by David Chapman
Staff Writer
Former State Sen. Betty Holzendorf called the report the most depressing she’d ever read.
Mayor John Peyton said the findings for the same report were “unacceptable.”
The Jacksonville Children Commission’s “2009 State of Jacksonville’s Children: Racial and Ethic Disparities Report” was released Monday in a presentation at City Hall.
“This has become an important day in the life of our city,” said Mayor John Peyton, who gave opening remarks. “We come together each year and try to get a handle on where we are(with racial and ethnic disparities regarding children).”
He discussed the work of the “Jacksonville Journey” and “Blueprint for Prosperity” to help curb some of the negative trends, such as income level disparity, but admitted more needed to be done to correct the problem.
“We obviously have to do more because numbers don’t reflect positively on our city,” said Peyton.
The report was broken into two sections.
The first focused on demographics for Jacksonville children, including population characteristics, family structure and poverty. Based on the data, the demographics can help predict risks Jacksonville children will face.
The second section broke down the different well-being indicators for Jacksonville children, including health, education and safety and security. Each was judged by a green, yellow and red stoplight showing how each indicator matches up to the the rest of Florida and progress over the past two years. Green indicated Duval County is doing better than the State and progressed, yellow meant one of the two factors was doing better while a red light represented a failure in both categories.
There was little green to go around – of the 23 criteria used to evaluate the three indicators (Health, education, and safety and security) 11 were red lit, 9 were yellow lit while three were green.
During her presentation, Dr. Anne Egan, board chair for JCC, held up a copy of the first report compiled in 1946 and said she saw much of the same today as was reported then.
“Having skimmed a few of these pages, we face some of the same problems,” she said, specifically referring to Health Zone 1.
Holzendorf, a member of the Jacksonville Journey steering oversight committee, grew up in Health Zone 1, and spoke passionately of the need to clean up the area.
“Poverty hurts everyone,” said Holzendorf. “Racism destroys a community.”
Holzendorf recalled her days growing up in the much reported region and said there has been a need for a change of behavior in the community for some time.
“(Health) Zone 1,” she said. “We’ve been talking about (Health) Zone 1 since 1947. Healthy people don’t commit crimes.”
JCC CEO and executive director Linda Lanier followed Holzendorf’s speech and presented key information and graphics from the report on numerous regions.
In her report, she discussed some of the findings in Health Zone 1, including statistics including a 38.4 percent poverty rate accompanying an 80 percent black resident rate.
“Poverty is a problem,” said Lanier. “It’s the driver of social problems.”
The Jacksonville Children’s Commission “2009: State of Jacksonville’s Children: Racial and Ethnic Disparities Report,” can be viewed in its entirety at www.jaxkids.net.
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