George Loper has combined figures from Gary Grant‘s most recent constituent report with figures from the city to come up with a list of city and county schools and the percentage of students living in poverty. Poverty percentages are defined under a federal income formula, and eligibility for a free lunch is defined by income guidelines. In the county, levels range from 59% (Yancey Elementary) to 2.9% (Meriwether Lewis Elementary); in the city, from 81% (Clark Elementary) to 21% (Venable Elementary.) This provides an interesting snapshot on the economic well-being of each corresponding district in the area.
News and meta-news about Charlottesville, VA, since 2001.
Sideblog
Police announced this afternoon that their investigation into what was initially believed to be a fatal fire on Rugby Avenue is now a homicide investigation. #
The Virginia Supreme Court has denied George Huguely’s appeal. His second-degree murder conviction will stand, WRIC reports. #
In a carefully worded story, and not citing specific sources, WTVR reports that forensic evidence belonging to Jesse Matthew Jr., the main suspect in the disappearance of Hannah Graham, matches forensic evidence collected during the investigation of Morgan Harrington’s 2009 murder. #
In the wake of Hannah Graham’s disappearance, and the evidence that came from private security footage, city officials are revisiting the question of installing security cameras on the downtown mall. #
Both Charlottesville Registrar Sheri Iachetta and former Electoral Board member Stephanie Commander have turned themselves in to the police on
foursix and four felony counts of embezzlement, respectively. #Ten years ago, the National Institutes of Health budget doubled and schools like the University of Virginia built massive new research facilities. A decade later, those buildings remain largely underutilized. NPR visits UVA in this story on the effect of federal binge and spurge spending in the sciences. #
In 2012, Council approved a new student housing complex on West Main—now some council members are questioning whether what they were shown matches what was built. #
The Architectural Review Board has approved a bike-themed mural on West Market, below the McGuffey Art Center, although at least one member expressed concerns that it might look like the bicyclists were riding away from Charlottesville’s downtown. #
City Police Chief Tim Longo is meeting with city leaders to work on protocols regarding the use of military surplus police weapons in Charlottesville. #
A 100-year-old Colonnades resident received military honors for her service in the WWII Women’s Army Corps #
-
Archive for Sideblog »
Combine Loper’s list with the report from the DP on how “a person earning the minimum wage of $5.15 an hour would have to work 104 hours each week to live comfortably in Charlottesville.
81% in one district?!?! Is anyone else amazed and apalled by this number??
Since my family forms part of that 81% I’m not amazed. Clark serves public housing, trailer parks, and the Carlton neighborhood ("working class"). Many if not most of the gentrified homeowners in Belmont send their elementary school kids…elsewhere; this exacerbates the statistics.
Where we choose to zone multi-family units creates pockets of poverty. Where we choose to draw the lines between districts creates schools serving poverty. It’s been about two decades since Charlottesville last drew district lines. This isn’t just a Charlottesville problem, it’s grotesquely common. Try reading Jonathan Kozol’s "Savage Inequalities" sometime. Painful.
Minimum wage. Zoning. School district lines. It all interconnects.
Moment of irony: the Lewis family was wealthy, the Clark family was not. Look at the reported poverty levels at these two local schools. This kind of thing’s been around here for centuries. And we’re still using the same names for it.
This is NOT a valid indicator of poverty. The numbers are too low.
My family was desperately poor and on government assistance at one point when I was a child. I did not apply for meal discounts, because school food is disgusting. Did YOU eat it? NO WAY! I just had cheaper school lunches packed with food-stamps food.
I was unemployed for awhile, and I didn’t file for unemployment. Guess what, the unemployment figures are too low as well. Do you really drive through cville and see that there are people wandering around during business hours and think "wow, only one percent of cvillians are unemployed".
So don’t believe the numbers, they’re too low. It’s this "we’re number one" mentality that causes a competition for "better numbers" that help our economy out. What? Unemployment is down? WOOO! BUY BUY BUY!
When you look at the list for C’ville schools, the numbers city-wide go down as the students grow older: Walker 52%, Buford 41%, and CHS 25%. Are fewer students applying for free and reduced lunch, or are fewer children of poverty making it all the way through their schooling? Either way, the numbers suggest an area of concern.
I was at a school board meeting within the past year where their number cruncher answered exactly this question for the board. Predominantly the answer is that the applications simply aren’t submitted. Conjecture was that it was the increasing peer pressure and shame of being poor as adolescence progressed which profoundly depressed the number of applications being submitted.
When you look at the list for C’ville schools, the numbers city-wide go down as the students grow older: Walker 52%, Buford 41%, and CHS 25%. Are fewer students applying for free and reduced lunch, or are fewer children of poverty making it all the way through their schooling? Either way, the numbers suggest an area of concern.
Without crunching the numbers, I can provide an alternate scenario that seems plausible. Each level of schooling has more and more kids enrolled, which likely indicates that a broader section of the city is present. Perhaps averaging the percentages from each elementary school would yield the 25% that we see for CHS.
However, the city does only have one middle school, so the 41%/25% schism between Buford and CHS is certainly notable.
I’m sorry that I don’t have time to do the math — I’ve got a U.S. Government paper that I should be working on now. :)
All city children also go to Walker (the only upper middle school). I imagine if the city went back to the two middle school arrangement prior to the current configuration, we would see a wide disparity between a Walker Middle School and Buford Middle School (one of the primary reasons for the change to an upper elementary and middle school model); more children of poverty at Buford and fewer at Walker.
Gary Grant’s figures isn’t only about child poverty. It also shows how the school districts are designed to concentrate poverty and to keep certain districts, like Meriwether Lewis, free of anyone not well off.
It’d be easy to rejigger the districts and create lower numbers overall. Except then, MWL would have to go up from 2.9% and you know the parent’s would scream.