How Sarasota’s Cyesis Program Helps Teen Parents Stay in School

Four years ago, Jeanni Castro had big plans. A high-achieving student at Sarasota High School and a star performer in the Sailor Circus, she was about to start her senior year and had mapped out a path to college after graduation. She went to circus practice every day after school, but still found time to work at Ben & Jerry’s and the Sarasota Farmers Market, and she supplemented those jobs by babysitting and working as a product manager for a local essential oil company. Then, a week before she was scheduled to take the SATs, she found out she was pregnant.

“When the first pregnancy test came back positive, my heart just dropped,” Castro says. Subsequent tests confirmed the result, and she remembers lying in bed that first night with her mind racing. “I said to myself, ‘This is not possible. I can’t have a kid. I’m so busy. My parents are going to go crazy, and this just can’t happen.’”

“At the same time,” she says, “there was another little voice in my head telling me that I’ve always known I wanted to be a mom, that it’s kind of exciting to be growing a baby and that everything was going to be OK. There were a lot of conflicting feelings.”

A close friend accompanied Castro to an ultrasound appointment. “At that point, I was 60 percent thinking I would keep the baby and 40 percent thinking that I would have an abortion,” she says. “When I saw [the fetus] on the ultrasound, I was like, ‘OK, I have to go through with this. There’s no turning back now.’ That was the pivotal turning point for me.”

Castro went home with her mind made up, but waited another week before talking to her father. “I was definitely not ready,” she says. “However, it was the night before the Sailor Circus tuition was due for the year, so I knew that I had to tell him before he paid all of that money. After I told him, he had a lot of questions, but he knew that what I needed most was his support. From that moment on, I went into planning mode.”

While the popular perception may be that teen pregnancy rates remain high, they have dropped dramatically over the past three decades, making stories like Castro’s rarer than in generations past. According to a 2023 study by the national research organization Child Trends, teen birth rates in the U.S. have declined almost 76 percent over the past 30 years, and Florida has seen that same directional trend.

“Florida’s teen birth rate falls around the middle of the country,” says Kira-Lynn Ferderber, an outreach educator with Planned Parenthood of Southwest and Central Florida.  “Overall, it’s declining, but county by county in Florida it is different. In Sarasota, it’s a little lower. In Manatee, it’s a little higher. We do know that teens are absolutely still becoming parents—both older teens and younger teens.” Florida’s Republican-led legislature and Gov. Ron DeSantis also recently instituted a ban on abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, a point at which many women don’t even know they’re pregnant, leading to concerns that the state’s teen birth rate, after declining for decades, may begin to rise again.

Teen pregnancy is a disruptive event for the young women who experience it. “Even though lots of kids work hard and get through school, which is admirable, teen pregnancy is still correlated with worse long-term outcomes for child development and getting out of poverty,” says Ferderber. She says research shows that risk-taking behavior among teens decreased during the Covid-19 pandemic, but that “regardless of educational format or the kind of school that someone attends, some teenagers will be sexually active.”

One of the first decisions Castro had to make was what to do about school and the circus. She had been enrolled in the Advanced International Certificate of Education program at Sarasota High, and she was also one of the first students participating in a new circus magnet program at the school that had been created in partnership with The Circus Arts Conservatory. The conservatory’s leadership ultimately decided that they didn’t think it was safe for her to continue in the circus program due to her pregnancy, so during the first week of school, she met with her guidance counselor, who recommended the Cyesis Teen Parent Program at Riverview High School.

“At first, I didn’t think I wanted to go there,” Castro says, “but my counselor told me about all of the benefits.” With her parents’ support, she took a tour at Riverview and decided to transfer.

The Cyesis program dates back to 1978, when a group of concerned citizens and community agencies in Sarasota County saw a need for an educational program for pregnant and parenting teens that would allow them to stay in school. The program influenced the state legislature’s decision to pass a law in 1994 guaranteeing all teen parents the right to an education with additional services to assist them in raising a child. After operating out of a facility on Beneva Road for 30 years, Cyesis moved to Riverview in 2009.

