The 2023-24 school year saw the highest percentage of kindergarteners exempted from vaccinations, with increases in 40 states and Washington, D.C. In some localities, the so-called health freedom message has led to nonmedical exemption rates as high as 50 percent.
A number of red states are moving to weaken child labor laws. Sponsors say they just want kids to be able to work, but critics complain companies are already exploiting vulnerable populations.
The overdose reversal medication is only required in larger high schools under current law. The bill is a response to rising opioid-related deaths among young people.
Washington provided $800 billion in pandemic relief. With most of that money spent, states now face major funding gaps for Medicaid, while school districts, child care providers and transit agencies are also struggling.
Fifteen states are not participating in a program to provide meals to school-age children over the summer, due to administrative costs or ideological opposition.
The St. Vincent de Paul Shelter for Women and Families sheltered an average of 107 children per day in October, its highest daily average ever. In 2022, the shelter housed about 63 children per day in October.
A U.S. district judge has scolded the Texas Health and Human Services Commission for ignoring complaints of maltreatment and horrible living conditions for foster children with intellectual disabilities.
Mary Otts-Rubenstein, who has her own child with disabilities, is helping migrant families with medically complex children enroll in Chicago’s Public Schools. But it doesn’t get easier once the kids are enrolled because the system is overwhelmed.
Since the end of the pandemic-era continuous Medicaid renewals, 1.4 million Texans have been dropped from the federal health insurance program and 58 percent of them have been children.
An audit from earlier this year found that, across 46 states, state agencies failed to report an estimated 34,000 cases of missing foster kids, including children who ran away multiple times.
Since federal protections keeping the medical insurance intact during the pandemic ended in April, approximately 3 in 4 patients have lost coverage due to “procedural reasons.” At least one-third of those patients are children.
Pandemic-era federal money is gone, yet problems remain.
The rate of teen births has dropped by 78 percent since a modern-day peak in 1991 of 61.8 births per 100,000 people. But since 2007, the rate had consistently dropped by about 8 percent and then in 2021, the rate declined just 2 percent.
After the federal pandemic-era tax credit expansion ended in the second half of 2021, the child poverty rate more than doubled in 2022. Now, 14 states offer child tax credits and several more introduced bills this year.
School officials are implementing new rules to prevent bullying and improve the mental health of teens. But some of the new policies, like a cellphone ban, are controversial. In 2021, 16 percent of high schoolers said they had been cyber bullied.
At the end of the month, some $24 billion in government aid for child-care providers will run out, threatening the spots for 3.2 million children. The upheaval may force parents, especially women, to reduce work hours.
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