17 percent of Wisconsin school kids were living in poverty last year

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Seventeen-percent of Wisconsin school kids were living in poverty last year, up from almost 13-percent in 2007 before the start of the recession. That's according to new figures released yesterday by the U-S Census Bureau. In Milwaukee, over four of every 10 children age 5-to-17 came from families below the poverty line -- which the Census Bureau defines as 22-thousand-314-dollars a year for a family-of-four. But officials say the problem is showing itself for the first time in some of Milwaukee's suburbs. In Whitefish Bay, the percentage of school kids in poverty almost doubled during the recession to around seven-percent. And it's over 10-percent in Waukesha, where Superintendent Todd Gray says he's seeing more kids coming to school with the stress of families in crisis. Milwaukee school officials said over two-thousand students were homeless last year -- and they expect that number to rise. Kim Kampschroer said the district started collecting socks for kids this year, after more kids started coming to school with bare ankles in cold weather. Julia Isaacs of U-W Madison says poverty normally rises for about a year after unemployment hits its peak in a recession. So she expects the Wisconsin poverty figures for 2011 to keep going up.

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