Julia Wise and her husband were paying more than $30,000 a year for both their children to receive child care.
But late last year, after her family qualified for New Mexico’s expanded child care assistance program, she was able to achieve her goal of joining a local technology startup company — a move she said would have been much more risky if her family had still been saddled with the burdensome cost of child care.
“It’s really impactful and life-changing for being able to move forward with our careers and our lives and our community,” Wise said.
Funding for universal child care for thousands of families like Wise’s was codified into law after Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, flanked by a dozen children of the Garcia Street Club early childhood center, signed Senate Bill 241 on Tuesday.
SB 241 will allow the state to draw up to $700 million from New Mexico’s early childhood trust fund over five fiscal years, set up guardrails should the economy take a turn including co-payments for wealthier families and help ensure implementation of a new wage and career ladder for early childhood workers.
“This is maybe the most monumental, pivotal day in New Mexico’s … past, its current and the opportunities for its future,” Lujan Grisham said.
The governor also signed into law SB 96, a measure to streamline zoning for child care centers, including by barring local authorities from imposing additional regulations and requirements on home-based providers or collecting taxes and fees for owning such a home.
Sen. Heather Berghmans, an Albuquerque Democrat who sponsored SB 96, lauded the measure as a way of providing more child care options to families by allowing more home-based providers to open.
“The bill really is working at making that process easier, more straightforward,” Berghmans said. “… These [types] of small at-home child care providers are the main infrastructure in the backbone of our child care provider system.”
‘Invest in what matters’
Since Nov. 1, Lujan Grisham said the state has enrolled 16,743 children in its child care assistance program. Early Childhood Education and Care Department spokesperson Jaime Bencomo wrote in an email Tuesday that at last count, 42,955 children were enrolled in the program.
SB 241 was the product of weeks of negotiations between Lujan Grisham and lawmakers who, following the governor’s rollout of the universal child care expansion in November, expressed concerns New Mexico was not equipped to fund the program or that its early childhood system would face capacity issues affecting families who need child care the most.
Sen. George Muñoz, a Gallup Democrat who chairs the Senate Finance Committee, was at first a leading voice in criticizing Lujan Grisham’s plan, acknowledging to her during Tuesday’s news conference that “I wasn’t fully on board when you started.”
However, he said he and the governor’s administration started meeting before the session to work out a way to fund universal child care. Ultimately, they settled on SB 241 and its funding mechanism that draws up to $700 million from the state’s roughly $11 billion early childhood trust fund to pay for universal child care.
“If you have money, spend it. Spend it wisely, invest it in your kids, invest it in your family, invest in what matters in people’s lives,” Muñoz said.
Pay ladder
Rep. Meredith Dixon, D-Albuquerque, highlighted language in SB 241 designed to ensure the state implements a wage and career ladder that would allow workers to receive improved pay and opportunities for advancement.
“Not only do we want the best taking care of our youngest, but we also need to have more early childhood educators so that we can continue to build the capacity to serve this generation and futures to come,” Dixon said.
Lawmakers set aside $60 million in the state budget bill for that ladder, along with $10 million per year for three fiscal years for the state Early Childhood Education and Care Department to implement it. Secretary Elizabeth Groginsky said a work group began meeting last week to plan the rollout of the ladder, and she expects it to be implemented by August.
However, some have expressed concerns that the state plans to use the $60 million on the universal child care program and not for workers’ wages. Teresa Madrid, executive director of the early childhood advocacy organization the Partnership for Community Action, pointed to Groginsky’s comments Tuesday that the pay increases would “come through the child care assistance rates.”
Madrid worried the state would not use the $60 million for workers wages as intended. Lujan Grisham has not yet signed the budget bill; she has until the end of the day Wednesday to do so and can line-item veto provisions in it.
“They could easily veto … four words in House Bill 2, and it changes the entire use of dollars,” Madrid said.