Albuquerque

Albuquerque birth to 3 project chosen for national network

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An Albuquerque organization just got awarded scientific research help and an instant brain trust in cities like Boston, Austin and Salt Lake City to determine whether the services they offer young Bernalillo County parents are helping them develop emotional bonds with their children. The hope is that this connection will set their children up to become good learners. Birth to age 3 is the fastest developing period in a person’s life and policymakers and child advocates in New Mexico are trying to find the best way to make that time count and to change the trajectory of poor educational outcomes, an underprepared workforce, and a new generation that will repeat the pattern. Cue Mission: Graduate. The 5-year-old organization was just chosen as one of 29 communities to join the StriveTogether Prenatal – Three Impact and Improvement Network by the National Institute for Children’s Health Quality and StriveTogether.

Adverse Childhood Experiences

Study: Nearly 20% of NM kids have multiple Adverse Childhood Experiences

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Child wellbeing advocates pushing to expand childhood programs  argue that New Mexico’s children are marinating in a stew of toxic stress that not only affects their health, but also underlies the state’s poor educational outcomes. This week, they got data to support their contention. A new report from the nonprofit Child Trends, using data from the 2016 National Survey of Children’s Health, found that New Mexico has some of the highest rates of children suffering from adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). It tied with Arizona for having 18 percent of children from birth to age 17 with three or more ACEs. The national rate for three or more ACEs is 11 percent.

early childhood education

Chances improve slightly for early childhood funding proposal

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Odds makers should be revising their estimates for passage of the Land Grant Fund Distribution for early childhood education. The joint resolution co-sponsored by Reps. Antonio “Moe” Maestas and Javier Martinez, both Democrats from Albuquerque, and Rep. Stephanie Garcia Richard, D-Los Alamos, chairwoman of the House Education Committee, has bypassed the Senate Rules Committee, the place it went to die in the 2017 legislative session. However, early childhood advocates shouldn’t get too far along in fantasizing about the winnings — the chances are still about as good as a long-shot horse winning the Kentucky Derby, not impossible but unlikely. Maestas and Martinez said after the resolution passed the full House on Tuesday they were planning to lobby individual lawmakers to try to get this constitutional amendment across the finish line.

2018 Legislative Session

House passes early childhood funding bill, 36-33

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Rep. Javier Martinez talked with NM In Depth’s Sylvia Ulloa about House Joint Resolution 1, which would tap New Mexico’s permanent land grant fund for early childhood programs. It passed the House Tuesday on a 36-33 vote.A plan to fund early childhood education programs in New Mexico by adding an extra 1 percent to the distribution from the Land Grant Permanent Fund cleared the same hurdle it did last year — though with about an inch less clearance. Rep. Antonio “Moe” Maestas and Rep. Javier Martinez’s HJR1, Land Grant Fund Distributions, passed on the House floor on a 36-33 vote, one vote less than the resolution got in the 2017 session. Martinez said the debate about the benefits of early childhood education was largely over. The debate now is how to fund it to an extent that it could change the education system. “We can invest in global stocks or we can invest in our children,” he said in opening statements.

2018 Legislative Session

More funding would help, but other issues also impede early ed in rural New Mexico

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With the 2018 legislative session fully underway, lawmakers are once again debating funding levels for early education. A tug a war continues to play out between those who say New Mexico ought to tap its Land Grant Permanent Fund, one of the largest such funds in the nation, to dramatically expand the reach of early ed programs and those who advocate a slower, incremental approach to increasing funding levels. As the debate rages on, current services aren’t evenly distributed around the state. New state dollars often go to places where they’re already going, helping to expand the number of children served in places where facilities to educate young children already exist. It leaves a lot of rural New Mexico’s children out in the cold when it comes to New Mexico PreK.

Will lawmakers make 2018 the Year of the Child?

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New Mexico’s children have arguably taken the brunt as the state has struggled through tough budgets the past couple of years, with cuts to public schools, state colleges and programs such as home visiting and expanded school years.

But with oil and gas revenues re-bounding, could 2018 be the year of the child at the Roundhouse?

child wellbeing

Child care ‘cliff effect’ jeopardizes working parents as incomes rise

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A couple of years ago a mother came to Ray Jaramillo, director of a childcare center in Las Cruces. She worked for minimum wage at Burger King, but was offered a supervisory position with better hours and a wage bump to over $9 an hour. She worried the extra money could cause her to lose childcare assistance for her two little girls. Between her and her spouse’s salary, their new earning power would push her family over the line for government-subsidized child-care. She had to figure out whether to take the promotion and risk paying thousands of dollars more each year for childcare, or forgo the extra family income.

child wellbeing
Las Cruces Mayor Ken Miyagishima

Advocates: Las Cruces minimum wage hike won’t affect child-care subsidies

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Las Cruces Mayor Ken Miyagishima has been hearing complaints and concerns from businesses throughout the process to increase his city’s minimum wage from the state minimum of $7.50 in 2014 to $10.10 an hour in 2019. There was a particular howl recently from the business community when a provision to index the minimum wage to inflation was scheduled to begin Jan. 1, 2018, something business operators and even the local school district was not prepared for because of an error in the ordinance’s drafting. The city council has since fixed the oversight. But child-care providers in particular have been bending Miyagishima’s ear because of fear over the effects on their payrolls and on parents who are receiving child-care subsidies.

child wellbeing

Kids Count goes on the road to southern NM

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Amber Wallin, Kids Count director for New Mexico Voices for Children, flashed up a photo on a screen during her presentation to childhood advocates and elected leaders in Las Cruces for the first Southern New Mexico Kids Count conference on Thursday. Anyone of a certain age would recognize the black and white photo of a motley bunch of kids in baseball uniforms: The Bad News Bears. Wallin said people in New Mexico were tired of being those Bears, tired of hearing the same old stats: 49th in child well-being, 50th in education, 49th in community and family. Some were tuning out, becoming numb, or throwing up their hands because it didn’t seem like there was anything they could do to change the situation. What is her answer to that? “Policy matters,” she said.