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Poverty is no ABOVE: Redwood City Teachers Association President Bret Baird says the middle class is rapidly disappearing in Redwood City. ABOVE: Vallejo Education Association member Lynette Henley says her students are increasingly worried about where they will sleep and what they will eat. tax fairness and corporate greed. Despite having the eighth-largest economy in the world, the Golden State does little to care for its underprivileged members. POVERTY IS SPREADING RAPIDLY An estimated 2.2 million children in Cali- fornia — one in four — lived in poverty last year, according to new U.S. Census data. The number of Californians living in pov- erty increased to nearly 6 million — more than the populations of most states. Chil- dren of color are four times more likely than white children to be born into the WHAT IS POVERTY? Another indicator of poverty is the number of children who qualify for free and reduced- price meals at school. Last year, 281,696 more public school students were eligible, representing a 9 percent increase in eligibility over a three-year period, according to www. kidsdata.org, a research branch of the Lucile Packard Foundation for Children's Health. In Oakland, where 70 percent of students qual- ify, some schools are even offering dinner. Poverty means a lack of access to health care. California cut the Healthy Families pro- gram, and nearly 1 million children in the pro- gram must pay more for visits to health care most "economically fragile" households, with 69 percent of Latinos and 71 percent of African Americans categorized as "income poor," compared with 32 percent of whites, according to a new report from the Center for Community Economic Development. longer the exception; it's just a way of life. Lynette Henley California ranks 40th in the nation in child homelessness (where 50th is worst), according to the National Center on Family Homelessness. The McKinney-Vento Home- less Education Assistance Improvement Act of 2001, part of No Child Left Behind, defines this as living in cars, motels, shel- ters, campgrounds or "shared housing." School districts, says Kottke, have been LESS THAN $44,100 FAMILY INCOME Poverty is defined by the federal government as families with children having an income below $44,100, even though most families need much more than that amount to survive in California, which has an extremely high cost of living. providers. Emergency rooms are taking up the slack for medical and dental care emergen- cies, according to a UCLA study. While the stereotype may be that parents living in poverty choose not to work, the real- ity is that most are working poor. Data from the National Center for Children in Poverty shows 48 percent of children in low-income families in California have at least one parent who is employed full-time, year round, and that 35 percent of children have at least one parent employed part of the year or part-time. Only 18 percent of children in low-income families do not have an employed parent. trying to pick up the slack, and the Fam- ily Resource Center offers food, clothing, tutoring, mental health referrals, and pro- grams ranging from preschool to mentor- ing. There are also dental and health care clinics for students and families. But grant money is drying up for her center — and similar ones throughout the state — that help alleviate suffering. Educators throughout the state believe things are getting worse. "Kids are worrying about where they are going to sleep tonight, whether dinner is going to be a bowl of cereal or a bowl of rice, whether they will have clean clothes, how they will get school supplies," says Lynette Henley, a member of the Vallejo Education Association who teaches at Hogan Middle School. "When I first started teaching here 30 years ago, you had a kid here or there living in poverty. Now, at least 15 kids in my class are poor. Poverty is no longer the exception; it's just a way of life." Unemployment, home foreclosures, and the closure of a naval base have hurt Vallejo badly, says Henley. "You have people los- ing their homes due to foreclosure, and you have more evictions because people can't story continued on page 16 12 California Educator / November 2011