Edmonson County leads the southcentral Kentucky region in quality of life for children for the second straight year, according to the annual KIDS COUNT 2016 Data Book released Sunday.

Warren County dropped three spots in the annual report compared to 2015; however, Warren was still second in the region in regard to quality of life for children.

Barren County improved two spots from last year and Simpson County improved 14 spots. 

Place, income and race affect Kentucky children’s opportunity to thrive, the report noted. There is an overall child well-being ranking that encompasses economic security, education, health and family and community evaluations. 

The Kentucky KIDS COUNT 2016 County Data Book provides a snapshot of children by county, including county-level rankings of child well-being based on 16 different indicators. State averages for economic security for children show 41 percent are living in high-poverty areas and the median family income among households with children is $53,200 annually.

The counties with the highest rankings on child well-being include, in order, Oldham, Boone, Spencer, Woodford and Ballard counties. Edmonson County leads the region, followed by Warren, Simpson, Allen, Barren, Logan, Hart and Butler.

Edmonson County Judge-Executive Wil Cannon said Friday that he really couldn’t put a finger on why Edmonson County dropped from fourth in the state in 2015 to 12th in 2016 in the KIDS COUNT, a county ranking that still outpaces the region.

It could simply be the improvement in Kentucky’s economy the past year.

“The economy has been coming back across the state. Other communities have perhaps picked up economically,” Cannon said.

One national benchmark for the economy is the unemployment rate. On Friday, the U.S. Labor Department announced the unemployment rate dropped to 4.6 percent in November – the lowest in nine years.

The U.S. economy added 178,000 jobs last month, and the unemployment rate dropped to the lowest level since August 2007, which is before the recession started, the Labor Department said Friday.  

Cannon said Edmonson has some of the best public schools in the state and the strong community has also benefited this past year in continued improvements in the county parks. A strong economy in nearby Warren County benefits Edmonson, he said.

“Most of our people work there,” he said.

Only 7 percent of Edmonson County children live in high-poverty areas, compared to an average of 41 percent in Kentucky, according to KIDS COUNT.

Edmonson County Schools Superintendent Patrick Waddell said Thursday that increased efforts in the community to educate parents about the benefits of preschool to prepare children for kindergarten add into the overall quality of life for children.

“School data attribute as to how active our family resource centers are in the community.”

Waddell said last summer’s kindergarten readiness camp helped incoming kindergartners with adjustment issues this past fall.

“It lets the kindergarten students get a leg up on what kindergarten is all about. The staff felt it was successful,” he said.

KIDS COUNT showed 55 percent of kindergartners in Edmonson are not ready to learn, compared to a Kentucky state average of 50 percent.

Waddell said efforts in the elementary primary center and middle school are proceeding to educate students about possible career choices. KIDS COUNT shows only 14 percent of Edmonson County students are not graduating on time, compared to a state average of 11 percent.

“We know our numbers are not where we want them to be,” Waddell said of high school students not graduating on time.

Edmonson County’s median family income among households with children is $63,900 annually, according to KIDS COUNT statistics compiled between 2010 and 2014.

Warren County dropped three spots in the 2016 child well-being rankings, declining to 26 from 23 in 2016. That’s still about twice as better as Jefferson County, which received a 54 – 10 spots higher than Simpson – and a dozen spots higher than Fayette County, which was at 38.

Forty-eight percent of Warren County’s kindergarteners are not ready to learn, KIDS COUNT noted, and 42 percent of fourth graders are not proficient in reading. The KIDS COUNT numbers come from 2015-16.

The KIDS COUNT report noted 37 percent of Warren County children live in high poverty areas, up from 31 percent the year before.

The Warren County median family income among households with children is $60,600 annually.

Warren County and other regional counties are continuing to benefit from early childhood awareness initiatives, particularly as they relate to the child’s transition from pre-kindergarten to kindergarten and on up to fourth grade, said Joe Tinius on Thursday. Tinius has been working with the United Way of Southern Kentucky on those efforts in the region since his retirement as superintendent of the Bowling Green Independent School District.

Tinius, who is chairman of the United Way’s community impact committee, said the key is to educate parents of what the expectations are for a 5-year-old child when he or she enters a public school district.

“We need to have fewer and fewer kids coming to kindergarten that are not prepared. This is an extremely steep uphill battle.”

The students fare better in kindergarten if there is a pre-school experience prior to it and if Warren County’s child well-being ranking is slipping a bit in the KIDS COUNT report, it could be coming from kindergarten preparedness issues, Tinius suggested. 

