Nearly one in every three schoolchildren lives in poverty in these two counties.
By Associated Press
Published December 6, 2003
ARCADIA - The children who come to the classrooms behind St. Paul's Catholic Church after school for tutoring are rosy-cheeked, vibrant and eager to learn despite the tough hand life has dealt them.
When they return home, many head just a few blocks to weather-beaten, single-wide trailers. Their mothers, many of whom spent the day toiling in the orange groves, have strung the family laundry on lines in the yard while pudgy chickens search for bugs in the dirt yards.
The children who attend the program created by Catholic Charities are part of the population counted in newly released U.S. Census Bureau figures that put Hardee and De Soto counties at the top of Florida's list when it comes to poor, school-age children.
In Hardee County, 29.3 percent of the school population lives in poverty, accounting for nearly 1,600 children. The numbers are almost the same in neighboring De Soto County, where 27.4 percent of the schoolchildren - about 1,500 pupils - are poor.
Clay, St. Johns and Seminole counties are at the other end of the list. There, fewer than one in 10 children came from households earning less than $17,050 for a family of four in 2000.
Comparable percentages for Tampa Bay area counties are Citrus, 18.1; Hernando, 16.5; Hillsborough, 14.9; Pasco, 14.5; and Pinellas, 12.8
The figures based on the 2000 census were released last week for students in more than 14,000 districts nationwide.
The Hardee and De Soto poverty rates are an improvement over 1995 census estimates, when each county had more than 30 percent of its children living in poverty. Only two of Florida's 67 counties, Liberty and Glades, reported an increase in school-age poverty.
The poverty rates will be used to distribute most of federal education dollars to state departments of education, which then funnel the money to local districts. The districts will share $13-billion available in Title I funding, which is money spent to aid poor students.
Florida received $476.5-million in Title I funding in 2002 and will receive an estimated $523.8-million in 2003 and $572.4-million in 2004.
School officials say the high concentrations of impoverished children in Hardee and De Soto counties exist because farm workers are a large segment of the population.
The poverty crosses all racial lines, including both migrant families and immigrants who have made Hardee and De Soto counties their permanent homes. They work picking oranges in the fall and early winter, harvesting watermelons in the spring or working on the cattle ranches.
