If you’re not already depressed about a) Governor Schwarzenegger’s No-Oops-I-Mean-$1.5-Billion-Cuts-to-K12-Education Plan or b) the possibility that AUSD will be facing a $25 million deficit within three years, Children Now released a report last month that shows just how dismal the situation for children in this state really is.

In its California Report Card 2010, the national non-profit (which is based in Oakland), gives the state a D+ in child health categories, including asthma, health coverage, and oral health; a D in K-12 education; and a D+ in child safety. The state received just one B grade—a B+ in afterschool care.

And this is based on data gathered before this year’s projected cuts to both K-12 education and children’s health services. This year, “the governor is looking to roll back still more health programs for children, even those that are subsidized by the federal government,” Children Now’s director for health, Kelly Hardy told me. “It doesn’t make a lot of sense.” (One example: if California doesn’t receive the federal funds it’s counting on this year, the governor will eliminate the partially fed-subsidized Healthy Families insurance program, which means 22,000 children in Alameda County—and nearly 1 million statewide—will be without health insurance.)

The state’s 9.4 million children comprise a full 13 percent of the nation’s children, the report notes. 6.3 million of the state’s children attend public schools, more than in any other state.

I’ll allude to the report’s findings on K-12 education in the future. But for today I’d just like to pull out a few key lines from the section on health care for the state’s children:

“California cannot afford the added expenses associated with forcing uninsured children to rely only on emergency room care, limiting the availability of necessary childhood immunizations or denying children’s mental health services when needed…The children served by {programs cut in 2009} now are more vulnerable to major health issues, resulting in unaffordable costs for families and the state.”

Never mind pain and suffering, of course.

Interestingly, the organization’s executive director, Ted Lempert, had a surprisingly upbeat—and inspiring—response to the report card when he talked to the San Jose Mercury News in early January. “This is indeed the worst of times in the 20 years we have been doing this,” the former San Mateo County supervisor and state assemblyman, said. “But it’s also a time of great opportunity.

“In the worst of times, you put your kids first,” he said. “Any family would do that. So here is an opportunity to get people to say, ‘Wait a minute. We need to focus on the future. If we are not protecting kids, what are we doing to our future?’”