New Mexico weighs new investments in early education auburnpub.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from auburnpub.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Before the pandemic, New Mexico’s efforts to improve child well-being were gaining momentum.
“The pandemic is a stark reminder about how fragile our systems are, how our equity issues are not addressed, and how we still have deep divides that cause and exacerbate poverty in the state,” Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham said Wednesday.
She was among the speakers at an online news conference hosted by New Mexico Voices for Children, which just released the 2020 Kids Count Data Book for the state.
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The data book tracks several indicators across four main areas: economic security, education, health, and family and community. Many of the statistics were from 2019, the most recent year available, but trends over many years show where the state has improved and where improvement is still needed, said James Jimenez, executive director of New Mexico Voices for Children.
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Commentary: It’s heart-breaking to see how New Mexico cares for its children. We rank last in child well-being, and first for childhood trauma. The fact that our state is poor, is in fact a poor excuse. Children are our most precious resource, and we have both the ways and the means to improve their care.
One way involves the “essential workers,” who care for and teach the 62 percent of New Mexico’s children who live in households where both parents work. In turn, the costs of caring for these children eats up a third of the working family’s income. Yet, child care workers made a median wage of $9.66 an hour in 2017. That year, the median wage for preschool teachers was $12.89 an hour, a two percent decrease from 2015.