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Thursday, October 10, 2024

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Florida picks up the pieces after Hurricane Milton; Georgia elected officials say Hurricane Helene was a climate change wake-up call; Hosiers are getting better civic education; the Senate could flip to the GOP in November; New Mexico postal vans go electric; and Nebraska voters debate school vouchers.

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Civil rights groups push for a voter registration deadline extension in Georgia, federal workers helping in hurricane recovery face misinformation and threats of violence, and Brown University rejects student divestment demands.

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Hurricane Helene has some rural North Carolina towns worried larger communities might get more attention, mixed feelings about ranked choice voting on the Oregon ballot next month, and New York farmers earn money feeding school kids.

Report: Increased children’s health coverage in WY, education needs boost

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Monday, June 10, 2024   

The number of Wyoming children with health insurance increased last year - but the state still ranked low in the nation for children's health overall, according to a new report.

The annual Kids Count Data Book, published by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, tracks year to year changes in children's well-being.

In 2022, about 11,000 Wyoming kids didn't have health insurance - or about 8%, down from 11% in 2019.

Micah Richardson - associate director of policy for the Wyoming Women's Foundation at the Wyoming Community Foundation - said that may be due to the pandemic-era continuous enrollment provision.

Nearly 13,000 people enrolled in Medicaid have lost coverage in Wyoming during that process, according to KFF. But Richardson pointed out that qualifications for adults and children are different.

"Sometimes parents don't realize that their children are still eligible to be enrolled when the parent is not," said Richardson. "And so I'm curious to see what will happen as that unwinding happens."

Richardson also noted the increase in Wyoming kids in single-parent families - from 25% in 2019 to 29% in 2022.

That concerns Richardson because of the increasing costs for housing and other expenses in Wyoming.

Looking at education data, Wyoming kids showed the same patterns as kids nationally - proficiency in reading and math for elementary and middle schoolers is declining, likely due to learning loss during COVID.

Richardson said there are some overlooked approaches to changing those statistics.

"But," said Richardson, "making sure that we're also supporting our youth and their mental health along the way is going to be really important to helping those scores come up. "

Another approach is, of course, providing extra learning support for students falling behind, through tutoring and creating appropriate learning environments, for example.

Leslie Boissiere - vice president of external affairs with the Annie E. Casey Foundation - said there are still billions of dollars available to schools through the pandemic-era Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief, or ESSER, funding.

"It's incredibly important that all schools in all states use the funds that were made available to them during the pandemic," said Boissiere, "in order to ensure that they can provide the resources that students need."



Disclosure: Annie E Casey Foundation contributes to our fund for reporting on Children's Issues, Education, Juvenile Justice, Welfare Reform. If you would like to help support news in the public interest, click here.


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