By Cassi Feldman

SITTING IN A circle, seven young mothers wriggle their babies free of constrictive jumpers and lay them faceup on floor mats. Then each takes a dab of oil and, after warming it, starts to gently knead her baby's tiny feet and chubby legs.

Clearly, this isn't your average high school class – but then Hilltop isn't your average high school. The room is set up as a nursery, and all of these students, some as young as 13, are moms. The teacher, Ellen Sakoloff, is a public health nurse who visits three times a week as part of the Teenage Pregnancy and Parenting Project (TAPP).

"So many people give these girls advice," Sakoloff said. "We try to nurture their own good instincts." It's easy to see how they would gather strength from this community, one that seems to blur the usual boundaries of race and class.

That's what scares TAPP administrators most about a push by the city's Department of Human Services to take over part of their program, now run by a local nonprofit. If the DHS succeeds, there will be a bright line drawn between those teen moms who are on welfare and those who aren't.

The DHS claims that it can simply serve the aid recipients better in-house, but that's not the whole story. The takeover attempt comes at the behest of some of TAPP's own employees, who were apparently told by their representatives from Service Employees International Union, Local 790, that they could get better jobs if they worked for the city.

The result is an internal tug of war – one in which the girls themselves have the most to lose.

TAPP in hot water

Family Service Agency of San Francisco, TAPP's parent organization, is one of the Bay Area's oldest nonprofits, founded in 1889. Over the years it's grown from humble roots into a multimillion-dollar operation, with more than 300 employees and 18 different city contracts.

Along with vocational, mental health, and HIV programs, FSA/SF runs TAPP to help the city's 550 pregnant and parenting teens get the services they need. Included in the mix are approximately 100 clients who receive Cal-Learn, a type of welfare for teen parents still in school.

But that could soon change. Rather than have TAPP handle all the teens, the DHS wants to pull the funding the nonprofit uses to serve Cal-Learn recipients and take over that part of the caseload.

Although they would still be able to participate in the program, those on welfare would no longer have TAPP case managers who provide one-on-one counseling at their Mission school. Instead, they would be assigned city social workers, and may have to travel to DHS headquarters, at 170 Otis St., to see them.

"Our clients say they don't want to go to DHS – they can't use that system," said Naomi White, a child-development specialist for TAPP. "It's not just intimidating; it's often brutalizing."

If the plan goes through, White said, the moms won't have school-based support groups to discuss things like family planning and domestic violence. They won't be able to keep their babies in Hilltop's child care center while they go to class. Without these services, she fears, they may just give up – and drop out.

Many say they are baffled by the push, which threatens to create more problems than it would solve. At an April 4 Board of Supervisors committee hearing, Trent Rhorer, head of the DHS, noted that FSA/SF has run the program successfully for a number of years. "There's no issue about service provision," he said.

So why the takeover? According to Rhorer, several TAPP employees and their union reps contacted him last summer with concerns about high staff turnover. Since 1999, he said, 25 TAPP case managers, nearly its entire staff, have left the program. By comparison, he added, the DHS only loses approximately 10 percent of its social workers each year.

Rhorer admitted that it was unusual for the DHS to take over a high-performing program, but he said it was also unusual for nonprofit employees to request the city's intervention. There would be "more continuity for Cal-Learn recipients" if they had DHS case managers instead, he said. It would also save money: the city could run the state-funded program for $43,562 less a year than FSA/SF.

The DHS has no plan in place yet for how to serve the teens, but Rhorer said he felt confident his staff could come up with one by July 1, when the current contract expires.

Battling the boss

High turnover is just one of many problems, some TAPP employees say. They describe a chaotic workplace where cases sometimes slip through the cracks because of malfunctioning voice mail and antiquated computers. Management always promises to make changes, employees say, but never follows through.

"It's a circle," said Priscilla Arellano, a case manager for the past two years. "Bad management practices lead to high turnover, and that affects clients. Hopefully Lonnie [Hicks, executive director of FSA/SF] can learn a couple lessons from this."

At the hearing, Ruben Garcia, an organizer with Local 790, portrayed the agency's management as unresponsive and completely unwilling to compromise. After years of bitter negotiations over working conditions and health benefits, he said, "there's no solution in sight."

But some TAPP staffers see the union as part of the problem. They say the real reason TAPP workers went to the city was because they were each promised the ultimate carrot: a government job.

Case managers Helen Singh and Francisco Nieves told us that Garcia guaranteed all 14 TAPP case managers jobs with the city and said they could circumvent the regular hiring process regardless of their qualifications.

In fact, the DHS only plans to hire two to three full-time case managers and one administrative aid. The others will presumably stay at TAPP as case managers for the clients who aren't on welfare. Garcia did not return calls by press time.

Singh, who generally considers herself pro-labor, said she is outraged the union would push this plan. "If the county is allowed to take the funding for Cal-Learn, it will set a terrible precedent," she wrote in a March 12 letter to the Board of Supervisors, which will ultimately decide the future of the program. "An already vulnerable and marginalized part of our population will be further isolated by being stigmatized and discriminated against based solely on their economic status."

Home security

Jamilah Mahasin, an 18-year-old TAPP client, agrees. She told us it's been strange to hear so many case managers, including her own, publicly disparage the program.

Mahasin was an 11-year-old middle school student in Sunnydale when she found out she was pregnant, and it was already too late for an abortion. Now, seven years later, she says she's glad. Her daughter, Latifah, has become the center of her world.

But that isn't always a good thing. "At times I don't feel like an average teenager," she said. "I don't hang out. I don't go anywhere." Mahasin is too busy for that stuff – she works two part-time jobs, one at a health clinic and one as a peer educator for TAPP.

Meanwhile, she said, her time at the DHS, where she now collects adult welfare benefits, has yielded "nothing but paperwork." In just the past six months, she's had two different DHS social workers, which she considers ironic given Rhorer's emphasis on consistency.

Mahasin feels strongly that Cal-Learn clients should stay at TAPP. "You can just walk in there," she said. "It feels like a home."

The Board of Supervisors votes on the fate of the Cal-Learn clients Mon/15, 2 p.m., City Hall, Room 200, 1 Dr. Carlton B. Gooldett Place, S.F. (415) 554-4184.