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The latest on the Key Bridge collapse, New York puts forth legislation to get clean energy projects on the grid and Wisconsin and other states join a federal summer food program to help feed kids across the country.

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Republicans float conspiracy theories on the collapse of Baltimore's Key Bridge, South Carolina's congressional elections will use a map ruled unconstitutional, and the Senate schedules an impeachment trial for Homeland Secretary Mayorkas.

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Historic wildfires could create housing and health issues for rural Texans, a Kentucky program helps prison parolees start a new life, and descendants of Nicodemus, Kansas celebrate the Black settlers who journeyed across the 1870s plains seeking self-governance.

Mixed Bag in Kentucky’s Kids Count Ranking

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Thursday, July 29, 2010   

FRANKFORT, Ky. - Kentucky ranks 40th in this year's annual "Kids Count" report, a notch above last year, but child advocates say the state's standing has been vacillating the last few years and has retreated from progress gained a decade ago.

In the 10 measures of child well-being, Kentucky has improved in four since 2000: infant mortality, child and teen death and percentage of teens not in school who haven't yet graduated. Terry Brooks, executive director of Kentucky Youth Advocates, says the worsening areas - low-birth-weight babies, kids in poverty and kids in single-family homes - signal a need for policy changes.

"We're afraid that if those economic well-being indicators don't get addressed, and don't get addressed quickly, we're going to remember 40th ranking as the 'good old days.'"

Brooks says that if the poverty numbers continue downward, the state will backslide in other areas like health and education - a trend often referred to as the "Kentucky uglies."

"We rank 48th in the nation in the percentage of children who live in homes where neither parent has a full-time, year-round employment. We're a state where one out of four children live in poverty, and that rate is getting worse each year."

Brooks says citizens should not accept excuses from policymakers when it comes to the well-being of Kentucky's kids.

"We can't let them say 'We're in the midst of a national recession and there's nothing we can do'; we can't let them say 'Kentucky is persistently a poor state' and throw their hands up."

Some of the financial burdens felt by low-income Kentuckians could be alleviated by adopting a state Earned Income Tax Credit, Brooks suggests, and by removing premiums for the Childrens' Health Insurance Program, K-CHIP.

Brooks credits Kentucky's better ratings in infant, child and teen deaths to legislative action a few years ago, as graduated driver's license and booster seat laws were enacted. He predicts further progress now that restrictions are in effect on teen texting and cell phone use while driving.


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