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Posted on 01/10/2008 3:42:37 PM PST by Diana in Wisconsin
One out of three school-age children in Milwaukee, WI lived with a family in poverty in 2005, according to U.S. Census Bureau estimates released Wednesday.
Milwaukee ranked sixth highest overall among the nation's 70 largest school districts; only Cleveland, New Orleans, Detroit, Fresno, Calif., and St. Louis had higher percentages of children living with families in poverty.
Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett said creating jobs, resolving school-funding issues, getting more fathers involved in raising their children and getting kids to stay in school are key elements in reversing poverty's grip on the city.
"I literally go into classrooms and say, 'I'm Tom Barrett, I'm mayor of Milwaukee, and I'm begging you to stay in school and work hard,' " Barrett said. "We know that's the long-term solution. The short-term solutions are job retention and work force development."
Overall, 12% of Wisconsin children ages 5 through 17 lived with a family in poverty. Within many school districts in southeastern Wisconsin, the rates were extremely low. Ozaukee, Washington and Waukesha counties ranked among the nation's 28 counties with the lowest poverty rates of school-age children.
But Milwaukee continued to struggle, with 38,785 of 117,884 school-age children living with a family in poverty, up nearly 10,000 kids from the 2000 census.
Brother Bob Smith, president of Messmer Catholic Schools, said he sees the impact of poverty every school day. Eighty percent of the 1,500 students in Messmer schools are eligible for free school breakfasts and lunches, he said.
Recently, one student missed classes because her family was homeless and she couldn't get her uniform washed, Smith said. He said there are numerous cases of children who come to school in need of warmer coats or money for bus fares.
"One of the first things is to make sure we understand what poverty is," he said. "On one hand, it's not a death sentence. I grew up in Chicago in poverty. You deal with gangs or you deal with being made fun of because you don't have the latest shoes, or you're eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch.
"On the other hand, if you're able to really get kids to believe that there's a future and there's hope, and so many educational opportunities, you have to let them know they have to earn those," he said. "You don't get scholarships just because you're poor or you're black. You get them because you earn them."
William G. Andrekopoulos, superintendent of Milwaukee Public Schools, said poverty affects schoolchildren in a range of areas, including academic preparedness and health.
"We need to get kids in quality day-care programs so they can deal with the deficits children have, like vocabulary development," he said.
He said many impoverished children in the school system are in desperate need of care for physical, mental, even dental health. Children who are either homeless or who are often moving from home to home - and school to school - also are at risk, he said. Recently, one school principal told him that a child was acting out in class. It turned out the child needed a blanket because he was sleeping at night on a pallet.
"This housing thing is probably bigger than I ever know or can imagine," Andrekopoulos said.
School kids living in poverty also may be in unstable family situations, he said.
"When kids live in poverty, there is such a disarray with who really is the primary adult in the child's life," he said. "A number of people are struggling to make a living, (working) multiple jobs; their own survival is critical. That becomes an issue with the family. The whole parenting thing is an issue. It is a problem for the school system. We don't want to use it as excuses."
the kids need to rag on their parents to work harder and longer.
uh - what’s wrong with peanut butter?
When you are the 5th or 6th generation of your family to live on welfare, that’s all you’re going to know. Somehow, we need to make a job mandatory for a person to get welfare.
Mmmm.. peanut butter and dill pickle sammitch.
I’m serious!
Hillery! hasn't mentioned that.
Are you sure....
65% of the children in the entire County of Siskiyou CA live in poverty. Rural poverty doesn’t get near the attention of inner city poverty.
“You don’t get scholarships just because you’re poor or you’re black. You get them because you earn them.”
http://www.eldoradopromise.com/
1. Go to school
2. Graduate
3. Get a scholarship
What is El Dorado Promise?
El Dorado Promise is a unique scholarship program. The Promise provides graduates of El Dorado High School a tuition scholarship that can be used at any accredited Arkansas public university or community college, or any accredited private or out-of-state university.
Who is Eligible?
All students who graduate from El Dorado Public School, reside in the district, and have been an EPS student since at least the ninth grade. (Enrollment and residency must be continuous.)
Is El Dorado Promise Need-Based?
No.
What are the Terms of the Scholarship?
El Dorado Promise provides up to five years of tuition and mandatory fees for undergraduate post-secondary education for students entering college immediately following high school (unless interrupted by military service).
How is the El Dorado Promise Scholarship Funded?
Murphy Oil Corporation created the Promise to give El Dorado students an additional opportunity to pursue higher education. Murphy Oil Corporation will provide 100 percent of the Promise scholarship funds
And saying "NO!" to socialism would be a huge key element in Milwaukee, or any city. Socialism=Applied Boredom. Socialism=Poverty of Thought + Poverty of Inspiration + Poverty of Action=Poverty of Everything.
Socialism causes things fall apart, it's scientific.
Wouldn't surprise me if one out of three were obese, either.
I had some, and I’d have to dig it out. What I recall is that the original research showed gains for voucher students, but subsequent research showed significant flaws in the original methodology.
There were also problems with “private schools” that weren’t teaching anything but were getting rich off the voucher money, including maybe one run by a criminal or sex offender. Someone from that area might remember more.
I *think* some of the problems included that students who used the voucher program tended to perform better than those who didn’t to begin with.
So do I, and my kids, as well. However, I remember having PB&J sandwiches, hold the pb&j, and only one slice of bread. I grew up in poverty, too. And catsup sandwiches, hold the bread. Early pregnancy caused mine. Parents who are involved, as my mother was, even when working two and three jobs, however, can really help kids know there is a future out there. School is the path to that future.
Of course, in blue states, they seem to have a vested interest in keeping people in poverty.
getting more fathers involved in raising their children
Chicago—the city that keeps on giving.
The daddies are in Chicago...garnish their wages.
The people in this story are poor, inner city blacks. Very few own homes, have jobs or are married. They generally don’t pay any property taxes (and their slumlords don’t either, if the tax delinquency rates are to believed) or income taxes.
There is a culture in Milwaukee’s inner city that marks education as a bad thing. Working a job is “too white.”
Even the teachers I know despair of teaching most kids in the inner city. One retired teacher said that the only thing that has changed since she taught in the 1960s is that all the schools in Milwaukee suffer from the blight that was limited to a few inner city schools in 1960.
Most poverty in the US could be solved by learning to read, saving sex for marriage and showing up for work on time, 5 days a week.
Poverty in US = luxury in most of world.
That and what counts as poverty in the us gets more luxurious every year.
Electricity and running water need to be missing before I’ll consider it a big deal.
Is there a major city that is not rat operated? 500,000 population or more.
How about a roomate? Single parents who can’t afford to support their kids on their own salary need to network and share house and utility payments.
No one says you have the right to a 3 BR house all to yourself just because you have kids.
5 lb. bucket of Shed’s peanut butter in the house at all times.
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And what is the answer? Why, elect more Democrats, of course.
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