The Central New York Community Foundation is expanding its free database to include data broken down by race. The new section of the online database CNYvitals.org will increase understanding of how different communities experience life in Central New York.
Frank Ridzi, who oversees community investment for CNYCF, says this provides a deeper look at some of our region’s most pressing issues … like housing, employment, literacy and more.
“We're adding an equity lens to that. And what we're doing is really breaking down a lot of those indicators by race," Ridzi said. "This way, as we're working to do the things that we do, like improve literacy, and reduce lead poisoning, and reduce poverty, we can actually see how what we're doing both as a foundation and as a community is impacting the actual experience of the people in those groups.”
CNY Vitals tracks data points over time and with interactive visuals. Ridzi says this helps spot trends and identify growing needs. One example is third-grade literacy, tracked in partnership with the Syracuse City School District. Overall, it has shown improvement — but Ridzi says a closer look at race demographics shows a discrepancy.
“When you look by race, some groups are certainly improving even more than others," he said. "So a lot of our efforts as a community have worked for white students, but we also see improvement for Asian Pacific Islander, Hispanic and Black, but they just are not nearly yet up to that same level. With this new dashboard, realize if we keep just doing what we're doing … we're not necessarily going to close the gap.”
The CNYvitals database is available for residents, nonprofits, government agencies and educators to use — all for free.
Editor's note: Central New York Community Foundation is a financial supporter of WAER.
