Rhode Island KIDS COUNT Executive Director Paige Parks

This episode dives into Rhode Island's latest child well-being report, revealing critical insights into the state's progress and ongoing challenges. Paige Parks discusses with Rhode Island Kids Count Executive Director, Paige Parks, about systemic issues affecting children—covering poverty, education gaps, healthcare access, and immigrant family experiences.

In this episode:

• The significance of data-driven advocacy for children's issues
• Over 15% of Rhode Island children live in poverty, amidst soaring housing costs
• Trends in education: declining absenteeism but persistent challenges in early childhood access
• Impact of federal policy changes on health insurance and social services
• The rising number of children in immigrant families—nearly 30%—and the importance of multilingual education programs
• How COVID-19 and inflation are magnifying disparities and stressors on families
• The need for more investments in childcare, social safety nets, and community-based support
• The threat and potential rollback of critical federal and state programs due to policy shifts
• Strategies for advocacy and coalition-building at the state level

Timestamps:

00:00 - Introduction to Rhode Island Kids Count and their mission

02:06 - The importance of putting children at the top of the policy agenda

03:43 - Key findings from the 2026 Rhode Island Kids Count Factbook

04:10 - Child poverty and housing affordability crisis in Rhode Island

05:13 - Ripple effects of unstable housing on children’s well-being

06:42 - The true cost of living in Rhode Island—almost 100k needed to stay afloat

07:33 - Education insights: progress vs. persistent gaps in early childhood and K-12

08:46 - Supporting the whole child: addressing food insecurity and school readiness

09:57 - Chronic absenteeism: causes, challenges, and the importance of data

11:20 - Health coverage: progress, disparities, and threats from federal policy changes

13:20 - Exposure to violence, domestic situations, and their impact on children

14:06 - The state of maternal and infant health care; disparities by race

15:31 - The vulnerability of immigrant children and families amid federal immigration policies

16:48 - The importance of local data amid federal funding cuts

18:41 - Strategies for advocacy and policy impact amidst political changes

20:15 - Federal data reductions: implications for statewide policy and program planning

22:54 - The rising needs of immigrant families for services like dual-language education and workforce support

24:11 - Addressing data gaps and community engagement for better child outcomes

25:37 - The recent legislative session and how coalitions influence policy for children

27:33 - Upcoming challenges: the impact of federal policies like HR 1 on families

29:16 - The importance of economic investments to sustain child benefit programs

Transcript

Bill Bartholomew 0:00

Paige Parks, Executive Director of Rhode Island Kids Count. Welcome to Bartholomewtown.

Paige Parks 0:05

Thanks for having me on.

Bill Bartholomew 0:07

Glad to be able to do this. It's been a long time coming. There's a lot that I want to get to, but I think the best place to start is just your background and what Rhode Island Kids Count is.

Paige Parks 0:19

Sure. So I am the executive director of Rhode Island Kids Count. I've been in this role for about four years, um, after my legendary predecessor of Elizabeth Burke Bryant. Um so happy to follow in her footsteps. Um and Rhode Island Kids Count, uh, we are a nonprofit, uh, nonpartisan organization that's working to advance equitable policies that improve the lives of all of Rhode Island's children and eliminate disparities by bringing together data advocacy and civic action. We've been doing this work for over 32 years, more than that, started off as a project of the Rhode Island Foundation as a response to Annie E. Casey Foundation doing a call-out looking for states' projects to collect and report data on kids so that policy making was data informed and focused on kids. So that's how we started. And for the last 32 years, we have been producing the Rhode Island Kids Count Factbook, which is the state's most comprehensive data set on kids. And then we don't just look at the numbers, which are often really sad and depressing, but we advocate for policies that are going to make some big changes for kids. And we also take research around like what's best for kids and families and make it understandable so the public um can make decisions and act at both a local and a statewide level to put kids in the forefront.

