There’s some rare good news for Central Florida’s kids — the poverty rate dropped significantly from 2012 to 2017, juvenile arrests were down and more children were covered by health insurance.
The findings were released Wednesday by the Florida Kids Count 2019 Child Well-being Index, produced by researchers at the University of South Florida and based on 16 measures of health, financial stability, education and social welfare in each Florida county.
On the whole, St. Johns County — in the St. Augustine area — ranked No. 1 in the state, propelled by improvements in economic well-being, fourth-grade reading scores and the number of children with health insurance. And, like the state as a whole, the number of kids in poverty dropped during the report’s five-year comparison, although it remains above the national average of 17.5 percent in Orange, Osceola and Lake counties.
[For more on this story, written by the Orlando Sentinel, go to: https://www.orlandosentinel.co...p2h76onkm-story.html]
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