A report that looks at children’s quality of life in Florida paints a bleak economic picture for Duval County’s black children.

Florida Kids Count, released Monday, shows that black children represent a much larger percentage of poor children than their white and Hispanic peers.

In Duval County, 23.4 percent of the population — or 208,077 people — are under the age of 18. A quarter of those children live below the poverty line. Of those poor kids, 58.7 percent are black and 32.1 percent are white.

Statewide, 24 percent of children live in poverty, and more than half of them are white. Among the most populous counties in Florida, Miami-Dade has the highest percentage of kids in poverty — 27.4 percent — followed by Duval County.

Also among the large, urban counties, Duval’s black children make up the largest share of all poor kids living with a single mother at 63.9 percent. Only Broward County comes close, with 63.5 percent of its poor kids with single moms being black.

Garrett Dennis, city councilman for District 9 that includes parts of Northwest Jacksonville, said the results were astonishing and show the importance of access to jobs. He said it’s not about hiring quotas, but giving people the opportunity to earn a living wage to support their families.

“I was having a talk with my son as we were driving home from church yesterday. I’m the product of a single parent household. I was fortunate enough to go to college,” said Dennis, who is black. “I was sharing with my son that (with) my job and his mom’s job, he’s starting life at the starting line or maybe a few steps ahead. When I started life, I started several steps behind. It takes you that many years just to get caught up.”

George Maxey, executive director of the New Town Success Zone, said the disparity has everything to do with economic opportunities and education. He said while programs targeted to children are great, it will take a two-generational approach to change lives.

“We focus on the needs of children, but children don’t pay the light bill, they don’t pay the electric bill, they don’t pay the food bill,” he said.

Maxey said there’s no silver bullet for eliminating the disparity, or poverty.

“It doesn’t exist,” he said. “And we keep trying to find it. But we have to work in conjunction and have many things working at the same time.”

Discipline disparities in schools

The Kids Count report also found that black kids in Duval receive a disproportionate share of discipline referrals at school, with 68.7 percent of all referrals going to black kids. It’s a common trend among all seven big counties, and statewide more than 40 percent of referrals go to black kids, even though only 23 percent of public school students are black.

Maxey, a former educator, said the issue of discipline referrals is two-fold: Teachers don’t understand their students’ needs, and students’ don’t understand their teachers’ needs. Both parties go in with preconceived notions about the other and fail to give anyone the benefit of the doubt.

“We automatically assume the person is wrong before hearing them out,” he said.

Maxey said schools need to create an environment in which educators and students are willing to trust one another, and it takes more than a one-time workshop to remedy the problem.

Dennis said Jacksonville’s children living in poverty have so many things to worry about before they even walk out the door — clean clothes, eating breakfast, how they’ll get to school, and so on — that it’s no wonder it impacts school performance. A former math and science teacher, Dennis said it’s no wonder these children are punished more as a result.

“They aren’t getting the attention they need,” Dennis said.

Limited funds and new thinking

Maxey said Jacksonville already has the resources it needs to improve children’s quality of life.

“We have to be willing in Jacksonville to think outside of the box,” he said. “I know we’re limited in funds, but that doesn’t mean we can’t think outside the box and find a way to do better.”

Kids Count aims to offer a big-picture look at the quality of life for Florida’s children using key indicators of well-being to inform the public and policy makers. The report looks at economics, education, health and risk factors.

Florida Kids Count is a part of the Department of Child and Family Studies at the University of South Florida. Nationally, the Annie E. Casey Foundation oversees the Kids Count Network.

To view the full report, visit Florida Kids Count.

Tessa Duvall: 904-359-4697