According to Meredith Piazza, the licensed clinical social worker who has run the program for the past six years, Cyesis—which means “pregnancy” in Greek—still adheres to its original mission, which includes providing academic, social and emotional support for pregnant and parenting teens; preventing child abuse and neglect; promoting healthy attachment relationships; and offering high-quality, onsite child care.

Before becoming director of the program, Piazza was a contracting therapist with Forty Carrots Family Center who worked with pregnant teens on attachment and bonding with infants. “Cyesis was built to wrap expectant and parenting teens with the support they need most,” she says. “We have a lot of community partners that come in and work with our students on parenting, child development and emotional and mental health.”

Transportation with car seats is available for Cyesis students, and child care is provided through a partnership with Children First, which is the Early Head Start provider in Sarasota County. Early Head Start is a federally funded child care program that supports pregnant women and families with children under the age of 3, while Head Start serves children between the ages of 3 and 5. When students graduate from Cyesis, they are already in the Head Start system, which guarantees them no-cost child care through the age of 5. Other organizations that work with Cyesis include First 1000 Days Suncoast, Healthy Families and the Florida Department of Health in Sarasota County.

“One of the first things they did when I started Cyesis was to set us up with Medicaid and WIC [the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children] and show us how to apply for grants to help out with medical expenses,” Castro says. “I ended up getting one that helped pay for my down payment for my midwife.”

“I also had the support of my family,” she continues. “Growing up, my dad was constantly supportive and intelligent in preparing me to navigate through life, which helped me in this new chapter. But for those in Cyesis who didn’t have that type of guidance at home, it was extremely helpful for them to learn how to access the resources that are out there. The last thing they wanted us to do was stress.”

Cyesis has a garden where students grow tomatoes, lettuce and other vegetables, and in cooking classes they learn how to prepare snacks for their children with the produce from the garden and ingredients they can buy through WIC. “Overall, Cyesis was very beneficial for me,” Castro says. “There were therapists we could meet with anytime we had issues that we wanted to talk about. The health department came in every week to give a talk on different topics, usually related to sex ed, birth control and stuff like that. I remember finding that a bit ironic, like, ‘It seems a little late for that.’”

Castro says she hadn’t taken any sex education classes in school prior to becoming pregnant. In Sarasota County public schools, sex education is taught as part of the Health Opportunities Through Physical Education course, which is mandatory. But some students, like Castro, who are in magnet or dual-enrollment programs that require specific classes in addition to a core academic curriculum, may sign a waiver to opt out of the class so they can fulfill other requirements, leaving gaps in their health education.

According to current Sarasota County Schools policy, classes that cover human sexuality must “teach abstinence from sexual activity as the accepted standard for all school-age children while teaching the benefits of monogamous heterosexual marriage.” (The school system declined to comment on the topic. Florida health education standards used by the district that were reviewed by Sarasota Magazine included no mention of birth control or ways to prevent sexually transmitted diseases, aside from abstinence.)

“The closest thing I had was biology class,” Castro says, “and I had also taken an elective anatomy and physiology class, but we never learned anything about birth control. After taking the sex ed classes at Cyesis, I think hearing the statistics about pregnancy and STDs earlier would have had an impact, because I’d have learned that literally wearing a condom will help you not get pregnant 99 percent of the time. Plus, we learned all about the different birth control options, and it was eye-opening.”

Planned Parenthood’s Ferderber says, “Although I don’t personally work in the public schools at this time, I do work with high school students in Sarasota outside of their schools in our Peer Education Program, and I know what questions they’re asking me. I know what information they’re not getting, and what misinformation they are hearing. As far as I understand it, the way that sex ed operates in Sarasota public schools is that there’s a requirement to provide some education, but it is still the abstinence-focused education where the school is supposed to set an expectation that young people are not going to be sexually active. That kind of education isn’t proven to equip people to be safe when they do choose to have sex. We’re not giving young people the advantage of all the technology and advancements that we have, and without that they are not able to make informed decisions.”

