“Do we look to the private sector? Our corporate community? Our foundation community?” he asked. “Would there be other options, other funding options, at the state level?” He has talked with Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney about that city’s 1.5 cent per ounce tax on sweetened beverages that it uses largely to fund kid stuff.
One block down Grant Street, city officials have created a $2 million Child Care Quality Fund. Once the Law Department signs off, it will fund upgrades at daycare centers in the city, with the aim of improving their learning environments, staff training, community engagement and leadership.
It’s a start, said Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto, as he held an inch-thick draft of his OnePGH plan. It calls for a 12-year, $4 billion blitz of public and private investments. Promised repeatedly throughout his six-year tenure, the report still awaits agreement among the private parties on phasing, “protocols” for controlling the investments, and — most daunting — “specific commitments,” including funds, the mayor said.
The plan includes $131 million in investments in early education. “I would say that there is bipartisan support that this is the best investment we could make, period,” he said. “Not just in education or [in] our children, but the best investment we can make for our region.”
“I wouldn’t say that it’s a critical success factor in moving youth out of poverty that we find a job across the street from their house. I would say that the school across the street from their house needs to be strong, and we need to think about the community they’re being raised in, that it’s safe.” — Stefani Pashman, CEO, the Allegheny Conference on Community Development, a business-focused nonprofit organization
Ms. Pashman heads a conference that has long focused on improving the region’s economy. The conference this year sent 35 CEOs to schools, where each spent a day shadowing a student.
“Some of [the schools] are basically completely technology-based, and the students have endless opportunity for project-based learning, real-time assessment, teachers can calibrate the learning, it’s all technology driven,” she said. “And then there are other ones that barely have a textbook. And so I think what we realized is that the change we need to make is so vast, but that we have to appreciate that there’s a lot of inequity.”
At its annual meeting this month, the conference announced what Ms. Pashman called “an ambitious goal”: to improve regional standard of living by 25% by 2030.
Stefani Pashman, CEO of the Allegheny Conference. (Pam Panchak/Post-Gazette)
“But then we have to look at that through an equity lens, of how is it working for the community, and the Mon Valley, and how is it working for the African American community,” she said, in an interview.
Achieving the goal requires a sustained, collaborative effort to reduce poverty, she said.
UPMC Health Plan in December announced UPMC Social Impact, an initiative to take on the economic drivers of health problems. Also likely to keep child poverty on the front burner is The Pittsburgh Study, a joint UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh and University of Pittsburgh effort to track some 20,000 kids for 20 years, starting in 2020.
“Structural factors like poverty, transportation, housing, access to healthcare, access to clean air, access to fresh food — all of those contribute to child health,” said Elizabeth Miller, chief of the Division of Adolescent and Young Adult Medicine at Children’s, and co-leader of the study. “So the goal of the Pittsburgh Study is to figure out what is going to work to support children and adolescents to be healthy.”
“Child poverty is sort of a leading indicator of the failure that we have in our economy right now — the canary in the coalmine, if you will. If over half of the children in communities are living in poverty, then the economy in the region is not working.” — Erin Kramer, executive director, One Pennsylvania, a pro-union membership organization
For most families, the path out of poverty involves a job that pays enough to cover housing, food, transportation and, for those with kids, child care. In Harrisburg, there’s no consensus on state government’s role in smoothing that path, but there is vigorous discussion.
“Our region offers good housing, good jobs, good education, including school choice opportunities which other states do not offer, and is moving in the right direction because we are steady and stable and are looking to expand our opportunities in manufacturing, in energy and in the petrochemical industries,” said state House Speaker Mike Turzai, R-Marshall, in an interview.
Pa. House Speaker Mike Turzai. (Jessie Wardarski/Post-Gazette)
He acknowledged that some areas aren’t thriving. But the state’s safety net has many strands, he said, and “economic opportunity, particularly in the high-paying petrochemical [and] energy space” is the best way to “remediate those blights and actually make life far more sustainable.”
Others in Harrisburg want the state to step in where the economy hasn’t lifted all boats. In November, the state Senate voted to raise the minimum wage to $9.50 by 2020, potentially joining Pennsylvania with its neighbors which have adopted minimums higher than the $7.25 federal floor.
State Sen. Art Haywood, D-Philadelphia, followed a “Poverty Listening Tour” with a report including 20 recommendations for addressing deprivation in the state.
“If we can get people into family-sustaining jobs,” he said, “then a number of costs the taxpayers bear to get people on heir way can hopefully be reduced.”
“There’s not a lack of resources, in my opinion, to address this issue. There’s a lack of coordination of the use of the resources.” — Fred Brown, president and CEO, The Forbes Funds
Last year The Forbes Funds, a nonprofit, decided to focus on the social determinants of health: education, economic stability, the neighborhood environment, the community context, health and healthcare. Taken together, they go a long way toward explaining the reality that, all too often, “ZIP code determines destiny.”
Mr. Brown found “a lot of good programming out there” to improve each of those determinants in many places, but “no real strategic approach.” That, he said, “is why there are so many people falling through the cracks.”
The region has no plan for dealing with child poverty. No one in the region has a complete list of the various efforts to help poor kids. To address that, Mr. Brown said, The Forbes Funds is working on a grant making map that would capture “all of the work going on in the region.”
A map, a goal, some plans, multi-million-dollar fundraising efforts — all are underway as 2020 approaches. Mr. Brown hopes to keep the focus on the places in which all of that activity can do the most good.
“There’s up to 50 vulnerable communities in and around Allegheny County,” he said. “If we’re able to strengthen those 50 communities, we believe it would dramatically change the quality of life.”
Rich Lord: rlord@post-gazette.com, 412-263-1542 or Twitter @richelord
Growing Up Through the Cracks has received support from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism and the Economic Hardship Reporting Project.
