Poverty and Education: Census: 20 Percent of City's Schoolchildren Lived in Poverty in 2005

from Red Orbit

By Sruthi Kunnel, Victoria Advocate, Texas

Jan. 26--More than 22 percent of Texas school-age children lived in poverty in 2005, according to information from the U.S. Census Bureau.

Texas had the seventh highest poverty rate in the country. The national average is 17 percent. Mississippi had the highest poverty rate, 28 percent, and New Hampshire had the lowest at 8 percent.

The data released by the U.S. Census Bureau details poverty rates among children ages 5 to 17 years for all the school districts in the country in 2005.

Across Texas, the rates for those living in poverty in the state's 1,033 school districts varied widely. Lackland school district in Bexar County hovered around 4 percent, and Santa Maria school district in Cameron County had more than 70 percent.

Victoria school district was around the middle with 3,139 of its 15,253 children, or 20.5 percent, living in poverty. The percentage has increased marginally each year from 17 percent in 2000.

Victoria school district offers a free lunch program, tutorial programs and special reading programs for economically disadvantaged students.

"The children (who live in poverty) are at a disadvantage,"Diane Boyett, Victoria school district communications specialist, said. "So we work to overcome those obstacles."

Matagorda County had the two school districts in the region with the highest percentages of poverty. The census report showed Palacios district had around 30 percent and Matagorda, a kindergarten through eighth-grade school, was at a little more than 29.

But Vicki Adams, director of federal funding at the Palacios school district, said that according to their data, Palacios has a higher poverty rate than the census is reporting --around 60 percent. She noted the rate varies based on how the shrimp and oyster industries are doing.

Adams said the district provides free breakfast to all the students, and free and subsidized lunches to students based on their economic status.

The district also provides accelerated classrooms for at-risk students. The classes have 10 or fewer students. At-risk students are those who are not on track to graduate in the allotted time. Adams said the classrooms are not exclusively for students living in poverty, but a lot of the students in the classes are from low socio-economic backgrounds.

Adams also added that not all students identified as living in poverty need tutorials. "Some of them are high achievers."

Austwell-Tivoli school district in Refugio County had the third highest percentage with 49 of the 170 children living in poverty in 2005. Superintendent Antonio Aguirre said that federal funding to the district is based on the data but because it is a rural district, the percentage of poverty rates and federal funding does not change much.

He said the school district has a free lunch program for all the staff and the students in the district and not just the students living in poverty.

"Students are students for us, and we take care of everyone,"he said.

Goliad school district provides federal free lunch programs and tutorials for students who come from economically disadvantaged backgrounds.

"A very large percentage of students who are eligible take advantage of the tutorials," said Goliad Superintendent Sam Atwood. Of the district's 1,241 students, 256, or 20.6 percent, lived in poverty in 2005.

Laura Shay, superintendent of the Matagorda school district, said the data would not affect funding for them because the district is a Robin Hood school. A Robin Hood school means that the school district gets to keep only a pre-determined amount of tax revenue and has to give the rest to the state. The amount is determined based on the property values and the number of students.

She said that the amount of taxes the district gets to keep is revised every few years and the current amount does not reflect current data. She said the school district absorbs the costs and provides free lunches to all the students, irrespective of their economic status. She said the difficulty in implementing a free lunch program is that the schools are required to have 100 percent enrollment, which might be difficult for larger school districts.

Shay said they know that students living in poverty had to face more disadvantages in the learning process. "We continue to want to be a safe place for these low-income kids to come to," she said. "We want to provide a quality education to all the students, irrespective of their economic background."