TUCUMCARI — The children of Turquoise Child Development Center have it made.

The toddlers start working on literacy skills early, spending one-on-one time reading with trained educators. Children ages 2 to 4 learn through play and conduct science experiments, like making homemade lava lamps with food coloring, water, oil and Alka-Seltzer. And children 5 and up practice sports and further develop reading proficiency.

The roughly 40 Tucumcari-area children enrolled at Turquoise are the lucky ones.

Over 100 families in the Eastern New Mexico community are waiting for childcare. Some parents wait for years and are forced to give up their careers, move or rely on relatives to care for their children every day.

Tucumcari families struggling to find childcare aren’t alone. While data shows New Mexico has made some progress in increasing its capacity of available daycare and preschool slots to meet rising demand through a new free, universal childcare program, it remains short more than 15,000 seats statewide for children under 6. The problem is particularly acute for children under 2: The state needs about 12,000 more slots for infants and toddlers.

“It’s very hard,” said educator Alexandra Molina, who has worked at Turquoise Child Development Center for four years. “… We get calls every day, people checking up on where they are in the list” or asking to be put on the list.

May 1 marked six months since Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham launched New Mexico’s universal childcare system, which expands eligibility for state-subsidized care — with no copayment — to all families, regardless of income. Lawmakers initially raised concerns about the costs of the ambitious, first-in-the-nation initiative, but struck a deal with the governor earlier this year to fund universal care for five years.

Still, the state wasn’t prepared to enroll thousands of additional children in early childhood programs. A December investigation by The New Mexican found the childcare system’s capacity had increased by just 10 slots in the months leading up to the start of the assistance program’s expansion.

The state added capacity for more than 1,300 kids — including roughly 200 under 2 — between December and April, according to an analysis of more recent data from the New Mexico Early Childhood Education and Care Department.

But data the agency published in June shows the true need is more than 10 times that.

More than 18,000 children had enrolled in universal childcare between Nov. 1, when the childcare assistance expansion took effect, and March 26, according to the early childhood department — increasing total enrollment to some 44,000 kids. Among then were over 6,000 families who were not previously eligible for childcare assistance.

Lujan Grisham said in a recent interview she expects the system’s capacity issues will be ironed out in the next two to three years, as the state continues to invest in early childhood infrastructure.

As other states balk at the costs of infrastructure requirements to implement a universal childcare system, the New Mexico governor argued it’s better to start imperfectly than not start at all.

“If you wait for perfection in a system or perfection in infrastructure, we wouldn’t let people drive on the roads while we were fixing them. … You can wait too long and never get close to getting over the finish line,” Lujan Grisham said.

Slow growth at registered homes

As of 2024, Santa Fe County was short 1,574 childcare slots for kids 6 and under, according to a statewide gap analysis commissioned by the Early Childhood Education and Care Department and conducted by the nonprofit Low Income Investment Fund.

It’s a common story in New Mexico: Lea County needed 2,024 such slots. Sandoval County needed 1,378. And Bernalillo County needed 4,894.

All told, the state needed 15,742 more childcare slots for children under 6, the gap analysis found. New Mexico is short 12,398 slots for newborns to 2-year-olds.

The state has started to chip away at the shortfall, adding 1,346 new slots between December and April, data shows.

“We are thrilled to see New Mexico’s child care sector responding to the investments and stability Universal Child Care provides,” Early Childhood Education and Care Department spokesperson Julia Sclafani wrote in an email to The New Mexican.

Sclafani noted growth isn’t attributable to any single strategy.

Rather, she wrote, “It reflects the combined impact of increased reimbursement rates, expanded eligibility, and the passage of Senate Bill 241, which codified universal child care as a permanent commitment between the executive and the legislature and gave providers the predictability they need to invest in expansion.”

She also pointed to the passage of Senate Bill 96, which reduces zoning barriers for home-based providers, as another reason for the growth in childcare capacity.

The bill — signed into law in March — prohibits local authorities from imposing regulations on home-based providers that don’t apply to other residences in the area.

“We are especially pleased to see growth across all care types — centers, licensed homes, and registered homes alike — which means families are gaining real choices in their communities,” Sclafani said.

The vast majority of the childcare capacity growth — about 1,200 slots — occurred in licensed childcare facilities, which include traditional childcare centers and home-based daycares. These providers face stringent state regulations.

However, the state’s expansion plan relies more heavily on registered childcare homes, in which providers can care for up to four children from outside the household. Registered homes, which added just 128 slots between December and April, face fewer state regulations than licensed homes but still must undergo background checks, training and home visits to ensure children are safe in their care.

They aren’t required to have a fire inspection or to secure zoning and environmental approvals, as licensed facilities are.

Expansion of infant and toddler care was limited in recent months. Licensed childcare facilities added 152 slots for children under 2 between December and April — about 11% of the state’s overall growth.

Capacity data for registered childcare homes does not specify the number of slots added for infants and toddlers.

Can the state grow the system?

Lujan Grisham’s approach to childcare: There should be “no wrong door.”

