Census Counting; Improving Their Futures

When I first made my digital footprint online, I was still writing for a local weekly newspaper. I did feature stories, mostly human interest but one of the ones that I covered was how our local elementary school had received a grant from Ohio Department of Job and Family Services. Through that grant, the school was able to open two weeks earlier, fire up the buses and treat incoming kindergartners to a mini school day experience.

Kids got the chance to test out the cafeteria, the classrooms, libraries, familiarize themselves with all the bathrooms (very important), the gymnasium, meet their teachers, make new friends, and be transported to and from the school on the bus.

My Shorty got to have this experience while his sister, who was in Kindergarten the previous year, didn’t. I can say that he was a much more confident kid in Kindergarten than his sister was and I credit the grant that to the school received. It helped him not to fear the unknown, to see some familiar faces, and feel brave as he stepped on to the bus his first day of school.

Why am I explaining all of this to you? It’s simple. It’s all about the numbers.

Grants like the one our school received come in part from people standing up and being counted every 10 years in the census. It gives our local, state and federal government a look at the past 10 years, the present and a peek into what they can expect in the future. It helps them plan financially for you, me, and our children’s future and their education.

The last census was in 2000, a year before Shorty was born and 10 years before Peanut. That’s two kids that didn’t get counted because they simply weren’t here yet. Had they been, I would have counted them. Still, in 2000, there were over 1 million kids under 10 years old, that were not counted on the census.

Can you imagine how much funding states missed out on because those children were missed?

Can you imagine how much money that your state missed because of that? How many programs were discontinued or were never able to be launched?

This time around, I’ll have more kids to count, (and while on a normal day that might get under my skin), this is the kind of counting that will come back to benefit our childrens’ future. This is the kind of counting that we can look back on and see the benefits for our communities.

For more information on how to make sure your family and community get counted2010 Census, visit the Census website for downloadable tool kits and resources.

This is post is part of the Global Influence Network. All views and editorial are my own.

About Nichole Smith

Nichole Smith has written 311 posts on The Guilty Parent.

Founder of The Guilty Parent and Chaos in the Country (http://www.chaosinthecountry.com), Nichole is a writer, blogger, social media strategist, wife to one, mother to four and embracer of mommy guilt.

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