Latest news with #EarlyChildhoodEducationandCareDepartment
Yahoo
13-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
'We're not trying to become millionaires': New Mexico early childhood centers push for better wages
ALBUQUERQUE — Fernando Noriega says first and foremost, being an early childhood educator requires patience and love for the work. But Noriega, a teacher at Caterpillar Clubhouse Daycare in Albuquerque, says he sees what amounts to a revolving door in educators, who despite loving what they do simply cannot sustain their families on $15 per hour or lower wages. Instead, many opt for easier — yet better-paying — jobs. 'We're not trying to become millionaires,' he said, speaking in Spanish. 'We just want to cover the necessities of our families, and to keep doing what we want, what we love, which is to care for children. That's it.' At least 18 early childhood centers throughout the state temporarily closed their doors Monday as part of a national annual 'Day Without Child Care.' In New Mexico, providers and educators demanded state lawmakers and officials institute $3 per hour pay bumps, to about $18 per hour, and a more clear path for compensation for workers. Ana Castro speaks during the news conference Ana Castro calls on lawmakers and state officials to implement pay increases for early childhood workers during a news conference Monday in Albuquerque. The conference, at the Love and Care Child Development Center, was part of a national day of action calling for improvements to states' early childhood systems. 'I ask: What would our community do without our service, without our training, without our calling?' asked Ana Castro in Spanish during a Monday morning news conference outside one of the temporarily closed centers in Albuquerque. '... We deserve more.' The call comes after advocates and the Early Childhood Education and Care Department during this year's legislative session asked lawmakers for more than $150 million to implement pay raises and a wage and career ladder for workers. State and federal dollars provide significant assistance to child care providers, which are often small businesses, including setting aside $77 million for grants to fund $3 per hour pay bumps in 2022. The request for a wage and career ladder came with a $10 million price tag. The pay raises proposal was bundled into a larger $104.6 million request for a pilot program to broadly improve child care outcomes across New Mexico. Neither ask, however, made it into the state budget for fiscal year 2026. Regardless, the early childhood department Monday said it will keep working toward increasing pay for workers. 'Governor [Michelle] Lujan Grisham's administration remains deeply committed to increasing compensation and wages for early childhood professionals,' early childhood department spokesperson Julia Sclafani said in a statement. 'As we move forward, we will actively engage providers and early educators to ensure their voices are heard and reflected in the decision-making process.' Fernando pushes Eva in a toy car Fernando Noriega pushes his 3-year-old daughter, Eva, in a toy car at the Love and Care Child Development Center in Albuquerque on Monday. The two were attending a news conference as part of a national "Day Without Child Care" meant to demand better pay and supports for early childhood workers. Last year, the Legislature appropriated $5 million for each of the following three fiscal years for the early childhood department to pilot a wage and career ladder for educators working in infant and toddler classrooms with children whose families are enrolled in child care assistance. While that pilot is in place, it is 'not sufficient to roll out a full wage scale and career lattice across all early childhood program areas,' Sclafani said. Sclafani and Camille Ward, spokesperson for House Democrats, each noted the state has implemented compensation programs and other financial incentives aimed at workers who make less than $18 per hour. That includes a supplemental wage program, which can net workers as much as $2,548 over a six-month period if they have a bachelor's or master's degree in early childhood education and work 32 hours or more per week. 'State lawmakers are committed to making sure our transformational investments in early childhood education are directly serving New Mexico's kids, families, and the educators who care for them across our state,' Ward said in a statement. Advocates say they're sitting down with the early childhood department in hopes the agency can push the pay raises through administratively using money from its significant budget increase during the coming fiscal year. Between fiscal year 2025, which ends June 30, and fiscal year 2026, the early childhood department's budget grew from $784 million to $995 million, Sclafani wrote in an email. The budget increase could help the state enact wage increases for workers, Ward said. 'With this substantial funding increase, we fully expect the department to prioritize improving access to quality early childhood education and care for New Mexico's children and increasing wages for educators,' she said.
