Tuesday, June 22, 2004 | 11 a.m.
The Las Vegas Valley is not an easy place in which to grow up, according to a national report released last week.
The annual Kid Friendly Cities report put out by the Washington-based nonprofit Population Connection gave the area a C-plus for how children fare here.
In the category of large cities -- metropolitan areas with more than 1 million and less than 2.5 million people -- the valley ranked 68th out of 80 cities. The report looked at statistics related to population, education, health and other factors.
Local groups and entities that work with children, from the school district to Planned Parenthood, said the area's population boom continues to fall out on youth, with consequences ranging from high teen pregnancy rates to low scores on academic achievement tests. Some said the valley shouldn't even have received a passing grade.
But concern for the welfare of children may be growing in the Las Vegas Valley as awareness of the problem mounts, and, in some respects, the situation is improving, workers said.
"Even though it sounds bad, it was worse," said Donna Coleman, president of the local group Children's Advocacy Alliance.
Coleman noted that statistics such as infant mortality and teen suicides have improved in recent years.
The Kid Friendly Cities report gave the valley a C-minus for population, including population growth and population under 18; a B-plus for health, including births to teens, infant mortality and kids without health insurance; a C for education, including fourth-grade reading and eighth-grade math proficiency; and a C for "community," including child poverty, violent crime and recycling.
But Coleman said those grades were inflated. Her group gave Nevada a D-minus in its last biennial survey of states, which came out last January. Coleman said that survey counted more of the factors that affect children's well-being.
"We have to figure out a way to deal with the population explosion in this state, particularly Clark County," Coleman said. "Even though we say these are people with problems that come here, they're now our problems, and we have to own them."
Population growth was one of the statistics Kid Friendly Cities took into account, for reasons familiar to valley residents.
"Often times when there is a large and quick increase in growth, other resources aren't increasing at the same rate, such as health care and schools," said Mara Nelson, one of the study's editors.
That is exactly the case here, said Assembly Majority Leader Barbara Buckley, D-Las Vegas, an outspoken advocate for children's issues.
She noted that some 200 children diagnosed with severe emotional disturbances were on a waiting list to get help, and that until two years ago the rate the state paid for foster care was less than the average cost to board a dog.
Local residents are starting to recognize such disturbing realities, she said.
"We are tired of being ranked last in the country," she said. "The only time we get a No. 1 ranking is for something negative, like the dropout rate. Is it because of Las Vegas and the type of community this is, or maybe just because we don't fund these programs?"
Most who work with children say it is the latter. Kid Friendly Cities noted that only 20 percent of fourth graders were proficient in reading and 20 percent of eighth graders were proficient in math. Maurice Flores, east region superintendent for the Clark County School District, said those dismal results flowed directly from low per-pupil spending.
Just last week, a Census Bureau report ranked Nevada second to last in federal education dollars per student.
"We're nowhere near where we need to be in terms of student achievement and, the bottom line, graduating students," Flores said. In 2001-02, the district's graduation rate was 59 percent.
Flores said his region includes many of the poorest students and a large number of Hispanic children who speak little English.
"We're behind the 8-ball in that respect," he said. "We need to do a better job of educating these kids."
The authors of Kid Friendly Cities looked at a number of factors and weighted them all equally. After the cities were ranked, analysts found that one factor correlated closely to the rankings: births to teenage mothers.
"Most cities that had a high births-to-teens rate ranked low overall," Nelson said.
The correlation suggests that teenage mothers are a good yardstick of a community's overall child welfare. That's because teenage pregnancy is often the result of many other factors that make a community inhospitable to children, said Laura Deitsch, program manager for Planned Parenthood of Southern Nevada.
"A lot of things lead up to (teen pregnancy) -- poverty, family dynamics, lack of connectedness in school," she said. And teen pregnancy, in turn, often leads to mothers dropping out of school and children raised in poverty.
Mary Rosenthal, chairwoman of the Clark County Teen Pregnancy Prevention Coalition, noted that while teen pregnancy has declined in Nevada, it has not declined as quickly as it has nationally, keeping Nevada near the top of the list of states for high teen birth rates.
"It's hard for kids to avoid the culture of sex" in Las Vegas, she said, pointing to racy billboards and the "What happens here, stays here" tourism campaign.
Amid the dismal news about Las Vegas, Kid Friendly Cities looked for a bright spot. The report singled out one children's program for praise in each city it examined. Here, it was the 3-year-old literacy program Clark County Reads.
"That's exciting and also very rewarding. We've been working hard," said Kay Carl, the program manager and a former school district administrator.
The program trains adult volunteers to tutor children struggling to learn to read, collects donations to buy new books for school libraries, sponsors the national Reading Is Fundamental program in Clark County, and collects used books for classroom use.
Carl said there are dozens of programs like Clark County Reads available to disadvantaged children, but they often face difficulties arranging transportation and getting the word out to a transient community.
"Somehow we're not reaching families and the community in terms of what's available," she said.
Kid Friendly Cities ranked Des Moines, Iowa, best among cities in metropolitan areas of 1 million to 2.5 million. Birmingham, Ala., was worst with a C-minus.
Among the 20 cities of more than 2.5 million people, Seattle was best and Cleveland ranked last.
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