A state agency will hire, oversee attorneys in neglect and abuse cases. Some say that’s a bad idea.
Sara Solovitch
Sara Solovitch is the editor of Searchlight New Mexico. She supervised its launch in January 2018 with the Child Well-Being Project, an investigation into the plight of children and families in New Mexico. Before coming to Searchlight, she published investigative and long-form stories in Esquire, Wired, Politico, and the Washington Post. As a staff reporter at the Philadelphia Inquirer, she covered education, courts and special projects. A former health columnist for the San Jose Mercury News, Sara also has traveled throughout New Mexico and Alaska while reporting for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation on health care in under-served areas. Her book "Playing Scared: A History and Memoir of Stage Fright" was published by Bloomsbury in 2015.
Posted inFeatured, Hitting Home
Pandemic lessons
What we learned from a year of covering COVID-19’s impacts in New Mexico
Posted inLetter from the Editor
A letter from the executive director
Searchlight New Mexico’s executive director, Sara Solovitch, addresses the Twitter response to our report Chaos and Cannabis.
Posted inCoronavirus, Featured
Through the lens of experience
Executive director Sara Solovitch speaks with photographer Don Usner about his favorite photos from Searchlight in 2019.
Posted inFeatured, Learning Experiences
Learning experiences: Regis Pecos
Regis Pecos has served as both lieutenant governor and governor of Cochiti Pueblo and was a member of the tribal council for more than 30 years.
Posted inFeatured, Learning Experiences
Learning experiences: Betsy Cahill
Betsy Cahill knows the problems of teacher retention firsthand. She worked as a preschool teacher for more than 17 years before becoming an associate professor of early childhood education at New Mexico State University in 1994. A native of New Jersey, she attended Kent State University in Ohio and ended up remaining there afterward. She […]
Posted inEducation, Learning Experiences
Learning experiences: Julia Bergen
It was just two days into the school year, and Julia Bergen already was dealing with two cases of student homelessness. Then she heard about an influx of Guatemalan migrant children just released from federal detention, who had unexpectedly shown up in a Santa Fe school. Bergen is executive director of Communities In Schools of […]
Posted inFeatured
Learning Experiences
For the start of the school year, Searchlight New Mexico is publishing interviews with four leading education activists. The conversations span the gamut from language immersion to teacher shortages, child trauma and what it takes to finally reform New Mexico’s schools. Because the crisis in education goes to the heart of practically every problem we […]
Posted inFull Archive, New Mexico's Children
Experts: Our earliest experiences, good or bad, can be our most important
New Mexico’s infant mental health pioneers aim to eradicate “the myth,” as they call it, that babies cannot remember what they see or hear. Rather, they say, those early experiences can be life-defining for early childhood.