Danielle Ford reads to her son Nazaiah Crosse at Edward A. Reynolds West Side High School's LYFE

New York ? At West Side High School, kids sprawled on the floor as an African music CD played. A few jokesters had their peers in stitches.

The fun in one corner ended, however, when a stranger’s greeting set off a fountain of tears from one diaper-clad youngster.

West Side is one of 40 New York high schools that house a day care center. It serves the babies and toddlers of students – teenage parents who are trying to stay on track and raise little ones.

Danielle Ford said the center allows her to stick with her studies while she brings up Nazaiah, a brown-eyed toddler with a killer smile.

“I have nobody else to watch him for me,” she said as she watched her son dance in circles. “He has fun here. If he was home with me, he wouldn’t get to play with kids his age.”

Many urban school districts have day care centers attached to some schools. In Washington, D.C., five schools have day care facilities, including Bell Multicultural, a bustling high school that serves about 800 students.

Doris Briones credits Bell’s day care center with allowing her to graduate last spring. She is now enrolled in a college-prep program.

“When I got pregnant, I was really depressed. I thought that everything was gone already for me,” she said. “This day care center helped me through four years of school. By taking care of my child and letting me have the opportunity to study, here I am.”

Bell’s principal, Maria Tukeva, decided to add the center to the school a few years ago. First, she had to overcome her fear that providing free day care – just off the main corridor, for everybody to see – might make parenting look desirable or easy. To counter that message, she asks the teenage moms to participate in a pregnancy prevention program.

“We have the teen mothers speak to other young ladies to let them know it may look really cute and fun, but it’s really not that easy. That’s part of the way they give back to the school,” Tukeva said.

About 80 day care centers attached to public schools have gone through the rigorous process of earning accreditation from the National Association for the Education of Young People. Two are in Vista, Calif., outside San Diego.

Susie Bristow, director of the district’s teen-parent program, says the day care workers spend a lot of time teaching mothers the basics of child care. “They’re good mammas, but they are babies having babies,” Bristow said.

She says pregnant girls often have to be prodded to stay in school, even with the availability of day care. “We do a really good job of going to their houses and getting them off their sofa,” Bristow said.

One in four girls who drop out of school does so because she is pregnant or a parent, according to a survey by the nonprofit Gates Foundation. Very few boys who drop out cite that reason.

Studies indicate that when teenage parents go on to earn high-school degrees, the odds increase that their children will finish school.

Research shows children of teenage mothers lag behind other children when it comes to school readiness, language development and communication and interpersonal skills. But studies also show that providing disadvantaged children with high-quality preschool can narrow those differences.

Teenage pregnancy rates have declined since the early 1990s. Yet an estimated 400,000 teenagers still give birth each year.

In New York City, about 7,000 girls in the school system are either pregnant or are parents. About 500 use the day care centers attached to schools.