Hurricane Katrina could make the Gulf Coast Mississippi’s new &#8220poster child for modern-day poverty,” a state child-advocacy leader said.

Since Hurricane Katrina struck the Mississippi Gulf Coast on Aug. 29 unemployment rates in the state’s three southernmost counties have topped the Tunica County peak, said Jane Boykin, project director of KIDS COUNT Mississippi and president of the Forum on Children and Families in Jackson.

&#8220If you define the current economic status of the three Mississippi Coast counties by their post-Katrina employment rate, you’re talking about counties in worse shape than Tunica when Sugar Ditch and joblessness made the Delta a poster child for modern-day poverty in America,” Boykin said in a press release.

September unemployment rates in Hancock, Harrison and Jackson counties ranged from 23 to 24.2 percent, Boykin said, adding that the data available to her showed Tunica County’s rate peaked at 19.9 percent. A year prior unemployment rates in the six counties were between 5.1 and 8.2 percent.

&#8220That’s the wake-up call I want people to see,” Boykin said in a phone interview. &#8220If we try to just keep serving people the way we’ve been doing, it’s not going to work. Time is not on our side.”

Boykin said planners need to do their best to &#8220fast-forward” 20 years ahead in rebuilding the Coast’s systems of education, health care and other pieces of its &#8220soft infrastructure.” As examples, curricula in area schools should be coordinated so students may move between schools without losing ground, Boykin said.

The Governor’s Commission on Recovery, Rebuilding and Renewal was established about six weeks after Katrina struck. It was set to deliver its report to Gov. Haley Barbour Friday, commission communications director Will Longwitz said.

The report will be Barbour’s to deliver to government officials and others on the Coast and copies of it will eventually be made public, Longwitz said. The vast majority of its recommendations are designed to help government officials, private investors and citizens on the Coast, Longwitz added.

&#8220It’s going to be up to them,” Longwitz said.

The commission has been holding public meetings across the Coast.

&#8220We’ve done everything we can to make sure it was their report,” Longwitz said.

Boykin said she had attended some of the commission’s meetings but has not presented her comments based on the unemployment data.

&#8220It’s more information for them to consider,” Boykin said. &#8220This (rebuilding) is going to be a long process. We’re just going to have to make sure soft-infrastructure pieces fit a future that’s very different from the present.”

KIDS COUNT is &#8220a national and state-by-state effort to track the status of children by providing policymakers and citizens with benchmarks of child well-being,” the release says. It is sponsored by the Annie E. Casey Foundation.

Estimates are the Coast will take up to seven years to rebuild, she said.

&#8220Over that seven-year period, what will the impact be on people who are underemployed and unemployed?” Boykin said. &#8220What will happen to their children when parents have to work two jobs? We know what happens. We know it from the Delta.”

Increases in measures like those of teen pregnancy and child-abuse and -neglect can be predicted in part by rises in unemployment rates, experience in places like the Delta shows, Boykin said. Many parents may need to take second jobs to make ends meet and many will remain displaced, contributing to likely increased stress on them, Boykin added.

&#8220Believe me, a family living in a travel trailer is stressful,” Boykin said.

The Governor’s Commission was organized with 10 committees, including one each focused on education and health and human services, Longwitz said. The commission’s work effectively ended with the completion of its report but four or five Barbour staffers who have staffed the commission will remain focused on helping local leaders who may want to act on recommendations in its report. Three or four of those staffers are to remain based on the Coast, Longwitz said.

Another of the commission’s committees focused on developing specific recommendations for the Coast to keep or regain jobs, Longwitz added. It worked to help accelerate the re-establishment of employment in the defense-contracting industries, including shipbuilding, and in shipping to and from Coast ports.

&#8220It was important for the commission to identify concrete things that can be done in the short term,” Longwitz said.

One such thing the commission considered was to find ways to communicate to people who may be considering leaving the area that the number of jobs available in such industries as defense-contracting will be increasing, Longwitz added.