Latest Coverage

"Luz Onofre has lived in the District since 1963, but she struggles to pay the below-market rent of $900 a month for her Mount Pleasant apartment."

"Other suggestions that have received strong support include excluding students living in college dorms and prison inmates from the population counts when calculating a town's per-capita income and eliminating or altering provisions in the current funding program that allow school districts to keep their level of grant funding even when their per-student share should be decreasing, if their poverty rate or other factors change."

" Preschool for disadvantaged children should not be another casualty of the budget wars."

"The result is that many schools would experience no layoffs, while high-poverty schools would have to shoulder a cycle of turnover and instability that would add to their challenges."

"The biggest issues, advocates say, are Medicaid reimbursement rates in Illinois that are among the lowest in the country for specialized care and administrative hassles that go along with treating low-income patients. Dentists say they can't make ends meet."

"Kentucky has had a pre-school program in our public schools since the 1990 passage of the Kentucky Education Reform Act. Families with incomes of up to 150 percent of the federal poverty level qualify for the program."

"The number of children living in poverty in the Marshfield School District has grown dramatically, and the district is actively expanding programs designed to keep up with the need."

"Mentors are matched with teens in the state's Twenty-first Century Scholars program, which promises college funding to low-income students who earn good grades and display responsible conduct"

"But as a low-income renter, Carter has limited options. And as a gay black man, he's concerned his choice of senior living facilities might be narrowed further by the possibility of intolerant residents or staff members."

"Tracey Korynas, PTA president at East Lake, said some parents want to help, but don't have transportation. She says a high poverty level may also hamper volunteers. More than 95 percent of students at East Lake are impoverished, according to the Tennessee Report Card. Meanwhile, at Ganns, the number of impoverished children is about 50 percent."

"The woes of public education could be addressed by a dramatic shift in redirecting dollars to social supports. Many people involved in education reform obviously have not spent a lot of time in the classrooms, hallways and cafeterias of our public schools (particularly those with higher poverty rates)."

"As discussed here two weeks ago, Port Huron teeters on the edge of the abyss. Urban planners say a city cannot remain viable, much less prosper, if its poverty rate exceeds 20%.Port Huron's poverty rate is 25%. Its median household income is two-thirds of the national average. Its jobless rate is twice the state average -- and the state average of 10.6% is abysmal."