United Way plans to roll out a kindergarten preparedness awareness program targeting parents after the first of year, he said.

“The challenge is to have the children read at grade level by fourth grade,” the former city schools superintendent said.

“Five-year-olds can manipulate technology — like an iPad — but they don’t have the social skills and don’t know how to conduct conversations.”

Tinius said it is important to reach the children at the earliest ages rather than when they have advanced past fourth grade.

BGISD Superintendent Gary Fields said Friday that with the booming economy in Warren County, it is easy to forget the number of children who still live economically marginal lives.

“Poverty is a barrier. We can’t lose sight of that,” he said.

Fields said a community is only as strong as its least fortunate and he praised the local United Way’s approach of focusing on early childhood education efforts.

“The United Way and The Foundry have both bought into kindergarten preparedness,” he said.

The young children face a far different school environment than their parents did.

“The difficulty is everything is happening earlier in school,” Fields explained. 

“I was in a kindergarten class on Friday and they were talking about nouns and adjectives. That’s so different than when I was in kindergarten. For a long time we didn’t educate parents that the expectations of school – especially kindergarten – are so much different today than they were years ago.”

When it comes to economic resources for children – food, clothing, school supplies – in the Warren County Public Schools, the fourth-largest public school district in Kentucky, the Synergy Center established in 2014 by Meijer has been a huge help, said Todd Hazel, director of student services for WCPS.

“It is a phenomenal asset. We can get food to someone in need immediately.”

The center is a 2,000-square-foot, climate-controlled storage facility stocked with food, toiletries, clothing items, school supplies and other basic necessities for students and families in need. 

Besides the Synergy Center warehouse, the 18 family resource centers in the district also play a major role.

“We are making sure that families are connected. We have been concentrating on Thanksgiving and Christmas needs,” Hazel said.

The key is knowing what the children need even when they don’t voice their needs.

“Some kids won’t speak up.”

Hazel said county district officials want to do everything they can to remove non-cognitive barriers for children and provide that safety net.

South of Warren County, the well-being of children is also improving in Simpson County.

Simpson County Schools Superintendent Jim Flynn said Thursday that Simpson County’s increase 14 spots could be attributed to an improved economy and pre-kindergarten awareness efforts.

“We may been seeing some evidence of moving in the right direction,” he said.

Simpson County was included in the federal Race to the Top grant in recent years and one pillar of that program was early childhood education, Flynn said.

“We received a $25,000 planning grant from the state for early childhood education,” he said.

Flynn said the biggest challenge is finding children attending in-home day care prior to enrolling in kindergarten.

Children in Simpson County are also doing better in reading by the fourth-grade level. “We had a 12-point increase in novice reduction,” Flynn said. That measures the number of substandard readers who increase their abilities to read.

KIDS COUNT calculates that 40 percent of Simpson County children are living in high-poverty areas and the median family income among households with children is $53,000 annually.

Other regional KIDS COUNT numbers include 56 percent of Barren County children are living in high-poverty areas and the median family income among households with children is $45,400 annually.

In Logan County, 58 percent of the children are living in high-poverty areas and the median family income among households with children is $45,900 annually while in Allen County 37 percent of the children are living in high-poverty areas and the median family income among households with children is $52,700 annually.

Hart County, with 94 percent, and Butler, with 90 percent, both have high percentages of children living in high-poverty areas, according to the KIDS COUNT report.

This year’s KIDS COUNT book goes a step further and examines how children fare based on where they live, how much their family earns and the color of their skin. It highlights solutions for how we can help all children succeed during childhood and as adults, a release said.

“We as a state have come a long way in providing children what they need to be successful, like ensuring kids have health insurance and changing the way we respond to youth who get in trouble,” said Terry Brooks, executive director of Kentucky Youth Advocates, in a release.

The 2016 County Data Book was made possible with support from the Annie E. Casey Foundation and the 2016 KIDS COUNT sponsors Passport Health Plan, Delta Dental of Kentucky and Kosair Charities.

The 2016 Kentucky KIDS COUNT County Data Book is the 26th annual report of both state and county data to measure and improve on child well-being. 

— Detailed data are available for every county in Kentucky. For copies of the book or county profiles, abennett@kyyouth.org may be contacted.

— Follow business reporter Charles A. Mason on Twitter @BGDNbusiness or visit bgdailynews.com.