Bill Bartholomew 1:49

Kids is such a, you know, when you look at look at it like that on such a basic statement, you know, not through the lens of, oh, education or whatever specific lens. When you just look at it like kids, it's like, well, yeah, that should be in any good society, top of the list. But at the same time, we hear a lot more about a lot of other things in the political ecosystem right now, not just directly how's this world impacting kids? So before we get into the findings of this year's handbook and some of the legislative um work that you've done in this past session, just do you get the sense here in Rhode Island that the work you do is from a policy maker standpoint, from a general public standpoint, do you get the attention that it needs?

Paige Parks 2:36

Yeah, I think kids get the attention they need because we have organizations like Rhode Island Kids Count and the campaigns that we lead like right from the start, which focuses on early childhood policy and advocacy, um, the Raising Rhode Island Coalition, who looks at um economic well-being and child poverty. It's because of these entities and these coalitions that exist is why kids um remain at the forefront and why Rhode Island um is making progress for kids. Um, and as you said, you're right, there are so many issues that are important. Kids, it would come naturally to think that kids should always be at the forefront because they are completely our future. Um, but you know, kids don't vote. And so the kids don't have the same kind of power and privilege that maybe corporations might have, that adults may have. So that's where our our role as child advocates come in. Like we are there at the state house to make sure that kids' voices are heard loud and clear, just as loud as other special interest groups may have.

Bill Bartholomew 3:42

Let's get to the 2026 Rhode Island Kids Count Factbook. The key findings, well, let's start with on an economic level, which this ties into the affordability crisis, the housing crisis, things that are impacting everybody. But over 15% of Rhode Island children, that's more than 27,000, are living in families below the federal poverty threshold. That just compounds all the challenges that we have everywhere else. What else did you find in terms of affordability and housing that jumped out to you in terms of this this year's assessment?

Paige Parks 4:15

Yeah, well, as many of us can know and feel, um, the data is reflecting the real life experience. And it's really hard. It's almost impossible to afford housing in Rhode Island without some type of stress on families. Um, you know, a certain percentage of your income, you know, more than 30% of your income really shouldn't go towards more than more than 30% for housing, but our housing prices are so astronomical here in Rhode Island that families are having to put more and more of their income to find stable housing. Um, and that puts stressors on families. And we see an increasing number of students who are identified as being homeless or have spent time in a homeless shelter or they're doubled up with other families. Um, and that's a large concern because one of our most basic human needs, right, is food, shelter, um, safety, and security. And so if our kids are not having stable homes, or if families are extremely stressed because of high poverty, um, it just ripple effects for kids. And um, that percentage of children living in poverty. I think it's important to remember that the federal poverty level is really, really low. So it's based on a national number. So it's like a family of three earning about, you know, $27,000 a year. That's what puts you in that that poverty level. But we know in Rhode Island the cost of housing is so much higher that $27,000, I mean, that you just you just can't survive. There are many other families that are not incorporated in that number that are really, really struggling. So the Economic Progress Institute, every two years, creates a report called the Standard of Need. And they look at like what does it actually cost to live in Rhode Island? And it's more of like you'd have to earn almost $100,000 a year in Rhode Island to not need any kind of government supports or subsidies. So we have a lot of families that are falling between that $27,000 a year and $100,000 a year that are just struggling, struggling to find housing, keep housing, struggling with food. We have increasing food costs, um, energy costs. It's it's very stressful for all Rhode Islanders, most Rhode Islanders, and especially Rhode Islanders with children.

Bill Bartholomew 6:42

That's an unbelievable statistic, that $100,000 marker. And it feeds into an anecdotal sentiment that a lot of people are right now just feeling the squeeze to a point where it's no longer a squeeze, it's actually crippling and still going to work every single day. And that is compounded um more and more and more, it seems, as inflation and the housing crisis rolls on. All of this from a from an uh a childhood standpoint, though, feeds into the next major area of of the factbook, education. Look, and and early learning, which is absolutely critical to this conversation. But okay, the Providence schools are going back to Providence and whatever other educational headlines are out there. But it's a much more granular discussion than that. What are some of the major gaps that you found still exist or are new gaps that exist in Rhode Island?

