To begin, on Long Island, like in New York State, poverty has risen steadily since 2006 as indicated by the percentage of students in LI and NYS schools who receive free lunch.  The increase steepened from 2009 to 2010 which likely reflects the nation-wide economic recession.  By 2010, more than 16% of the students in the average LI school received free lunch. Note that charts here consider the percent of students receiving free lunch, and not reduced lunch.  This approach produces a more conservative estimate of childhood poverty.

Level of school poverty can be “disaggregated” into high poverty schools, middle poverty schools, and low poverty schools.  High poverty schools are the 10% of LI schools with the most students receiving free lunch; low poverty schools are the 10% of LI schools with the fewest students receiving free lunch; and mid poverty schools are the 80% of schools in the middle.  One can then look at the average percent of children receiving free lunch in each of these categories and compare them.

While dividing schools by level of free lunch necessarily means “high” poverty schools will have more students receiving free lunch than mid- and low poverty schools, the gap between the categories is not predetermined.  The larger the gap from one category to the other, the greater the level of inequality.

Looking at the “disaggregated” figure, two trends become apparent.  First, the steady rise in overall poverty since 2006, and especially since 2009, does not occur in low poverty schools.  All LI poverty and all its increases are located only in mid- and high poverty schools.  Since the increase is concentrated only in mid- and high poverty schools, inequality is increasing.  That is, in the figure, the gap between the low poverty line and the other lines has gotten wider. In 2010, low poverty schools averaged nearly 0% of students receiving free lunch, while high poverty schools had about 60% of their students receiving free lunch.