What will happen to 25,000 Michigan kids cut from assistance?

Spokesmen from Michigan League and DHS talk about the impact of state budget cuts on poor children and families:

Bridge Academy gives adult students a chance for a diploma and a better life

Like many people wanting to change their lives, Benton Harbor resident Kent Rush just needed a nudge in the right direction.

Four years ago, Rush, 26, struggled to support three children, "running into a lot of temporary jobs, dead-end jobs, not making any cash - it was just like a dead-end street," he said.

At one of those jobs Rush suffered a thumb injury that had his doctors talking about amputation, which didn't happen.

"I was going into debt, I almost lost my house, I had to take off work eight weeks - I'm (saying), like, 'This factory work isn't gonna get it,'" he said.

But Rush's fortunes changed after joining YouthBuild, which is run by Michigan Works of Berrien Cass and Van Buren counties. YouthBuild is now part of the Bridge Academy, which opened last fall at 777 Riverview Drive, Benton Harbor.

The academy is a year-round alternative school for anyone 16 and over who is looking to complete their general education diploma or high school diplomas, Chief Education Officer Chris Fielding said.

Those who finish the program gain the job and life skills they need to function while making the transition to a better career.

"Employers are going, 'Please take direction, be part of a team, don't argue with everybody and be on time,'" Fielding said. "As a work force development organization, we have that opportunity to instill those skills."

Rush has seen that example play out in his life.

He works for Shelton Construction, which has taken him to major projects like the carousel restoration at Silver Beach and the Harbor Shores clubhouse.

www.heraldpalladium.com/articles/2011/07/26/local_news/5807085.txt

Pew Study Shows Racial Wealth Gap Widens

There's long been a big gap between the wealth of white families and the wealth of African-Americans and Hispanics. But the Great Recession has made it much worse — the divide is almost twice what it used to be.

That's according to a new study by the Pew Research Center, which says that the decline in the housing market is the main cause.

The numbers are astounding. The average wealth of a white family in 2009 was 20 times greater than that of the average black family, and 18 times greater than the average Hispanic family. In other words, the average white family had $113,149 in net worth, compared to $6,325 for Hispanics and $5,677 for blacks.

That's the largest gap since the government began collecting the data a quarter of a century ago, and twice what it was before the start of the Great Recession.

Real Estate Downturn

Rakesh Kochhar, one of the authors of the report, says white households went into the recession in a much stronger position and, as a result, were better able to weather the storm.

One reason was investment in real estate. Minority families had most of their wealth in their homes, so when the housing bubble burst, Kochhar says, those households took a bigger hit.

"Especially Hispanics, for example. Sixty-six percent of their net worth derives from home equity," Kochhar says. "And they are concentrated geographically in parts of the country such as California, Arizona, Florida and Nevada, where the housing downturn was most severe."

The result is that the average Hispanic family lost two-thirds of its wealth between 2005 and 2009, according to the Pew report. Black families lost more than half of theirs.

www.npr.org/2011/07/26/138688135/study-shows-racial-wealth-gap-grows-wider

Chicago Physician and Authority on Premature Births: Racism is a Stressor that Can Trigger Pre-Term labor

It doesn't matter if you're well off financially. It doesn't matter if you have a college education. It doesn't even really matter if you've had adequate health care.

If you are a black woman living in the United States, you are much more likely to have a premature baby than a white mother in the same socioeconomic category.

What is causing this gap?

Dr. James Collins, a physician and researcher from Chicago and an authority on premature births, believes the culprit is racism.

"Racism exists, and racism is a stressor" that decreases the immune system and can trigger pre-term labor, Collins told an audience of medical professionals and community leaders Wednesday.

The event was sponsored by the Berrien County Health Department and Lakeland HealthCare.

Upward mobility for black women does reduce the rate for low-weight births, the leading cause of infant mortality, Collins said.

The rate of infant mortality is higher for poor, black single teenage mothers, especially if the mother was a low birth-weight baby.

If you live in poverty and were a low birth-weight baby "you're pre-programmed to have a low birth-weight baby," Collins said.

The lives of 6,000 black babies could be saved each year if the infant mortality rate for blacks could be lowered to that of whites, Collins said. For those who survive, low birth weight leads to health problems later in life.

www.heraldpalladium.com/articles/2011/07/25/local_news/5755174.txt#comment

Branch Area Food Pantry Celebrates 25 Years at Annual Volunteer Appreciation Dinner

The Branch Area Food Pantry (BAFP) held the annual Volunteer Appreciation Dinner last Wednesday at the St. Charles activity hall, a time of fellowship and gratitude. There were 76 of the volunteers in attendance.

“I think Deacon Al (Provot) would be very pleased to see how far the pantry has come,” said Chuck Tippman, chair of the board. “This is the best-run organization of its kind I’ve been involved in.”

Tippman recalled when Provot recognized a need and began a pantry of sorts in a closet in the St. Charles office building 25 years ago.

www.thedailyreporter.com/news/x1009569270/Branch-Area-Food-Pantry-shows-gratitude-with-dinner

What "The Grapes of Wrath" Says about Today's Immigrant Workers

When John Steinbeck won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962, a reporter asked him if he thought he deserved the world’s most prestigious award for novelists. Reportedly, Steinbeck said, "Frankly, no."

Sadly for Steinbeck, this opinion was shared by many literary critics who thought that while he was a competent writer, he wasn’t worthy of the Nobel. Although he was a prolific writer, Steinbeck’s literary reputation rested primarily on one work that remains undisputed in terms of its contribution to American culture.

When The Grapes of Wrath was released in 1939, it caused a sensation that literature is probably no longer capable of provoking. It won the Pulitzer Prize and was the best-selling novel of the year. Just months later, in 1940, the book was turned into a film by John Ford that was nominated for seven Academy Awards.

