Poverty numbers still troubling
Staff writer
Where Marion County performed at startlingly low levels for 2009’s Kids Count Data, the county improved the most in the 2010 data.
Kansas Kids Count is a combined effort by the Annie Casey Foundation, Kansas Action for Children, and Families and Communities Together. It is a statistical snapshot of the health and vitality of Kansas children, and how they compare on a county-by-county basis.
The Kids Count Data this year reported that up to 77 percent of Marion County Kindergartners are fully immunized. The numbers from last year indicated only 51 percent of Marion County kindergartners had been immunized. The five-year average trend for Marion County immunizations is up 5.22 percent.
Within Marion County’s peer group — rural counties including Clay, Harper, Kingman, Morris, Ottawa, and Rice Counties — 74.2 percent of kindergartners were immunized reflecting a .41 percent increase. Kansas’ immunization percentage is 63 percent down 1.25 percent from 2009.
Marion County also increased the number of birth mothers receiving prenatal care, up .19 percent from 2009 to 87.8 percent. Low birth weight babies, 5.5 pounds or less, decreased 1.93 percent to 4.07 percent of live births.
“We have a lot of really good early childhood programs,” FACT Coordinator Linda Ogden said. “We have an excellent network of agencies that collaborate.”
Other positive numbers for the county were education.
Marion County has 136.38 head start education slots available per 100 children, up 11.92 spots in the five-year trend.
Sixty percent of elementary schools offer pre-kindergarten education, an 8 percent increase. In Marion County 80 percent of kindergartens are all-day, up 10 percent.
Marion County was also up in reading proficiency with 89.51 percent of fifth-graders meeting or exceeding standards, up 4.07 percent.
“The Marion County stuff looks pretty darn good,” Ogden said.
The county does have distressing numbers in other areas.
The county’s percentage of high school graduates, 86.03 percent, is low.
“Schools don’t always count dropouts the same,” Ogden said. “If they go to the learning center they may or may not be listed as a dropout.”
The rural peer group has 91.72 percent of high school students graduate and the Kansas percentage is 87.51.
In two other categories, Ogden said the way data is collected caused high numbers in Marion County. Teen violent deaths — resulting from suicide, homicide, or motor vehicle accidents — are nearly 209 per 100,000 15- to 19-year-olds. The peer average is 79.52 and the Kansas average is negative 38.53. According to the survey, Marion County has 11,982 residents.
“It’s because the numbers are so low,” Ogden said. “One incident is a huge percentage.”
The other category that could be skewed by a smaller population in Marion County was infant mortality. Marion County has an infant mortality rate of 8.13 deaths of children under the age of 1 per 1,000 live births. The peer rate is 9.05 and the Kansas rate is 7.25. Marion County showed a much steeper increase at 2.05 percent than its peers at .87 percent.
Ogden said one of the reasons for the high infant mortality rate is because of deaths in unlicensed care facilities. Ogden said a law that changed July 1 puts child care facilities under the scrutiny of inspections, performed by Anita Hooper in Marion County. The fees for licenses will increase to pay inspectors’ salaries and Ogden is working on a grant to help child care facilities with the cost.
“We want them to become licensed,” Ogden said.
Ogden is troubled by the economic data. She is worried that 12.9 percent of Marion County children are living below 100 percent poverty — $21,200 annual income or less for a family of four — and 43 percent of Marion County students are receiving free and reduced priced lunches. With the data having been collected in 2008, she said the percentages are actually much higher.
“Although Marion County has a smaller percent of children living in abject poverty than for peers or the state, there are larger numbers of children and hard working families in our county who struggle to make ends meet with gross monthly incomes of $2,000 to $3,500, which is in the range of 150 to 200 percent of the Federal Poverty Level,” Ogden said.
“It confirms what we know about the economic situation; more families are struggling,” she added. “For all school districts, 43 percent is pretty high.”