The St. Croix Foundation for Community Development unveiled the 2025 Kids Count “Data Book” in a virtual presentation Wednesday, offering policy shapers, lawmakers and community stakeholders a wealth of data about child welfare, education, health and more.
This year, the Kids Count USVI team brought that data to life with testimonials and first-hand accounts from the kids themselves. The 2025 book is titled “When Data Speaks: The Voice of Our Children.”
Kids Count is a nationwide initiative of the Annie E. Casey Foundation. For the past five years, the St. Croix Foundation for Community Development has collected data from territorial government agencies, nonprofits and other sources to provide a thorough, complex picture of the issues affecting youth and families in the U.S. Virgin Islands.  The foundation’s president and chief executive, Deanna James, told the Source Wednesday the annual report is part of an effort to address those issues in a comprehensive, holistic way.
“I think what happens is that there’s so much siloed work that happens that everyone has one piece of the puzzle, and our hope is that — through this work and how we are presenting the data — that people begin to see the intersections between the data points,” she said, “and between the stories of the lived experience of our children, so that we can collectively create real coherent solutions.”
Pulling the data together isn’t without its challenges. James noted that the project receives no funding from local government sources.
“I think that’s one of the challenges and frustrations for us, is that this work benefits our nonprofits, it benefits our government partners in very real, measurable ways, and yet we have been unsuccessful in making… a sound enough case for an investment in this work,” she said.
The book also acknowledges data gaps which “limit our ability to form a full picture of child and family well-being in the territory.” This year, researchers were unable to include key data points like the number of children enrolled in Medicaid or child maltreatment statistics, which are typically tracked and reported by the V.I. Human Services Department, or statistics on crimes committed by youth, which the V.I. Police Department usually tracks.
Even the exact number of children in the territory is difficult to pin down. Population counts are only done by the U.S. Census every ten years, and the last Virgin Islands Community Survey was published in 2018 — and used data from 2015.
“This data book contains around 53 charts and hundreds of bullet points, the product of our collaboration with our partners… but I think even some of the agencies will agree that data sharing is an Achilles’ heel in the U.S. Virgin Islands,” the project’s principal investigator and data analyst, Saul Santiago, said during Wednesday’s presentation.
Some of the data points that were shared show a 20-percent decline in the territory’s overall population between 2000 and 2020, and the number of children fell by half.
“In past years… we discussed the decreasing population of children in the USVI. This year, we discussed the implications of the decrease,” Santiago said. By looking at local fertility rates tracked by the World Bank, he explained that the average number of births won’t sustain a stable population without migration. “And one of the implications of a smaller child population is the dependency factor.”
Fewer children means there will eventually be fewer working-age adults, who will in turn have to support a larger number of older members of the community.
Other charts, like one showing a steady uptick in graduation rates — from 70.9 percent in 2020 to 80 percent in 2024 — gave the Kids Count team cause for optimism.
“It’s one of those things where it’s just eking forward, bit by bit by bit,” said Lilli Cox, the foundation’s vice president of communications. “And to see that sort of continual progress would be wonderful. Once they’ve figured out what the magic levers are, maybe they can scale it and sort of increase that a little bit more. It’s really encouraging.”
Those who attended Wednesday’s virtual presentation heard from Gifft Hill School sophomore Yosairy Rodriguez-Sanchez, who highlighted a 2022 U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics finding that the territory’s average hourly wage was $6.75 below the national average.
“That $6.75 may not sound like a huge difference, but it adds up. It’s one of the main reasons why so many young people decide to leave the island,” she said. “They want jobs that can pay enough to cover the increasing cost of living and still let them save up for their goals.”
Rodriguez-Sanchez also noted that one third of the territory’s children live below the poverty line and recounted how a friend of hers struggled in school after hurricanes Irma and Maria and the COVID-19 pandemic, adding that the girl would have benefitted from educational opportunities her family couldn’t afford.
“So watching her go through that made me realize how much money — or the lack of it — can change a kid’s whole education,” she said. “The point is, kids shouldn’t have to depend on luck or favors to have the same opportunity. If leaders focus on raising wages and giving families more support, then kids can live up to their potential and believe they have a future here at home. We should be able to stay, work and build our lives in the Virgin Islands, not feel forced to leave because of our economy.”
James acknowledged the territory’s challenges during Wednesday’s presentation and said she hoped attendees “will walk away a little scared.”
“Maybe even a little petrified,” she said, “but ultimately resolute to use the data to act, to act decisively and to act boldly and to act collectively.”
The 2025 Kids Count USVI Data Book can be found online here, and an interactive Kids Count dashboard can be found here.