2020 Census Awareness In The Classroom – Share by Sep 30

Posted by Philly Counts on August 18, 2020

Philly Counts and The 2020 Census
Philly Counts is an initiative with the City of Philadelphia to ensure a complete and accurate count in the 2020 Census of all residents of Philadelphia. The 2020 Census will determine the federal funding allocation, congressional representation, and research. Every person not counted is a loss of $2,100 in federal funds each year for the next ten years.

Students living on-campus are counted by a process called Group Quarters Enumeration, i.e. a file submission by the school listing all students living on-campus for the 2020 Spring Semester (as if the pandemic had not occurred). This part of the count is complete. Thank you to our Philly colleges and universities for working with the Census Bureau to submit their file.

Now, we have a big challenge to count students living off-campus. Students living off-campus are expected to respond for themselves. If a student was attending college in the Spring in Philly, they should respond to the 2020 Census using their Philadelphia address before September 30, 2020. This census timeline was recently reduced by 30% and we need help getting this information out to students as soon as possible.

This Fall, we are asking professors to help us raise awareness about the importance of students living off-campus to participate in the 2020 Census. Our ask is that professors share a slide (see below) at the beginning of the Fall semester and give students 5-10 minutes to complete the census.

See our higher education FAQs one-pager to help answer questions that may come up as the information is shared with students. For questions not listed or for any clarifications, you can reach out to Vanessa Caracoza at vanessa.caracoza@phila.gov.

If we can count on professors to be trusted messengers and help us raise awareness in this way, we can meet the challenge of counting all students by the shortened September 30th deadline.

Get the slide and FAQ here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZBP-6zXcvKsNauUQGPLkSgMirOS5iuq-I53SHpWl5ck/edit

Thank you for your consideration and helping us with this impactful effort. – Philly Counts