Google's fucking Eric Schmidt should change his name to Scrooge for the holidays (rant)

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11. More school-age California children are living in poverty

http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_19443440
Posted: 11/30/2011 05:22:14 PM PST
Updated: 12/01/2011 06:54:23 AM PST

The economic downturn has hit children hard. New estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau show the number of school-age children living in poverty in California swelled by 30 percent from 2007 to 2010.

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The trend could have far-reaching and long-term effects. Educators and researchers say that when children come to school hungry or without a stable home, they often struggle to focus on their work and fall behind. Some kids, after a prolonged period of instability, develop what early childhood experts call "toxic stress," which can trigger long-term memory loss and other cognitive problems, as well as hypertension and other stress-related diseases.

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In 2010, the counties of Alameda, Contra Costa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Santa
Cruz and Solano were home to nearly 137,000 poor children between the ages of 5 and 17 -- roughly 28,600 more than in 2007, before the recession began, according to the estimates.

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Alameda and Santa Cruz counties had the highest school-age poverty rates in the Bay Area, at 17 percent and 18 percent, respectively. In Santa Clara County, the number of poor schoolchildren grew by 40 percent in just three years to just more than 38,000.