
Last school year, both high schools in the city's district reported 55 pregnancies. Ninety-nine pregnancies are expected in the district this year, most of them at Timken, where expecting students get six weeks of maternity leave.
''This has gotten to horrible proportions. I wish I knew the answer to why it's happening," principal Kim Redmond told the city's newspaper, The Repository. Redmond did not return several messages left by the Associated Press.
