Stigma of poverty a barrier to helping poor Bozeman-area kids
GAIL SCHONTZLER, Chronicle Staff Writer, Posted: Thursday, June 27, 2013
Emilie Matthaei prepares hot lunches of sloppy Joes at Beall Park as part of the Summer Lunch Program, which offer free, healthy meals to all children. Sponsored by the Montana Office of Public Instruction and run by the Human Resource Development Council.
While her daughter enjoyed a free lunch of Sloppy Joes in sunny Beall Park, Sara never stopped working.
“I do piecework to keep my family going, pay my rent,” said Sara, a 40-year-old, single Bozeman mother of three.
Her hands were always busy, folding locally manufactured eyeglass retainers into plastic packages, to sell in stores to people who have more disposable income than she has.
Earning 7 to 20 cents per piece, Sara is typical of Bozeman people living in poverty. She works, but doesn’t earn enough to make ends meet. She and her kids get help in the form of food stamps, subsidized housing, Medicaid and subsidized school lunches.
She has to consider the cost of gas to drive to Beall Park so her kids can get a healthy lunch from the Summer Lunch Program, offered free to all children.
Sara was a stay-at-home mom, caring for her family and ailing mother, until a few years ago, when her husband was suddenly gone. She found it tough to get back into the workforce.
Then in May, her teenage daughter was riding a bike and got hit by a car. Weeks later the girl is still recovering in a Seattle trauma hospital from broken bones and severe injuries – thankfully none to her head or spine. Sara lost a lot of work and has to rely on others to get to see her daughter. She spoke on condition her last name not be used, to protect her kids, partly from the stigma felt by many Americans living in poverty.
“I’m not lazy,” Sara said. “Sometimes poverty-stricken families are put down… People just look at you differently because you’re not part of the middle class, or always ask for scholarships” so kids can participate in school field trips or sports. “It’s humbling. It’s very humbling.”
People should encourage those who are struggling, “not shun people having a hard time,” Sara said. “Compassion is important.”
Bozeman’s 30 percent
Children are more likely to live in poverty than adults.
In Montana and across the nation, 21 percent of children were poor in 2010, the highest rate since the U.S. Census began its American Community Surveys in 2001.
In Bozeman, the problem of poverty appears to have gotten worse in the past five years, as measured by how many kids qualify for free and reduced-priced school lunches. That grew between 2008 and 2012 from 22 percent to 30 percent.
That 30 percent represents more than 1,700 Bozeman school kids, or enough to fill three large elementary schools.
How many students received subsidized lunches ranged from 10 percent at Morning Star School to 20 percent at Longfellow, 22 percent at Hawthorne, 25 percent at Emily Dickinson, 46 percent at Hyalite, 47 percent at Irving, and 53 percent at Whittier.
Carol Townsend, president and CEO of Greater Gallatin United Way, said she thinks people would be surprised to learn that 30 percent of kids in the affluent community of Bozeman are poor or low-income.
It’s probably more, she said, because getting subsidized lunches depends on parents reporting themselves as low-income. As kids become teenagers, they’re more self-conscious about who’s rich and who’s poor. That’s one reason only 19 percent of Bozeman High kids signed up for subsidized lunches, while 32 percent of their elementary-age brothers and sisters qualified.
“Pretty strong in Montana culture is not to ask for help,” Townsend said. People feel a stigma about it, so poverty remains, she said, “one of those silent issues.”
“Most people don’t understand the level of childhood poverty and hunger,” Townsend said. “We have to talk about it before we can fix it.”
In 1997 United Way started the KidsLINK after-school program, originally to give kids safe places to go while parents worked. It has grown dramatically and this fall will be in 27 schools, from Bozeman to Big Timber and White Sulfur Springs. The program offers homework help, fun activities and feeds 1,100 kids a healthy snack every day.
Bozeman and Belgrade charge a sliding-scale fee. But in most rural schools, after-school programs are open to all kids without charge. If a fee were charged and low-income families had to ask for scholarships, Townsend said, rural people wouldn’t come.
Fighting child hunger
The Bozeman community has added several programs that help poor children in recent years. Still, local experts say, there are kids who go hungry.
Lori Christenson, nutrition outreach program manage for the Gallatin Valley Food Bank, said 36 percent of the Food Bank’s clients are children. And in the vast majority of households, parents are working.
“People perceive the Gallatin Valley as affluent area, but a lot of people struggle to live here,” Christenson said. “It can be a challenge for people who are under-employed.”
This is the 13th year the Food Bank has operated the Summer Lunch Program for kids, sponsored by the state Office of Public Instruction. It gives out close to 200 meals a day at Beall Park, Montana State University’s SOB Barn, Belgrade’s Hollensteiner Park and Three Forks’ Stevenson Park.
This fall will be the sixth year the Food Bank has offered the Kids Pack program, giving discreet bags of food to elementary kids to take home in their backpacks on Fridays so they won’t go hungry over the weekend.
Last year an average of 500 bags went home each Friday, targeted to schools with the highest need in Belgrade, Three Forks, Manhattan, Willow Creek, Gallatin Gateway and Bozeman’s Whittier, Emily Dickinson, Hyalite and Irving schools.
The program was started because teachers had kids coming to school on Mondays with nothing to eat but a Popsicle or a can of tuna fish, Christenson said.
Next fall Christenson said she can expand Kids Pack to all Bozeman and Belgrade elementary schools, plus Alder, Whitehall, Boulder and Twin Bridges, thanks to an “amazing” three-year, $60,000 grant from Big Sky’s Yellowstone Club.
The Community Café on North Seventh Avenue, which offers free dinners to everyone, in its first year served 3,700 meals to children. An offshoot program brings cafe dinners to about 25 Whittier students in the after-school program.
“We’re looking at building a stronger Montana,” Christenson said. “If we want a vibrant Montana, we need to pay attention to childhood nutrition.” It can also be seen as a social justice issue, she said. “Every kid should have a well-balanced meal.”
Ken Miller directs Bozeman’s Head Start pre-school program, and was a school principal and superintendent in Wyoming, Colorado and Montana for 25 years.
Miller ticked off the harm that poverty can do to children – low birth weights, inadequate medical and dental care, frequent moves, smaller vocabularies, increased risk of low school achievement and learning disabilities, higher dropout rates.
That’s why he’s concerned that recent federal budget cuts, called the sequester, mean the local Head Start can serve only 148 preschool children next fall, down from 168 last year.
“We can save money” in the long run, Miller said, “if we spend on early childhood education and care.”