Yahoo
06-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
National pre-K report highlights New Mexico investments in enrollment, funding
New Mexico has significantly improved funding and enrollment in preschool, according to a recently released national report. (Photo courtesy of the New Mexico Early Childhood Education and Care Department) New Mexico's national rankings for preschool education have improved significantly due to increases in enrollment and funding, according to a recently released report. The National Institute for Early Education Research, a nonpartisan research organization established at Rutgers University, released its 2024 State of Preschool Yearbook last week, which looks at access to preschool, quality of programs and state funding. According to the report, New Mexico pre-K served record high percentages of children aged 3 and 4 between 2023 and 2024. The state improved to sixth in the country for preschool accessibility for 3-year-olds to 12th in the country for access for 4-year-olds – New Mexico was 13th in both areas in the previous report. New Mexico also moved from 14th to fifth in the country for state spending per child. The total amount spent by the state more than doubled from the previous year to nearly $212.9 million, which translated to about $13,200 per child, according to the report. The state appropriated nearly $100 million to the Early Childhood Education and Care Department from the Land Grant Permanent Fund, further increasing funding to pre-K programs, Head Start and other community-based programs. New Mexico was one of six states to increase funding by more than $100 million between 2023 and 2024, according to the report. 'These investments are part of a broader strategy to ensure that every child in New Mexico has access to high-quality, world-class early education and care, setting a strong foundation for lifelong learning and success,' Early Childhood Education and Care Department Sec. Elizabeth Groginsky told Source in a written statement. She said the NIEER report's findings reflect the steps the state has taken toward a 'cradle-to-career education system' for New Mexico children. She added that legislative investments have funded 20,375 preschool slots for fiscal year 2026. Kate Noble, president and CEO of advocacy organization Growing Up New Mexico, told Source NM that the $100 million appropriation was the largest increase in funding to early childhood in the state's history. 'New Mexico has, I think, been fortunate to have an administration and Legislature that really understands the importance of investing in early childhood, and they've been willing to make significant commitments,' Noble said. 'It's not just funding the system properly that's important, but it's also the way that we have…been holding it and talking about it in our communities.' Noble said expansions to funding play important roles in increasing enrollment, expanding classroom capacity and investing in teachers, but the idea of universal pre-K remains 'rooted' in New Mexico communities. The state now has a cycle, she said, of expanding funding, expanding community knowledge and engagement and therefore, expanding child participation. 'We have this sort of social appreciation for it that has also shifted measurably over the past six years since the Early Childhood Education and Care Department came into existence,' Noble said. The NIEER report also looks at several benchmarks such as teacher qualifications, class sizes, learning standards and health screenings. New Mexico met nine out of 10 benchmarks. The state fell short of the benchmark for all early education teachers to have a bachelor of arts degree. 'When states put money into quality preschool programs, they are investing in children's futures and can expect to see strong returns on their investments. New Mexico leaders have put the right quality standards and per-pupil funding levels in place to ensure that pre-K programs adequately support children's development and result in the lasting gains that ultimately deliver savings for taxpayers,' W. Steven Barnett, NIEER's senior director and founder, said in a statement. Noble said 'there's no question' that New Mexico is a leader in expanding early childhood education 'in its thinking, in its rhetoric and in its actions.' She added that the state should also start seeing the investments made in early childhood start to translate into positive outcomes as children grow and make their way through the educational system. 'Investment without quality is not going to get us anywhere,' she said. 'It does take time because children need to grow, but we have studied pre-K. It does have positive outcomes that extend into school-age years. And New Mexico has made significant investments and really should start to reap the benefits of what we've done.' Noble told Source that she believes the state needs to show a similar focus on home visiting, a program that supports families and can often be a first step in screening for developmental delays in children aged 0 to 3. Home visitors can then refer families for early intervention to help mitigate delays before a child enters K-12 school. She said there also needs to be a focus on early childhood workforce in the state through professional development and increased wages to reflect the 'benefit to society' they provide. Groginsky told Source that the state is working to support educators through a pay parity program, matching compensation between early childhood teachers and K-12 teachers based on 'credentials and experience.' SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Yahoo
13-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Solvency questions swirl around paid leave proposal as session nears homestretch
