St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands – St. Croix Foundation for Community Development (SCF) released the territory’s 2024 KIDS COUNT USVI Data Spotlight, entitled “Answering the Call: We are the System and the Solution,” on Wednesday, December 18, 2024, at 10:00 AM AST during a Virtual Community Stakeholder Presentation open to the public. The Data Spotlight was presented to a broad range of community stakeholders along with the territory’s first online KIDS COUNT USVI Data Dashboard.
2024 KIDS COUNT USVI DATA SPOTLIGHT
During the virtual Community Presentation, SCF’s KIDS COUNT Team provided an overview of the 2024 USVI Data Spotlight to Community Stakeholders. This year’s Data Spotlight is a special report on “Opportunity Youth” (youth ages 16-24 who are not in school and/or not employed/training).
The 2024 Spotlight reported several data Hot Spots surrounding local Opportunity Youth. For example, in 2023 there was a slight increase in the number of violent crime arrests of young people in this age group. There were 258 incidents involving youth ages 18-24, up from 250 in 2022 and 208 in 2021.
In the domain of Education, dropout rates among students in grades 7 through 12 saw a concerning rise, with 140 students dropping out during the 2023-24 school year compared to 107 the previous school year. Ninth-grade retention rates showed improvement, with 146 students retained in 2023-24 versus the 168 9th-graders who were retained in the 2022-23 school year; however, this remains the highest rate among all grades, underscoring the need for targeted interventions to support students at this critical juncture.
A significant Bright Spot continues to be the Virgin Islands’ nonprofit civic sector. For example, the Women’s Coalition of St. Croix provided services to 71 minors in 2023, compared to 65 in 2022, demonstrating their success in scaling programs to serve youth more effectively.
Chermaine Hobson, the KIDS COUNT Team’s Sector Liaison, eloquently emphasized the critical challenges and opportunities within this age group: “What we realize is that our at-risk population eventually becomes disconnected Opportunity Youth if we don’t provide the effective programs necessary to channel them in the right direction.” “We see what’s happening in our community with crime, violence, and the loss of young lives, and we know we must act,” Hobson noted, also reporting that the average age of incarceration in our community is 23 years old, highlighting the urgent need for early intervention and support for our youth. This underscores the urgent importance of addressing youth challenges early to prevent future incarceration.
The 2024 Data Spotlight (which is structured as an abridged data book) also provides selected data snapshots “At-A-Glance” on the status of U.S. Virgin Islands youth across all ages in the four primary KIDS COUNT® domains: Family and Community, Education, Health, and Economic Well-being. This data can be used to understand where our children are and how they are faring. For example, in the case of children in public housing, 3,166 children were living in public housing in 2023, a slight decline from 3,368 in 2022. And, interesting upticks, such as those found in Student Enrollment trends, are compelling for both programming and policy considerations: Public school enrollment increased slightly to 10,312 students during the 2023-24 school year, marking the first increase since the 2020-21 school year.
An electronic copy of the 2024 KIDS COUNT USVI Data Spotlight is available at https://stxfoundation.info/2024KidsCountUSVI. Interested parties may also watch a recording of the Community Presentation at https://stxfoundation.info/2024KidsCountRelease. Additionally, physical copies of the 2024 Data Spotlight may be requested by emailing the Foundation at kidscountusvi@stxfoundation.org or calling 340.773.9898.
KIDS COUNT USVI DATA DASHBOARD
The 2024 KIDS COUNT USVI Team also unveiled the territory’s first online KIDS COUNT USVI Data Dashboard. The Data Dashboard includes selected data collected from the most current available data sources in the public and civic (nonprofit) sectors throughout the territory.
Reporting on conditions across all ages of childhood, this year’s KIDS COUNT USVI Data Package highlights urgent and consequential issues impacting the well-being of children in the U.S. Virgin Islands. The Data Dashboard contains Hot Spots including lower assessment scores for students territory-wide in 8th-grade math. The percentage of 8th grade public school students who were proficient in math for the 2022-2023 school year was just 2.4%, down from an already low 6.1% proficiency the prior year. Another key Hot Spot was the reported income for children with families in housing communities on St. Croix. For St. Croix households with children living in housing communities, the average income was just $13, 141. This was lower than the $15, 303 reported in 2022 and less than half of the $26,335 reported average income for housing community households with children in the St. Thomas/St. John District.
Amid these challenges, the KIDS COUNT USVI Data Dashboard also highlights encouraging Bright Spots as civic organizations such as My Brother’s Workshop and the Women’s Coalition of St. Croix, along with government agencies like the VI Department of Labor and the Department of Sports, Parks, and Recreation, continue to expand services and capacity to transform the lives of youth in the Virgin Islands. Many of these organizations are experiencing higher demand for their services. Yet another Bright Spot was reported by the VI Department of Health, which secured funding for the Virgin Islands to conduct the Youth Risk Behavior Survey for the first time since 2018. As the territory’s only comprehensive survey on our children’s mental health, new YRBS data (expected in 2025) will provide an up-to-date accounting of the overall mental health impacts of environmental and health factors including hurricanes and the COVID-19 pandemic.
St. Croix Foundation’s KIDS COUNT Data Researcher and designer of the Data Dashboard, Laurie Blake, was thrilled to share that “The KIDS COUNT team and I worked very hard to bring you a tool that makes accessing and understanding the KIDS COUNT data easier and more actionable than ever. This dashboard consolidates all the relevant data into one user-friendly platform—no more flipping through books or pulling data from multiple sources.”
St. Croix Foundation’s KIDS COUNT USVI Data Dashboard can be accessed by visiting the Foundation’s website at: https://www.stxfoundation.org/kids-count-dashboard/. Questions about the Data Dashboard can be emailed to kidscountusvi@stxfoundation.org.
During the presentation, St. Croix Foundation President and CEO Deanna James underscored the interconnected nature of the Foundation’s work, stating: “Everything is connected to everything. All the work St. Croix Foundation is leading is interconnected; our KIDS COUNT work is connected to our nonprofit capacity-building, which is connected to our downtown revitalization, and to our expanding national network of partners. Prioritizing our children through data, policy, and community action is at the heart of everything we do.” James also highlighted that SCF’s holistic approach aims to create a lasting impact across multiple sectors of the community, ensuring that efforts to uplift children and families are sustainable and far-reaching.
The 2024 KIDS COUNT USVI Community Presentation also highlighted critical “Data Gaps” — data sets that would be invaluable to understanding the challenges facing Virgin Islands youth, yet remain elusive and thus absent from KIDS COUNT USVI publications. The lack of data on Opportunity Youth (ages 16-24) includes: the number of youth committing crimes, experiencing housing insecurity, and participating in the workforce.
A national initiative of the Annie E. Casey Foundation (AECF), KIDS COUNT® has evolved into one of the largest, long-standing data repositories in the United States focused on the status of children and families. A national network of nonprofits, foundations, and consortia from all 50 States, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, KIDS COUNT is seen as a vital means of providing critical data about child well-being for many federal, state, and local government agencies.
St. Croix Foundation extends its deepest appreciation to the Annie E. Casey Foundation and to its many local and national partners who support this work including the Office of the Governor, the HIVE Fund, Seven Seas Water Group, and GAM Software. Special acknowledgment also goes to the Foundation’s public and civic sector Data Partners for their collaboration and commitment to children and families in the Virgin Islands. Questions about the KIDS COUNT USVI Initiative should be directed to President Deanna James of St. Croix Foundation at 340.773.9898 or DJames@stxfoundation.org.