For readers today, Steinbeck’s migration saga remains relevant as a piece of (dramatized) social analysis. It’s essentially a road novel about the Joads, a poor Midwestern migrant farming family. Throughout the novel, the Joads fight to keep their family intact while fleeing the 1930s Oklahoma Dustbowl for the hope of farm work in California...

(Today) It’s common to meet young men laboring on farms in the United States who haven’t been home in years. They keep sending their family money saved from their $9-an-hour wages, but there’s no human contact.

Even families that reconstitute themselves on the U.S. side of the border are not secure. The Urban Institute estimates that 100,000 immigrant parents of U.S. citizen children have been deported to Mexico over the past 10 years...

notes.bread.org/2011/07/the-grapes-of-wrath-revisited.html

Poverty study: 1 in 3 Michigan senior citizens struggles with money

A third of Michigan’s seniors are considered “economically insecure” — far more than the federal poverty limits would suggest, according to a new study.

Moreover, even in counties that are home to some of the most affluent suburbs where the wealthiest will buoy the overall median household income, at least one in four seniors on the other end of the economic scale struggles to make ends meet, according to the paper, “Invisible Poverty: New Measure Unveils Financial Hardship in Michigan’s Older Population.”

“There’s the popular perception that they have this nice car and their house is paid off and they travel the country. And that’s true for some,” said Thomas Jankowski, one of the study’s authors and associate director for research at Wayne State University’s Institute of Gerontology. “But others – many, many others – just skate on the edge of economic security.”

www.freep.com/article/20110720/NEWS06/110720009/Poverty-study-1-3-Michigan-senior-citizens-struggles-money-

"Injustices in the food sytem are abundant" - Niki Britton, Berrien County Health Dept

The goal of the Benton Harbor Farmers Market is to make fresh food available to all residents, particularly low-income people who might not have access to healthier choices.

"Injustices in the food systems are abundant, and this means that not everyone has the same access to affordable, healthy foods they need to live their best life," Nikki Britton, the Berrien County Health Department's epidemiologist, said in a press release.

Britton refers to neighborhoods without full-service grocery stores as "food deserts," where it is easier to get a bag of corn chips than an ear of corn.

This consumption of junk food can lead to diabetes and other illnesses.

Another entity trying to link small farmers to customers looking for healthy foods is the Conservation Fund. The organization recently announced that it had received a $400,000 grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation to help black and Hispanic farmers increase their production. The produce can in turn be sold at farmers markets.

"They are really the unsung heroes of local communities," said Peg Kohring of Sawyer, the Conservation Fund's Midwest coordinator and a member of the Berrien County Board of Health.

The grant will benefit farmers and markets in 11 southwest Michigan counties, including Berrien, Van Buren and Cass.

www.heraldpalladium.com/articles/2011/07/20/local_news/5713273.txt

School Suspensions are Up Across the Board but are Significantly Higher for Minority Students

Researchers in Texas have released the most comprehensive analysis of school suspension and expulsion policies ever conducted. It's considered groundbreaking because of its scope and detailed examination of disciplinary policies that when misused often put students at greater risk of dropping out or being incarcerated.

The study, titled Breaking Schools' Rules, is extraordinary in that it looked at individual school records and tracked all seventh-graders in Texas — 1 million of them — for six years. One finding surprised even veteran educators: 60 percent of those students were suspended or expelled at least once between their seventh- and 12th-grade years.

Mike Thompson with the Council of State Governments Justice Center, which commissioned the study, said the frequency with which kids in Texas are suspended and expelled reflects a 20-year trend that has seen the rate double nationally.

"For example, in California in 2010 alone, nearly 13 percent of students were put in out-of-school suspension or expelled," he said. "In Florida, that was 9 percent."

Texas, though, is the only state that has been able to use this data to track kids and see what happens to them after they're suspended or expelled.

A Higher Rate Of Removal For Some Groups

Of the 1 million students in Texas who were tracked, 15 percent were disciplined repeatedly — 11 times or more. Half of them ended up in juvenile-justice facilities or programs for an average of 73 schooldays. These students were likely to repeat a grade and not graduate from high school.

Just as worrisome, Thompson said, is who is being suspended and expelled.

"African-American students and those with particular educational disabilities experience a disproportionately high rate of removal from the classroom for disciplinary reasons," he said.

One glaring example: 70 percent of black girls were suspended or expelled, compared with 37 percent of white girls, usually for the same offenses...

www.npr.org/2011/07/19/138495061/report-details-texas-school-disciplinary-policies

Do early-childhood programs enable poor parenting?

An oft-repeated perception among conservatives and libertarians is that early-childhood programs such as Head Start are counter-productive because they enable slacker parents.

The subject came up last week in an interview with House Speaker Jase Bolger when I asked him about state funding for early-childhood education.

Bolger acknowledged the research that shows the value of early intervention services, but also he sees it as an area where government programs enable the lack of personal responsibility. A quick excerpt from the story:

”It’s a very difficult balance,” he said. “Kids go hungry, so schools start feeding them. Kids get in trouble after school, so there’s after-school problems. Parents don’t read to kids at home, so we give reading help at school. Parents don’t get kids ready for kindergarten, so we need preschool.

We turn to schools to do the things that parents aren’t doing” and it builds an expectation in parents that it’s really the schools’ responsibility, Bolger said. “It’s an unintended consequence of government doing too much.”

So is there evidence that the good from early-childhood programs is offset by parents easing up on their own responsibilities?

www.mlive.com/news/kalamazoo/index.ssf/2011/07/school_zone_blog_do_early-chil.html