Reagan High School has faced some hardships recently: two years ago, a student was stabbed to death at school.
And it was one of a handful not to meet the "No Child Left Behind” federal guidelines two years in a row.
But one alum says teen pregnancy is by far the biggest threat to students. State Rep. Dawna Dukes, D-Austin, graduated from Reagan High School.
Now she wants to give something back by helping with the Ashera Project, a nonprofit pregnancy prevention organization for high school students in AISD.
"The rate of teen pregnancy at Reagan High School is so much higher than the state average, the national average and the rate in Travis County, which tends to be higher than the state and national average itself," Dukes said.
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Teen pregnancy
Reagan High School’s Ashera Project is a pregnancy prevention organization.
 
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Dukes and the band Grub Dog were the notables at a fundraiser celebration for the Ashera Project on Saturday.
It’s the organization's first year at Reagan High School. The Ashera Project was founded by three health educators who were looking for an opportunity to provide long-term sexuality education rather than one-shot presentations.
"If the teens feel like they really have a place in their community, if they feel like they make a difference where they live and where they live affects them, if they feel like they have future goals that they can reach once they get out of high school, then that's gonna be a deterrent for them to participate in behaviors that might put them at risk," organizer Stephanie Hebert said.
Dukes and the Ashera Project are trying their best to educate teens about sex and pregnancy, but they say a recent change in state textbooks present an added burden.
"It's unfortunate that the new health textbooks that have been passed by the state Board of Education, only mention abstinence, they don't mention any other contraceptive, barrier method, anything else for students who choose to be sexually active. And about 50 percent of Texas high school students are sexually active by the time they graduate," Hebert said.
Dukes said the push for abstinence education is also wrong.
"It's not just about pregnancy, it's about STDs, it's about AIDS, It's about a lot of other things and we can't take a chance that by saying 'hey be abstinent', that they're going to do it. That's about as effective as the say-no-to-drugs program and people ended up using them," she said.
