Vancouver Public Schools has reached a grim milestone — perhaps no surprise, given a third year of economic distress in a county with an unemployment rate near 15 percent.
More than half — 50.7 percent — of the district’s 22,300 students now qualify for free or reduced school lunch rates, eligible for federal assistance based on low household income.
It’s a dubious first for the district, officials note.
But that spike merely leads a rising tide across Clark County, where 40.6 percent of all public school students now qualify for meal subsidies.
Compare recent measures with those in October 1998, a prosperous era before the terms “dot-com bust,” “Sept. 11” and “housing meltdown” crossed anyone’s lips:
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• Vancouver: 40 percent in 1998, to 50.7 percent in 2009;
• Evergreen: 23 percent, to 40.8 percent;
• Battle Ground: 16 percent, to 40.4 percent;
• Washougal: 28 percent, to 40 percent.
Even in rural Hockinson, home to century farms and flashy hillside spreads, the rate has nearly doubled, to 19 percent.
The Camas district alone has experienced a decline, to 17 percent.
In all of Clark County, 40.6 percent of students were eligible for meal assistance in October. That’s up from 27 percent a decade earlier.
It’s a similar picture across Washington state, where the rate has climbed to 42.3 percent of 1.02 million students enrolled.
The numbers are sobering, for a decade when federal meal assistance rules didn’t change.
(Besides households that receive some other public aid, those with total income at or below 130 percent of federal poverty rates qualify for free lunches; those at or below 185 percent qualify for reduced-price lunches).
Test score impact
The data simply reveal the extent of underlying poverty sweeping the region.
Consider that almost 80 percent of the 30,000 students eligible in Clark County, nearly 24,000 pupils, are in the worse-off category — that’s less than $2,000 monthly income for a family of three. Included are 9,500 Vancouver schoolchildren, 8,100 in Evergreen and another 3,200 in Battle Ground.
What does that mean for schools, teachers and even fellow students?
Vancouver district leaders’ stance on children “in socio-economic crisis” is emphatic.
“This will affect their learning at school. There’s a lot of research on that,” said Chriss Burgess, associate superintendent.
The district cites algorithms based on several years’ results that show a corresponding decrease in reading and math test assessment pass rates of 0.39 percent for reading and 0.48 percent for math, for every 1 percent increase in free/reduced lunch rates.
Translated: Vancouver’s 11 percent jump in free/reduced rates (from 39 percent eligible in 1999) would predict a decline of Washington Assessment of Student Learning pass rates of 4.3 percent in reading and 5.3 percent in math.
“There’s other factors, of course,” Burgess said. “(But) we can see the trend: When free and reduced rates go up in our district, test scores go down.”
No good to ‘cry foul’
The impact resonates for Vancouver, poised to make significant reforms at Discovery and Jason Lee middle schools in response to federal sanctions triggered by students’ flat WASL scores. In February, Discovery and Jason Lee reported 67.3 percent and 65.1 percent free/reduced lunch rates.
It’s not merely a handful of Vancouver schools that are seeing higher household stress.
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Elementary free/reduced lunch rates for last month include: Eisenhower, 43.2 percent; Benjamin Franklin, 39.5 percent; Hazel Dell, 61 percent; George C. Marshall, 58 percent; Minnehaha, 63.6 percent; Truman, 59.4 percent; Walnut Grove, 57.3 percent.
Evergreen district educators also have witnessed rising poverty. They know more family relocations will disrupt a child’s learning, with a switch of schools and teachers. They see more homeless students, mitigated by state rule changes that provide busing to keep that pupil at his or her “home school.”
The effects are many. “School counselors, secretaries just have more work to do,” said Tom Nadal, Evergreen director of elementary education.
“As far as the classroom goes, we try to do business as usual. I think we’ve done a pretty good job, in sort of maintaining (student performance),” Nadal said.
Tough times bring greater challenge to everyone, but aren’t reason for excuses, he said.
“I guess the attitude of most districts is, it doesn’t do good to cry foul or put blame on something,” Nadal said. “This is (students’) only chance at an education, so we’ve got to step up.”