At Cyesis, Castro found herself with a whole new group of peers. “It was so nice to have those mom friends and know that you’re all in the same boat,” she says. “For a while I was the only in-person pregnant student in the program, and they were all so excited for me.”

“It’s diverse,” Piazza says of the demographics at Cyesis. “We pull students from all different high schools in the county, from all types of families and backgrounds, so there’s not a ‘typical’ Cyesis student. One thing that many of our students have in common is that the odds are stacked against them regarding their ability to earn, learn and raise a family. Many of our young parents have experienced stressful life events, trauma, financial insecurity, and food and housing insecurity. The one thing they all have in common is being parents, so they build their own little community here.”

“There is a consistent theme of wanting to be the best parent that they can be and wanting to provide for their child and give them a different experience,” Piazza continues. “Teen pregnancy does not need to be a reason that you can’t continue school. We find a way to make it work.” Cyesis and its support services are open to teen fathers, as well, and occasionally there are a few, but when Castro was in the program, there were none. (The father of Castro’s child is not currently involved in her life.)  “The majority of mothers are navigating this on their own or with a lot of outside and family support,” Piazza says.

Many teen mothers struggle academically. A 2018 study by Child Trends showed that just 53 percent of young women in the U.S. who gave birth as teens earned a high school diploma, compared with 90 percent of those who did not give birth.

Piazza says the percentage of Cyesis students who receive a diploma ranges from 67 to 100, depending on the year. Of the 15 seniors in the program this past year, all 15 met the requirements to walk in their high school graduation ceremonies. Four of them still need to complete state assessment requirements, but Piazza says she is hopeful that after another round of testing, all 15 will obtain their diplomas.

Graduation rates are just one of the benchmarks that Piazza looks at when she evaluates how Cyesis is doing. She also looks at the quality of the parent-child relationships; the students’ social and mental health; their access to safe housing, nutrition, child care and health care; and their plans for continuing their education or securing a job. “The high school diploma may be the main goal we are working towards, and we work hard in every way to help them achieve this,” Piazza says, “but there is so much more that I want for them to ensure that they leave Cyesis on a healthier trajectory.”

Understanding how hard it had been for Castro to give up one of her greatest passions, the circus, Piazza referred her to Sarasota’s Miss Jodi’s School of Dance, where Castro was hired as a coach for aerial silks, lyra and hammocks, acts she had previously performed in the Sailor Circus. This helped keep her connected to some of the things she loved, and she was able to coach all the way up until she gave birth.

Castro’s daughter River was born on April 16, 2021. During her early postpartum days, Castro stayed at home with River while continuing to take classes on Zoom. That June, Castro walked in the Riverview High School graduation ceremony with her graduating class. Then she and River moved to Tallahassee, and Castro began her studies at Florida State University in August. She was able to find subsidized child care through an organization called Kids, Inc. so she could attend classes and train with the FSU Flying High Circus. “When I first came to FSU,” she says, “I met a few friends who were all really supportive of me and River. We did everything together and River would come along with us. I had a pretty good social life because I could take her with me, and there were some other college students that I became friends with who would babysit for me. I’ve become sort of a role model in Tallahassee for other teen moms because I’m very open about it and very public with my daughter, so people feel comfortable coming to me and talking about it.”

Castro graduated in May with a bachelor’s degree and recently began an online graduate program at FSU in hospitality entrepreneurship, which will enable her to perform with the FSU Flying High Circus for one more year. She has also started two of her own businesses: Wild Hippie Cosmetics, which makes candles, soaps and natural body care products, and Genie Birthing Services, which provides hypnobirthing and pregnancy support geared specifically toward pregnant teens and others with unexpected pregnancies.

River is now 3, and Castro says she is a social girl who is already showing signs of wanting to follow in her mother’s footsteps and join the circus. “Looking back, I’m very grateful for the decision I made,” she says. “It made me more mature. A lot of people think it must have been so hard, but honestly, I feel like it hasn’t been that hard for me. I’ve had to adapt, but I’m still doing the same things I would have done, and she just pretty much tags along. It might not be the same experience as it would be without her, but I don’t feel like I’ve missed out.”