Mar. 12—SANTA FE — As a hotly debated New Mexico paid leave proposal nears the finish line at the Roundhouse, questions are swirling about the plan's financial viability. A House-approved bill creating a state-run paid leave program and authorizing $9,000 baby rebates for working parents — spread out over three months after birth — is awaiting a key vote in the Senate Finance Committee with just over one week left in the 60-day session. Several committee members expressed misgivings Wednesday during a legislative analysis of the proposal, pointing out the bill does not specify where an estimated $193 million per year to pay for baby rebates would come from. "I don't think I've ever seen where we didn't say how we were going to pay for something when we put it on the books," said Senate Majority Whip Michael Padilla, D-Albuquerque. He also expressed concern the funding could end up being funneled out of an early childhood trust fund created in 2020 that will have an estimated $9.6 billion balance by the end of this year. Rep. Christine Chandler, D-Los Alamos, one of the bill's sponsors, told reporters later Wednesday that lawmakers could appropriate money from the Early Childhood Education and Care Department's budget — not the trust fund — down the line. "Is it funded? Not really. But does it need to be funded? That's the question," she said. "Well, just recall that (baby rebates) do not start until Jan. 1, 2028, so frankly, I would think it would be inappropriate to have the cost of the program in this year's budget when, in fact, it is at least one or two budget cycles out." But even some advocates of creating a New Mexico paid family leave program have expressed solvency concerns. Tracy McDaniel, policy director of the Southwest Women's Law Center, said members of a coalition of more than 50 groups are still trying to understand the implications of changes made to the bill before it was approved by the House on a 38-31 vote. "We just want to make sure this is a fiscally sustainable program from year to year," McDaniel told the Journal. She also said backers are trying to convince senators to expand the bill by extending the amount of paid time off workers could take off annually to care for family members or recover from medical procedures. Paid leave bill's evolution Supporters of a New Mexico paid leave program have tried for years to win approval at the Roundhouse. This year's bill, House Bill 11, marks the furthest such legislation has advanced, but the proposal has also changed significantly since it was first introduced. During Wednesday's hearing in the Senate Finance Committee, lawmakers also questioned the solvency of the wellness fund, a part of the bill that would require employees and employers to make contributions into a state-run medical leave fund. Employees would pay 0.2% of their wages into the fund and employers with five or more workers would pay 0.15% of wages, allowing workers to take up to six weeks of paid leave for medical, bereavement, fostering, military exigency or sexual abuse safety purposes. But New Mexico would be the lowest-income state to adopt the paid leave program, resulting in a lower amount of dollars making it to the fund but possibly a higher uptake rate, according to a legislative analysis of the bill. The only situation in which the fund would remain solvent at the currently proposed premium rates is if only 4.5% of workers utilize the paid leave, per scenarios provided by the analysts. The other hypotheticals with 6-8% of eligible New Mexicans using the leave would put the fund in a $227-870 million deficit, according to the report. The average of utilization in other states with similar programs is 6%, though analysts note that uptake rates are extremely difficult to predict. Other states since policy adoption have increased employee- and employer-paid premiums to ensure solvency. Senate Finance Committee analyst John Kreienkamp said New Mexico legislators could also later inject a one-time cash infusion to build the fund balance. But the funding uncertainty for both portions of the bill prompted criticism from Democrats and Republicans. "I'm concerned because we certainly do not have room currently in the budget," said Sen. Nicole Tobiassen, R-Albuquerque. "I don't know where this magic pot of money is sitting." But Chandler said she feels confident the bill is on solid financial ground. She pointed out the bill requires an actuarial study for its wellness fund before premiums are enforced. For her part, Tobiassen also questioned whether remote out-of-state workers could get the baby rebates and whether estranged parents could split the $9,000 when only one parent is the main caregiver. Analysts could not fully answer those questions. Vote on bill could come down to the wire Despite hearing an analysis of the bill, the Senate Finance Committee did not vote on it Wednesday. Such a vote will likely not happen until this weekend as analysts work to research senators' questions, a top committee staffer said. Sen. George Muñoz, D-Gallup, the committee's chairman, said this week the paid leave bill is part of what he described as $3 billion in "unfunded mandates" approved by the House. But House Speaker Javier Martínez, D-Albuquerque, called the legislation overdue. "No one should have to choose between taking care of a sick child or a sick parent or showing up to work and putting food on the table," Martínez said this week. Meanwhile, the bill's sponsors were not present at Wednesday's committee hearing, something some lawmakers objected to. "We're almost wasting our time here today," said Sen. Jeff Steinborn, D-Las Cruces. Chandler later said she found out about the bill presentation Monday evening through the committee's posted agenda. She called it an unusual process but said it doesn't raise any red flags in terms of the bill's chance for winning final approval. "If we're in a search for knowledge, I'm looking forward to when the (committee) chairman ... actually schedules our bill so that we can speak to him about where we're going with it and what we've learned through the process of, actually, several years of working on this bill," she said.
