New Mexico Child Care
With all the disruption to everyone's sense of security, livelihoods and stability in the American news right now, I want to post something encouraging.
I'm hyper aware of the scarcity and unaffordability of preschool programs because my grandchildren, at ages one and four, are in day care and preschool full time. My son and daughter in law in California can manage it, but barely. The costs are astronomical and out of reach for just about everyone else, if they can even find any availability.
The state of New Mexico does something extraordinary.
New Mexico is the only state in the union to offer most families free childcare from birth. Half of the families in the state (families earning up to $124,000 a year) are eligible. In 2022 70% of voters voted to enshrine the right to education for children ages 0 to 5 in the state constitution.
The state guaranteed $150 million in state dollars per year to support it. The money comes from the Land Grant Permanent Fund, which was set up in 1912 when New Mexico became a state. Over the years New Mexico's oil and gas industry (yes, the Permian Basin fields are a big source of our state's revenue) has grown the fund to over a billion and a half dollars. The fund insulates beneficiaries from the boom and bust volatility of fossil fuels.
Few oil and gas states have chosen to fund childhood programs at all, so what New Mexico has done with their fossil fuel income is remarkable.
New Mexico has ranked at the bottom for child welfare for years. It's a huge empty state, very rural, and it has its challenges. There were advocacy groups working for years on improving early childhood support, but it got serious when Michelle Lujan Grisham was elected governor in 2018. Early childhood was one of her main campaign planks.
I'll attach the link to an article that explains all of this. But I wanted you to know there are still good things in government going on around us.
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