Guest Blog Post: Heads Up Administrators! Time to Help Count Kids
This guest blog post comes from our friends at
Partnership for America’s Children.
The Census Bureau just sent its Statistics in Schools
materials to every administrator, public and private, in the country. The
mailout will contain three colorful large wall maps and a booklet containing
information on the program including a take home letter for students to share
with their family. They should arrive between January 21 and 31.
Now it’s your turn. Please ask all your teachers to use
these materials and to send home the take home flyer. You can also check them
out at census.gov/schools/get involved.
When schools use these materials in the classroom, it helps
bring in more funding for the schools and money for programs that get kids
ready for schools. How? Well, Title I funds for low income schools are
allocated based on the number of k-12 children you have in your community, and
special education funds are allocated based on the number of 3-21 year olds you
have. Funding allocations for programs that help get kids ready to learn, like
WIC, child care, Children’s Health Insurance Program, Medicaid, and many
others, are also based on the census data in your community and your state.
(Teachers and administrators are used to thinking about attendance data
affecting funding, but that data is used to allocate money among schools in the
district; counting kids brings more money to the district.) So making sure
every child is counted helps get kids ready to learn, and helps schools have
the resources they need to teach.
The Statistics in Schools materials teach children about the
value of census surveys, which helps get young kids counted in three ways; many
school children have younger siblings at home, some teens in school have
babies, and children who are the only English speakers in their families will
translate the information and help fill out the census.
The Statistics in Schools materials include a flyer kids can
take home to their parents to teach them about the census and why they should
count their kids. We know that in 2010, one of three households with children
in school saw and remembered these materials.
You can also start planning for Statistics in Schools Week
in your school; that will be the first week in March.
The first mailings for the census go out March 12, in less
than two months. Now is the time to teach children about the census, so they
and their families know it matters to count their kids when the census arrives.