Paige Parks 7:38

Yeah, so we're seeing if we're looking in um the education space, at least in the K through 12 education, there is some good news. We're seeing chronic absenteeism starting to go down since the pandemic. So there were some good, you know, movement and trends in that direction. Um we're still seeing challenges with a decreasing number of families using childcare subsidies for childcare. Um we've stopped the bleed, I guess you would say before, with some of the pandemic era reliefs, and there has been some um legislation and budgetary investments that were really, really important to keep some of those early childhood classrooms open, but it's still a struggle. Um but what I'm very concerned about looking forward is that, you know, I think schools are where we see all of the other indicators, all the other uh impacts of poverty and health. We see it show up in school. So it's important to look at the school indicators and the school metrics. We need to make sure we're supporting schools, support the whole child, and we need to swim upstream and address those issues that schools are seeing. So, SNAP, for example, HR1 has new uh work reporting requirements. We're really worried about how many families are gonna struggle to feed their kids now. A kid going to school hungry is not a child that can learn, right? So that's why I say schools are kind of downstream. We also need to be looking upstream to address the actual causes that our schools end up trying to figure out how do we teach kids to learn while all these other things are going on around their life.

Bill Bartholomew 9:26

I want to ask you a specific question on chronic absenteeism. It's been a big focus of the McKee administrations to the extent that they actually put out an absentee absenteeism report every single week to the media, I think, seeking coverage of this school or this person was the absentee winner. At the same time, some of my reporting on this, I've talked to a lot of people who said, you know, I don't like that metric because it underappreciates the experience of some students who literally cannot go to school because they have to work or they cannot go to school because of a chronic condition of uh be it mental health, even physical health, whatever the case may be. When you look at that statistic uh uh in terms of chronic absenteeism, how much does being in school actually impact uh better outcomes uh and versus how much of that is on it uh can be looked at on an individual basis, at least from time to time?

Paige Parks 10:20

So I think there's both. I think there's two issues or multiple issues going on here. I think kids absolutely need to be in school if they're going to learn the curriculum. They have to have high-quality curriculum, high-quality instruction in order for them to um show what we hope they show when the outcomes are like the RICAST score. So if kids aren't there, it's much harder to learn the curriculum if it's not there being presented to you. There's multiple reasons why kids might not be in school. Some of that is um, and there's been a lot of work with like the Attendance Matter campaign around like just educating parents about how being in school is really important. We've heard from families, especially with that campaign's messaging of being absent two days a month actually can lead you to chronic absenteeism. A lot of families have thought about it that way, especially in the early grades, like kindergarten. Parents might not realize, like, oh, your your kids are actually doing something in kindergarten. It's not just playtime. So there that could be one of the reasons why kids are chronically absent. And I think the campaign did a good job around raising awareness around chronic absenteeism. But then there are other reasons why kids might not be in school. As you said, chronic health conditions. Um, asthma is one of the leading reasons why a student might be absent from school from a chronic health condition. Um, and you'll see different reasons, you know, in elementary schools, it could be health, it could be family issues. Whereas for older kids in high school, older kids actually have some um ability to be like, no, I don't want to go. I don't care if my parents tell me I don't want to go. And so for an older student, it may be other issues why they might not be going. It could be school climate, it could be bullying, um, it could be they're just not interested in the curriculum. They don't think it applies to their life. Um, so there's different reasons to address different ways we need to address all of those reasonings. And it's one thing that I think the Attendance Matters campaign has done, as well as having that dashboard, it really has um incentivized schools to look at their data. Like look at it, see which kids are absent. Are you seeing a pattern? I mean, in some schools we've heard where because they were looking at that data every day now with a different kind of lens, they may have noticed certain patterns. So a high school student may be late to school, but their younger sibling is there on time. Oh, is that older sibling late because they're bringing their smaller brother or sister to school? Okay, how can school address that issue? But if you don't look at the data, you can't figure out what's going on, you can't figure out what patterns are happening, and schools have to be creative and figure out how to address that because there's so many different reasons why kids may be chronically absent, and you can't use the same strategy for all kids. You really got to understand and know what's going on for every individual family and child.

