BOSTON -- The Gloucester School Committee is deciding if it should bar the media from meetings scheduled for next month, where residents plan to discuss a surge in teeange pregnancies.

The city plans to hold three meeetings in September after news of the pregnancies made national headlines and was the subject of a parade spoof in a nearby town.

The meetings that will be run by the Public Conversations Project will be a platform for residents to talk about teenage pregnancy and debate contraception handouts -- which are not done at the high school's health clinic.

Earlier this summer, it was announced that 17 teenage girls in the city were pregnant and an alleged "pregnancy pact" made by some girls was questioned.

The annual "Horribles Parade" on July Fourth in Beverly Farms mocked the teen pregnancy crisis in Gloucester. Three floats featured parodies of the crisis, including a phallic symbol equipped with a water hose, teenage girls with bulging stomachs and two men in diapers riding a bicycle.

One of the floats was awarded the $400, second-place prize, despite protest from three judges who walked away from the contest.