News Release
April 18, 2016
Candidate for County Commissioner John Whikehart Calls for Monroe County Summit on Childhood Poverty

Democratic candidate for County Commissioner John Whikehart today called for a summit of business, economic development, community, educational, non-profit, and governmental leaders to meet in early 2017 to begin conversations to create action plans to address childhood poverty in Monroe County. Whikehart proposes the county bring together a group modeled on the MCCSC Graduation Workgroup on which he served in 2006-2007. That diverse group was charged with creating a plan to improve 21st century skills high school graduates needed to be prepared for the workforce. One result was creation of the New Tech High School, now the Academy of Science and Entrepreneurship. “That is an example of community stakeholder conversation leading to action,” Whikehart pointed out.

Referring to the results of the recent annual rankings released by at University of Wisconsin institute and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation report, Whikehart said, “It is not longer acceptable to realize that 19% of our children under the age of 18 live in poverty and not have formal action plans from our leaders to address that fact with a coordinated plan of action.”

Whikehart stated that the report demonstrates that Monroe County is well ahead of the Indiana figure of 13%, and the report shows that poverty is the single greatest threat to the well-being of children.

“We live in a county with a world class research university and a community college, an affluent community, a cultural and tourism destination for many, and 1 in 5 of our kids lives in poverty,” Whikehart stated. “We cannot accept that.” “I have worked with community leaders for the past 15 years to analyze and address other issues in our community,” Whikehart said. “We must recognize that at-risk children must have our primary attention or we will continue to see cycles of poverty, under education, and under employment as generational issues for some of our residents.” Whikehart reiterated that we have the resources to create a plan, “How can we not put our best resources to work on this problem?”