Bill Bartholomew 13:19

Really glad we had that little uh diatribe there because it's something I've wondered about a lot, and I think there's a lot of mixed feelings on you. Look, um, health and safety is another major area that was a focused fact book. And the the Rhode Island has relatively decent coverage metrics for children's health insurance. Um, but we saw some stuff this year, like the Newport birthing center threatening to be closed. Now all of a sudden, well, philanthropy better step in, or it's you're not gonna be able to get maternal health care on a Quinnoc Island. So your overall assessment, let's start from a from a health care standpoint and then move into the broader concerns of safety, social justice, and climate and environment, and things like that, if we could. So on just access to care, your takeaways are.

Paige Parks 14:05

Yeah, so when I present data, I often say like I'm the most depressing person in the room because I'm always sharing bad news. But health was always one of those areas where I was like, we can celebrate. Our children's health insurance coverage has been one of the top in the country for a very long time. We've been number two for many, many years behind Massachusetts, meaning so many of our kids having health insurance coverage. And this year's fact book, we dropped in our national ranking to number 12. And so we are very, very concerned about that. I'm like, oh my good news, we're taking away my good news. So we really have to pay attention to that and see where our kids are dropping. As we dig more into the data, I think we're seeing that um the kids who are losing coverage are those whose parents are working, but their income is too high to qualify for Medicaid. And we're really concerned about like the the premium tax credits being dropped off. It's gonna be harder and harder for families to be able to afford health insurance coverage. Um, so that's something we really need to pay attention to. Um, we are getting positive in positive directions around maternal health and infant health. We still see large disparities by race to ethnicity, but we're making progress. But it's hard to continue to make progress if we lose health insurance coverage for many families. So it's like one of those things where we are, we've been making progress, making progress, and then HR1 really threatens that progress that we have been making as a state. And it's kind of like we have to go back to step one to make sure that our kids and families have the basics, like food, health insurance coverage, housing. Like we're back to the basics again in many ways.

Bill Bartholomew 15:59

Yeah, right there is a strong enough argument, an opposition argument against HR one that should in and of itself resonate with anybody who is tepid in their opinion on that. Uh what a plunge in a in in such a short span of time for something that we were I don't want to say we were necessarily leading in, like, you know, but you know, in terms, but we figured it out at minimum in a way that was sustainable, it seemed, not anymore. Safety, justice, you know, this is an area that's it's not just about it is about violence perpetuated against a child, but it's also about exposure to things like domestic violence. What were your findings in in this space and climate-wise, um uh the experience of a child's development?

Paige Parks 16:47

Yeah, so the stress, we talked about like the stress of of poverty uh on families and on children. Again, it like trickles into so many of the indicators of the fact book, including um exposure to violence. Um, when families are experiencing tough economic stress, you can start to see it pervade in kids' exposure to things like that, as well as children's experiences with neglect and abuse. Um, and oftentimes we say neglect first because when kids are involved in the child welfare system, a large, like the biggest percentage of those reasons is because of child neglect. It could be lack of supervision. Families are juggling a couple of jobs and a kid is home alone or or something to that effect. Um so and experience with domestic violence, we're always very concerned about that. I know our partners at the coalition against domestic violence have been advocating um really hard to make sure that we continue to support many of the programs that helped to get families with children out of domestic violence situations into safe housing so they can restart and rebuild their lives. Um, it's devastating that there has to be so much advocacy for something that should be pretty basic understanding that we should take care of mostly moms who are trying to leave the situations with their child. Um, so their child is not experiencing that violence, not experiencing all the stressors that come with it that then we see in other community settings, like in school or in neighborhood involvement in the youth justice system. To me, it's just so common sense. I'm like, we can see where this starts. We need we need to invest more uh on the front end for our kids and families.

Bill Bartholomew 18:46

Yeah. What about from the standpoint of DCYF here in the state?

