Poverty and Class

Most large Florida school districts are moving away from suspending children for nonviolent misbehavior — part of a nationwide consensus that harsh discipline falls unfairly on black kids and leaves struggling students too far behind. The Pinellas County School District is an outlier.

Notions of personal failure and our collective ignorance of what it’s like to live on $8.60 a day help explain why 20 states have not covered the very poorest, and why Medicaid as we know it could disappear.

We're happy to announce today that we have a new name and a new look. Our program is now known as the Center for Health Journalism, which better reflects our expanded range of programs and goals.

Nearly 60 hospitals have closed in the U.S. since 2010. In reporting on how hospital closures affect poor patients in Rust Belt towns, reporter Sean Hamill found first-person accounts to be crucial. But backing up those stories with data and geographical comparisons also provided essential context.

As Merced County in California's Central Valley grapples with a rising tide of violence over the past few years, local behavioral health clinicians are paying closer attention to PTSD. The county has recorded homicides in record numbers over the past two years.

In 2013, Desiree Parreira lived a parent’s worst nightmare when her 16-year-old daughter, Samantha, was shot and killed at a house party near Merced in California's Central Valley. The ensuing grief was unbearable. But in a county wracked by violence, she's not alone.

Violence is a part of daily life in the most segregated elementary schools in Pinellas County, Florida. Five elementary schools had more violence than all 17 high schools combined.

First the School Board abandoned integration, leaving the schools overwhelmingly poor and black. Then they broke promises to help and stood by and did nothing as black children started failing at outrageous rates.

With a dramatic flourish, a longtime education activist recently unfurled a Confederate battle flag in front of Pinellas County School Board members, saying they had failed black students in five neighborhood schools in south St. Petersburg.

Black leaders in Florida's Pinellas County say the school district broke promises they made to settle a lawsuit accusing them of shortchanging black students. The criticism comes in the wake of the publication of "Failure Factories," a yearlong investigation by the Tampa Bay Times.