In contrast to other states, New Mexico’s childcare assistance program works within what’s called a “mixed delivery” system. Providers operating in a variety of settings — including homes, independent daycare centers, schools and houses of worship — can participate.

“That, I think, is the secret recipe for success — for really meeting capacity so you can go big,” Lujan Grisham said.

With Lujan Grisham’s second and final term as governor ending later this year, Democrats running to take her place in the state’s top office — former Congresswoman and Interior Secretary Deb Haaland and Bernalillo County District Attorney Sam Bregman — voiced their commitment in recent interviews to maintain a free, universal childcare system and continue to expand childcare capacity, including by developing a stronger workforce.

Both emphasized the need to keep expanding certificate and degree programs in early childhood education at New Mexico colleges, while taking additional steps to increase pay for workers in a field that long has faced concerns about low wages.

Meanwhile, Republicans, vying for the governor’s seat have questioned whether New Mexico has the childcare capacity and state funding to maintain a universal system in the long run, even as they have shown support for childcare assistance programs for families in need.

Former Rio Rancho Mayor Gregg Hull said analyzing the viability of the initiative would be among his first actions if elected governor.

Hull and Albuquerque businessman Doug Turner both raised concerns about worker shortages.

“We actually have a disconnect between the workforce that we have in place to provide childcare and what we actually need to meet the demand. … We have a gap that we can’t really close very quickly,” Turner said.

Fellow Republican Duke Rodriguez has expressed the strongest objections so far to the free, universal childcare system: He, along with state Sen. Steve Lanier, R-Aztec, and Sandoval County father Zachary Anaya have filed a lawsuit aiming to undo the expansion. A judge in the state’s 2nd Judicial District Court ruled late last month the state must pause the program or present an argument for why the expansion shouldn’t be shut down. A hearing is scheduled in the case June 11.

The complaint argues Lujan Grisham’s executive branch went about the childcare expansion the wrong way by creating regulations in November, several months before the Legislature voted to approve funding for the program.

But the potential cost of the program should be cause for concern, too, Rodriguez said. He argued the state jumped in without understanding the expansion’s true cost — which he said could balloon beyond hundreds of millions of dollars and into billions.

“When it comes to the cost of an announced universal free childcare program, we will not be able to look to the feds for any portion of it,” Rodriguez said. “It will be 100% borne by tax revenues and appropriated by the Legislature.”

He continued, “Whatever program we ultimately adopt … has to be built to last, not built to simply sound good. It would be terrible to make promises of access when the capacity is missing.”

Cost of inadequate care capacity

Without enough openings for children in the state, providers often must turn families away.

Sindi Davis, who owns and works at Future Generations in Clovis, with room for over 170 children, is forced to turn many away.

Without access to childcare, families must make difficult choices: leave children with family members, who may not be able to provide the same level of care as a licensed facility, or give up income and stay home.

“It’s heartbreaking telling parents you don’t have any openings, and you don’t know when you will have one,” Davis said.

Yadira Armendariz has three childcare centers in Albuquerque that largely serve families who speak Spanish as their primary language.

Though those facilities operate in New Mexico’s most populous city, Armendariz said her community often struggles to get the services it needs.

“It’s a lot of need — it’s a desert … where we are located,” she said.

Increasing the number of seats in a childcare facility is no easy task, and is often out of reach for providers.

Michelle Chavez, the owner of Turquoise Child Development Center in Tucumcari, had tried for years to expand her operation by opening a new facility. Amid challenges with contractors, uncertain funding and other issues, a remodeling project for the new center stalled for years before work finally started late last year.

Chavez said she plans to open in the coming weeks, a move that would allow her to enroll nearly 50 more children.

“The goal, the vision that we’ve had … we’re finally reaching that, and it’s coming to fruition,” she said.

Some parents, too, say the vision of universal childcare is starting to pan out.

Before the universal childcare system went into effect, Santa Fe resident Madeleine Carey was spending “essentially a second mortgage payment” on childcare each month.

The family was lucky to find a childcare slot for her 3-year-old daughter, at a cost of about $1,400 per month, Carey said. After paying for a few additional hours of care on Fridays — when the usual daycare was closed — the family’s total childcare costs added up to an average of $2,000 per month.

Financially, that was a stretch, Carey said, but it was possible.

That changed late last year, when Carey applied and got approved for assistance through the state’s universal program. Her daughter’s childcare has been free since Nov. 1.

The cost savings, Carey said, have allowed her family to travel for out-of-state memorial services for several family members, and to consider fire mitigation, well repairs and other deferred maintenance projects at their home on a shorter time frame.

She acknowledged New Mexico doesn’t have the capacity to make its childcare system truly universal right now — but that’s no reason not to try, said Carey, who also serves as co-chair of Niños and Neighbors, a Santa Fe-based political action committee that has identified accessible childcare as one of its key policy priorities.

“It takes time to build infrastructure of any kind, and, in particular, when the infrastructure is educated, licensed humans,” Carey said. “We have to start somewhere, and this is a bold, visionary start.”

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