Paige Parks 18:51

Yeah, so DCYF has been um is under uh you know a decree order, um, and that department has been doing a lot of work to do, a lot of restructuring and working with community partners to address the needs of kids and families. How do we bring more kids back into state, back into care and state, and also supporting those community organizations that are providing much needed care for kids and their families and those supports? And it's been a challenge. But we are really happy that in the budget that just passed, there were some funds put into place to help those community providers being able to go through what's called this Medicaid transformation so that they're able to bill Medicaid directly, which helps make sure that they are able to be sustained and can do the programs and services that we know that we we really desperately need them to be able to do effectively and efficiently.

Bill Bartholomew 19:50

There's a special focus this year on immigrant children and families. Some startling statistics. I don't think a lot of people realize how many children live in immigrant families in Rhode Island or the percentage, I should say, of the overall population of children in Rhode Island. It's close to a third.

Paige Parks 20:04

Yes, nearly 30 percent.

Bill Bartholomew 20:07

Like which just uh further aggravates uh uh the the the way that the the conversation around immigration has been framed right now, right? This is this is not some abstract, distant conversation. This is in each and every person's never in my community neighborhood. So what were your findings and and and there's a call to action as well in this year's FACBOK on this?

Paige Parks 20:32

Exactly. So this year's FACBOO, um, we dedicated it to children immigrant families and had a special highlighted section around children immigrant families because of exactly what you've said. Um, our data is showing an increasing percentage of our children in Rhode Island live in an immigrant family. So, what that means is that at least one parent in the household is foreign-born. That number is now increased to nearly 30%, as you've said. And just watching what happened in 2025 at the federal level, uh, and also knowing what our our data is, I felt a pressing need to really highlight this community in our fact book this year. As you said, this is not an abstract concept, this is not a DC issue, this is not a New York issue, this is a Rhode Island issue, and when we are seeing federal immigration policies that are separating children from their families, that are making immigrant families fearful of getting the services that their citizen children are entitled to, it makes me very concerned that we need to know here in Rhode Island that this is our kids we're talking about. This is not someone else's children, this is our children in our backyards, in our classrooms, in our neighborhoods, these are our kids. So we really need to pay attention to what's happening at the federal level and to also prepare ourselves as a state to protect our immigrant kids. Um so as you've said, We we have nearly 30% of our kids are living in immigrant families. We also have the fastest growing percentage of multilingual learners in the entire country. So there is an urgent need to make sure that our schools are equipped to be able to educate multilingual learners and to really hone in on dual language programs, which help kids learn English, but also keep their home language so that they are able to be bilingual or multilingual, which is what we need for this economy that we're um, this world economy that we are participating in. And we want to make sure, as I said, that we're looking at and paying attention to the needs of our immigrant families and making sure that they have access to the programs and workforce development programs, nutrition assistance programs, because uh these are our kids, these are our future.

Bill Bartholomew 22:53

Couldn't agree more. I don't think anybody with a heart or brain could agree more as well at this point. Speaking of the federal government, while Secretary of Health and Human Services Bobby Kennedy has got his shirt off doing push-ups in an airport restroom or whatever it may be. The USDA is discontinuing reports that includes the household food security report. So they're fooling around and doing UFC stuff. Meanwhile, reports are being cut, data's becoming more and more difficult to get. They're defunding academic consortiums, institutions, special programs that oftentimes supplant or supplement that data. How has it been different this go-around trying to make a data-driven analysis of what's happening when you've got a federal government that is flashing the data that's available?

Paige Parks 23:43

Exactly. So this is a challenge that we have in front of us as a data organization. Um we're really concerned about, as you mentioned, the USDA not collecting the food security information. Um, also, other data that's under threat is around maternal and infant health. As I said, like we were making progress in that, but we may be losing access to some of that data, and particularly data that allows us to disaggregate that data to better understand which populations and for maternal health uh are more at risk. Um, and as well as data that's not that's being discouraged from being collected is around data around LGBTQ folks. Um, and so just because we don't have the data at the federal level doesn't mean that there's not those issues and problems. It just means it's going to be harder for us to better understand what's going on. So we at a at the local level or at a kids count are trying to be creative and thinking about what are other ways and avenues to make sure we can get this data. Um, close partnerships with our community-based organizations, which are often the most trusted folks in a community who could tell us what's going on. Um, their voice is going to be extremely important as we continue to build the fact book year after year. If we don't have the federal data, what do we know at the ground level so that we can continue to raise awareness and attention and most importantly act so that we can um address the issues that our our kids and families are facing?

