Peekskill City Snapshot

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The Peekskill City Snapshot that we’re sharing today is the final fact sheet in our City Snapshots Series. If you missed the first four City Snapshots for Yonkers, New Rochelle, Mount Vernon, and White Plains, be sure to check them out!

We hope you have found these City Snapshots interesting and useful, and that they encourage you to advocate for children in all of our communities to be healthy, safe, and prepared for life’s challenges.

Our goal is to shed some light on what it’s like to raise a child in each of these cities in Westchester County. The data we’ve chosen covers key areas such as demographics, economics, education, community resources, health and safety, and family. While there is much more data that we could have included, we think the data we’ve chosen provides a well-rounded picture of the environments that our children and youth are developing in. All the City Snapshots will contain the same data indicators for comparisons between cities.

You can download a pdf of the Peekskill City Snapshot or use the interactive viewing window below.

A Word of Caution

Compared to the other four cities we’ve featured in the City Snapshots Series, Peekskill has some unique challenges due to its smaller size. For much of the data in City Snapshots, we use estimates generated from sample survey data from the US Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS).

The general rule for sample survey data is: the larger the sample, the more likely your survey will actually reflect what’s going on for the entire population. The smaller the sample, the greater the risk of generating an estimate that’s not so great.

The US Census Bureau is wise enough to publish ACS estimates along with their corresponding margins of error. For those without a statistical background, what you should know is that the larger the margin of error, the less confident you should be in the estimate. The smaller the margin of error, the more confident we can be.

Municipalities with small populations, such as Peekskill, tend to generate small samples and large margins of error. As a result, there were some numbers available for other cities that can’t be published for Peekskill. For example, you’ll notice that we didn’t include the percentage of children living in each family type; the margin of error for this data was so large that it made the data inconclusive.

Just to clarify, none of this means that the data collection or source was unreliable. We just can’t be as confident in pinning down an exact statistic due to the small sample size.

Peekskill Highlights

 
NOTE: Unless otherwise noted, all comparisons are made between the five selected cities, not between all municipalities in Westchester County.
  • Walkability: Peekskill has the lowest walkability score out of the five cities, designated as “Somewhat Walkable.” This means that some errands can be done on foot.
  • Limited English proficiency: Peekskill has the highest percentage of students with limited proficiency in English, with 17% of students designated as LEP (limited English proficient).
  • Student proficiency rates: Together with Yonkers, Peekskill has the lowest passing rates for third grade Math. The school district also shares the lowest passing rates for third grade English Language Arts with both Yonkers and Mount Vernon.
  • Bullying and drug/alcohol possession: While Peekskill seems to have higher rates of bullying incidents and drug/alcohol possession in its schools, it’s important to remember that in a smaller school district, just a few incidents can throw off the rate for the entire year. Similarly, the low index crime rate for Peekskill may be reflecting the small sample size as much as it reflects the actual crime levels.
  • Prenatal care: Out of the five cities, Peekskill has the lowest percentage of infants who were born having received delayed or no prenatal care (24%).
  • Child obesity: Compared to the other four cities, Peekskill has the highest percentage of children who are obese or over-weight (39%). Throughout Westchester County as a whole, 26% of children are obese or overweight.
  • Leadership Initiatives for Teens (L.I.F.T.): Peekskill’s L.I.F.T. program, sponsored by the Youth Bureau, provides positive activities for preteen youth during the school year and summer months. The program seeks to teach 11-13 year-olds about leadership and the basic skills needed to be self-sufficient as an adult.

Take some time to explore the rest of the data in the Peekskill City Snapshot below. We also encourage you to download the fact sheet as a reference, or send it to a friend or colleague using the share buttons at the bottom of the post.

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