OPINION: We must meet the needs of early childhood educators to ensure high-quality care for children
Recent scientific breakthroughs have shown us something amazing about children’s brains: More than 80% of all neural connections are made during the first three years of life.
This knowledge presents us with a golden opportunity. By investing in high-quality early childhood education and care, we can set the stage for a lifetime of improved health, well-being, and cognitive development.
However, low wages present the single greatest barrier to building the high-quality prenatal-to-five system in New Mexico that can lift families out of poverty and secure bright futures for New Mexico children.
Recently, U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich hosted a roundtable with local early childhood professionals to discuss the pressing issues facing the childcare industry, including insufficient wages. However, media coverage of the senator’s roundtable did not acknowledge measures New Mexico is already taking to address this challenge.
Since the Early Childhood Education & Care Department (ECECD) was created in 2020, New Mexico has led the nation in efforts to professionalize wages for early childhood educators.
In fact, the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment at UC Berkeley highlighted New Mexico’s progress, noting: “From the outset, ECECD articulated a forward-thinking vision for early care and education that uplift the ECE workforce. The department then worked toward a cohesive strategy for reaching that vision, one step at a time.”
ECECD is implementing a wage and career ladder across all early childhood settings based on education and experience. Unfortunately, states have been left to address the issue of inequitable wages without long-term financial support from the federal government.
We need the federal government to be a stronger partner, and Congress should do more to support states’ early childhood systems. The influx of federal funding for child care during the COVID-19 emergency demonstrated the amazing progress that states can make when the federal government makes significant investments in young children.
I look forward to discussing with Heinrich and his staff how he and his colleagues in Washington can boost funding to support competitive wages and compensation for early childhood professionals. New Mexico families, young children, and early childhood professionals deserve nothing less.
To ensure high-quality care for our children, we must meet the needs of our early childhood educators. This is why ECECD initiated the Competitive Pay for Professionals grant, using emergency federal coronavirus relief funds to provide every child care worker in the state a $3/hour raise. This amounted to a 20% raise for many child care workers and helped prevent hundreds of qualified and committed educators from leaving the field for better-paying jobs.
To sustain these competitive wages, ECECD employed a sophisticated cost model to set child care subsidy rates at a level that supports a $15 per hour wage floor for all staff in a child care program and $20 per hour wage floor for lead teachers.
New Mexico also has introduced a pay parity program to ensure that Pre-K teachers and Head Start teachers with advanced credentials earn the same salary as public school teachers with similar credentials.
Next month, ECECD will launch a pilot program to extend infant and toddler teachers’ pay parity as well.
When we invest in a universal, high-quality, family-centered early childhood system with fair pay for early childhood professionals, we are setting the stage for transformational change in our state.
The life-long benefit of quality early childhood experiences will pay dividends in the form of stronger families, a more vibrant economy, and safer communities for generations to come. That’s an outcome worth investing in.