Bill Bartholomew 25:20

A couple minutes, if we could, on just local stuff here. We've seen the General Assembly session wrap, a bit of an odd one with the speakership change and a lot of uh behind-the-scenes politics happening. Uh, did that make it any different from your standpoint in trying to get stuff done?

Paige Parks 25:36

Oh, well, we had a lot done this legislative session. We were really excited about um the budget. It was a book, budget that was focused on kids and families. And I'll tell you, for our work, um, we just keep at it. We have um, I think a really effective strategy um for how we put kids' issues in the forefront. We start with data. Um, we work in coalition with community to really help bring those voices of those with lived experience to policymakers, and we form coalitions, coalitions of folks who are like, yes, this is important, and we help get those folks state housed. We've been doing that for years. We continue to do that this year with even a like a really strict laser focus on some policy priorities. So, with the change in the leadership for us, we just kept doing what we were doing. Um, and we're really grateful for um Speaker Blasicewski, uh Majority Leader Kazarian, and Senate President Lawson and we have a great relationship with that we were able to meet with them and just keep them updated on um what the campaign work has been. Um, one thing that we try to do at Kids Count is we try to make it easy for policymakers to make the right decisions for kids. So we had done the work um ahead of time with the numbers, the data, um, all the research, comparing it to other states so we could just hand it to them and be like, here you go, here's what's easy for kids. And um we were really pleased and happy to say that, you know, to show that they moved forward with many of those proposals.

Bill Bartholomew 27:13

Yeah. Anything you're looking to as we we wrap up here, anything to next year? I mean, other than just the generic kind of major wish list, is there any specific thing that you want to flag that you know, you know, kind of needs attention from the public to either get um more aware of or provide feedback on anything like that?

Paige Parks 27:32

Yeah, well, the the HR1 pieces, we're gonna start feeling that. Uh on June 1st was our first wave of the SNAP work reporting requirements. Some early numbers I've seen is that 5,500 Rhode Islanders lost SNAP on that day. Um, and we're gonna keep seeing it. Now, each month as we move forward, there's gonna be more and more parts of HR1 that we're starting to see. Uh, and that's going to put a stress on our budget as a state. So I think just looking forward, we need to make sure we are paying attention to the new data and the numbers. And we might need, we are going to need continued investment in these programs so that we don't lose them. Um so we'll be working over the next couple of months to really build public awareness around the impacts of HRM1 and things that we need to put more general revenue in. So, for example, childcare. We have we have taken out $46 million in our child care funding from our general revenue since 2005. We need to put some more money into that system. Um, our cash assistance program, which is right now completely federally uh funded, um, which is our you know our welfare system. Um, those those dollars need to be used, those federal dollars need to be used for many other things. We need to start putting in our own general revenue as well to make sure that we are continuing to support um families. The net is getting smaller and smaller at the worst time. We need to get the net bigger to support families. So look look forward to uh talking more about that over the next couple of months and uh giving the public some opportunities to join us in the advocacy.

Bill Bartholomew 29:15

Yeah, likewise, and I hope we can highlight some of that stuff here. And yeah, the net is getting smaller and smaller. We did see a little bit of a surprise in terms of our revenue generation here in Rhode Island, and that is why economic development on a light, on a hyper micro down like across the street on Broad Street, like that level, all the way up to the big ideas, is so critical because we need to be able to find a way to fund the programs. Um, millionaires tax, in and of itself, is not gonna do it. So we got to keep moving forward here. Um, Paige Parks, you're all about moving forward. Rhode Island Kids Count. I'm I'm so glad we're able to do this. It's been a long time coming, and uh you're a legend. So thank you.

Paige Parks 29:49

Oh, thank you. What is the f the phrase people say, um, long time listener, first time caller? That's me. I've been watching you for so long. So I'm so played to be on the show. I really appreciate it.

Bill Bartholomew 30:00

Great conversation, thank you.