Supporters frame issue before voters as a moral choice
Interfaith panel discussion organized by Pre-K for Santa Fe set for Thursday
Proponents of a tax on sodas and other sugary beverages to raise an estimated $7.7 million annually to send hundreds of Santa Fe children to preschool are framing the ballot question as a moral issue.
Pre-K for Santa Fe, a political action committee campaigning in favor of Mayor Javier Gonzales’ proposed 2-cents-per-ounce excise tax, is holding an event Thursday night with an interfaith panel called “Pre-K for Santa Fe: A Moral Choice.”
“Many people in Santa Fe believe Pre-K is a moral issue because it’s about social justice and equity,” Sandra Wechsler, campaign manager for the group, said Wednesday in a statement when asked whether the proposed tax was an issue of morals or smart public policy.
Opponents of the proposed tax described the event as propaganda.
“The choice is whether we need to hit residents and small-business people hard with a massive tax or instead fund pre-K with a multimillion-dollar surplus from revenues that these same people created by working hard,” said David Huynh, a spokesman for Better Way for Santa Fe & Pre-K, a political action committee opposing the proposed tax. “That’s the choice,” he said. The interfaith gathering, coincidentally, is being held during Holy Week.
“Scheduled for Holy Thursday? Wow!” Amber Espinosa-Trujillo wrote in a Facebook post. Espinosa-Trujillo is the wife of City Councilor Ron Trujillo, who is running for mayor next year and opposes the proposed soda tax.
The keynote speaker at Thursday’s event will be Charlie Clements, a human rights activist and physician who is the former executive director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
“Charlie offered to come, so we organized the event,” Wechsler said.
“We’re honored to have Charlie Clements join us to discuss the moral implications of ensuring pre-K for all of Santa Fe’s children,” she said.
In prepared remarks Clements is expected to make Thursday, which Wechsler provided to The New Mexican on Wednesday, Clements says he suggested the framework for the panel discussion.
“In these days of ‘alternative facts,’ I think we have ‘alternative morals’ in the White House, but I’m going to posit a simple definition — moral issues are those actions or choices which have the potential to help or harm others or ourselves,” Clements says in the statement.
“We have several other presenters
who will speak to this issue from their own faith perspective,” he says. “If you accept this definition for what makes a choice or action moral, then whether your values arise from religious beliefs, human principles, or agnosticism, the Pre-K for Santa Fe campaign has a huge moral footprint.”
One of the panelists, the Rev. Harry Ebert of First Presbyterian Church, said the word “moral” has a connotation that could be “a little bit divisive.”
“I always get worried when we use the word ‘moral’ because it’s different for different people,” he said. “You don’t want to be moralistic.”
For Ebert, the issue is about “community well-being and how we can support our kids and families.”
“It really is an issue of the entire community coming together to help our kids, which has long-term effects,” he said. “If you want to call it morality or good public policy, that’s not the language I’m using. I don’t look at it in those terms as much as I do just knowing about the importance of a good start in life, and I see that in our own preschool.”
First Presbyterian Church operates a preschool with about 80 children. The church has more than 100 families on its waiting list, Ebert said.
“They call up before they even have a child being born,” he said. “They want to get on our list because families are scrambling out there. We don’t have the quality spaces in Santa Fe, and that’s one of the big issues that we face as a community. If we don’t do this for our kids, they’re not going to have as good a start in life, and that’s going to affect the well-being of the community in years to come.”
That’s a major point made by Clements in his prepared remarks. Clements cites the “iconic study” of a Michigan school from the 1960s.
“It was famous because for 30 years it followed a cohort of almost 60 low-income African American children who were enrolled in a modest early childhood education program,” Clements says. “It compared them to a carefully matched control group, who did not receive the same benefits.”
The study documented significantly higher high school graduation rates, lower rates of teen pregnancy and fewer brushes with the law among the children who attended the early childhood education program, among other successes. Researchers calculated that for every dollar spent on early childhood education, the Michigan city saved $7 in future expenditures.
“Pre-K for Santa Fe is a huge moral issue because it has the potential to either benefit or harm us for generations,” Clements says in his prepared remarks.
Estelle Berger, a parishioner at St. Bede’s Episcopal Church who is among Thursday’s panelists, said, “We all judge based on a moral framework.”
“Public policy, which is one of the areas I was trained in, is always ambiguous,” she said.
“The goal is to have as much as possible a win-win situation and to expand the pie, expand resources. But people have to make the best choice on the information they have and the values that guide them,” Berger said.
The Rev. Talitha Arnold, senior minister at United Church of Santa Fe, said she won’t be able to attend Thursday’s event because of her congregation’s Maundy Thursday services. But she provided The New Mexican a copy of a statement she prepared that will be read as part of the panel discussion.
Arnold wrote that she supports the proposed tax as a citizen, a faith leader, an individual and someone who grew up in a single-parent family.
“It is both just and right to do what is needed to insure that all children have a chance to reach their God-given potential from the very beginning,” she wrote. “Supporting pre-K for all is one way to do that.”