The subtitle for the latest Kids Count Data Book for New Mexico, published by New Mexico Voices for Children, is “Progress Under Pressure: Achieving New Mexico’s Family-Focused Agenda Amid National Setbacks.” Scott Brocato spoke with Emily Wildau, Director of Policy for New Mexico Voices for Children, to unpack the data book’s latest findings.
Scott Brocato:
First of all, for those who are not familiar with it, can you give a brief description about the Kids Count program and what it covers?
Emily Wildau:
Yes, absolutely. Kids Count is a national program that tracks sixteen indicators for child well-being, and they release every year a set of rankings that comes out in the summer. And then in New Mexico, New Mexico Voices for Children is the organization that shares about that program and monitors that data. So we also release our own New Mexico Kids Count data book every year with additional data that's not tracked by the indicators that the national program tracks, but that provides more context and more information so that all of our communities and decision makers know a little bit more about how our kids are doing.
Scott Brocato:
Well, let's talk about the latest New Mexico edition. The subtitle is “Progress Under Pressure, Achieving New Mexico's Family Focus Agenda Amid National Setbacks.” Let's start with the progress part of that: what are some areas in which New Mexico has made progress according to the recent findings?
Emily Wildau:
Yeah, thank you. That's really exciting to get to talk about. You know, we, even before the expansion to universal child care, the state had really increased the amount of families that were able to receive child care assistance. And so we saw since '21 that the number of children who receive child care assistance and are able to access their child care and allow their families to work has doubled. And when you look at that, it's also interesting to know that it's still pretty targeted towards people who really need that support.
So 68% of families with children under six are actually earning incomes below 200% of the federal poverty level that receive that benefit. So that's one place where we've already really expanded. We know we're going to see more coming in the next few years. We've seen that New Mexico's poverty rate, while the official rate, which just measures families' wages, is still high, when you measure the impact of benefit programs like SNAP and WIC, and the impact of tax credits. New Mexico has one of the lowest supplemental poverty rates. It drops significantly, and it's lower than the national average. So we know those programs are making a big impact for the lives of kids and families as well.
Scott Brocato:
In what areas is the state still struggling?
Emily Wildau:
The state continues to struggle in education. Reading and math proficiency has remained relatively unchanged. And after seeing a little bit of improvement on the rate of chronic absenteeism, it rose again slightly from 30% up to 33%. So that's still an area where we're struggling to get kids engaged to make sure that they have the curriculum that they need to really learn and thrive and understand their strengths when they come to school that would kind of show up in these additional scores.
We still saw that there was a little bit of a higher rate of children in households with high housing costs. New Mexico's traditionally had lower housing costs than many places in the country, but in the last few years, along with the rest of the nation, those have been rising and really putting pressure on families. So that continues to be something that we, and many lawmakers, are still really trying to address and make sure that doesn't continue to rise.
Scott Brocato:
Staying with education, chronic absenteeism is still an area where the state still struggles. What can be done to address that issue and how should policymakers respond?
Emily Wildau:
Yeah, it's a great question. I think that the biggest issue there is that our students are not engaged with school. I mean, we can do a lot of good things to improve the programs that kids who are in the classroom are getting, and I think there's been a lot of energy around figuring out what those things are.
But if students don't feel that their coursework is relevant to their future, if they don't see their culture, their language, their community reflected in their school experience; if there's a lack of just a culture of school safety or a feeling that they're in a place where they don't have relationships with people who care about them or providing them enough of those kind of wraparound services that a lot of kids need to deal with mental health or other problems that they're facing in their lives, it makes it hard for them to engage and to be at school. And so I think it's a really nuanced problem that has a lot of elements that we have to address to really just figure out what are the young people asking for? What do we need to do to make sure that students who graduate high school have the skills that they need to succeed? And how do we make sure that those things are engaging and reflective for kids?
Scott Brocato:
Going back to the data book's subtitle, what are the “national setbacks?”
Emily Wildau:
Yes, so with the passage of HR1 last summer, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, there's been kind of a cascading, rolling implementation of federal cuts to programs that are really critical for New Mexico's kids and families, most notably in SNAP and Medicaid. Those are the kinds of things that really have an impact. We can measure how effective particularly SNAP is on addressing poverty in families. We know that that is critical to the people that live in the state. And so as those things are restricted or as funding is cut, it becomes really detrimental to our communities.
Scott Brocato:
Last fall, Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham rolled out her universal child care program. Republican gubernatorial candidate Duke Rodriguez won an initial legal victory in his lawsuit against the governor's rollout. When it's finally rolled out--if it's finally rolled out-- how do you see the governor's universal child care program impacting families and children?
Emily Wildau:
Yeah, I think that universal child care is something that is rooted in a lot of research and evidence that tells us when kids, our youngest kids, have places that are safe, that are educational, and allow their parents to work, it really improves all of their outcomes through childhood and later on as adults. So I see this program, and we see this at Voices, as something that is just a win for our kids and families.
We do want to make sure as it gets implemented that it continues to focus on targeting those people that would benefit the most. So people who are lower income and making sure that there are really strong, robust plans to improve access, especially in rural communities, so that there's enough space for everybody to participate in this program and for folks to see those benefits for their kids and to make sure they have the ability to work and earn income to support themselves.
Scott Brocato:
In the area of accessing health care, talk about current challenges.
Emily Wildau:
Yes, so health care is another place where New Mexico had really succeeded doing the expansion of Medicaid out of the Affordable Care Act. And during COVID saw the lowest rates of kids without health insurance that we'd seen, and as those COVID provisions kind of unwound, we saw it rise back up slightly.
But the there's an issue beyond just being insured of do we have the providers and do we have access and how far people may be having to drive to make sure that they can have those preventative care visits that ultimately prevent worse health outcomes in the future? So there's still a lot of need around how we solve for that.
I think it'll be worth monitoring to see what happens now that we've entered some of those interstate medical compacts to see kind of what happens with some of the changes to medical malpractice. And we'll see how that starts impacting access to care and we'll go from there to see what still needs to be addressed.
Scott Brocato:
That's all the main questions I have. Is there anything else you'd like to discuss or address?
Emily Wildau:
You know, I don't think so. I think we are, you know, fortunate to have a legislature that is working on a lot of these problems. The governor has done great things with universal childcare, and we're hopeful for the next administration to just continue building on these things and address some of the things that we haven't made as much progress on yet. So we're looking forward to continuing to address those federal harms and keep working on the things that we know our kids and families need.
