Advocates offer $84M plan to up pre-K funding

Proposal to lawmakers modest compared to efforts to tap state investment fund

With a 25 percent increase in funding for prekindergarten, New Mexico could enroll up to 80 percent of its 4-year-olds in programs that see a high rate of return, boosting educational outcomes and building a stronger workforce, a coalition of advocates told state lawmakers Wednesday.

The group, including the United Way of Santa Fe County, the Thornburg Foundation and the city of Albuquerque, presented a five-year, nearly $84 million plan for pre-K expansion to the Legislative Finance Committee.

“Our dream is that any one of or all of the [gubernatorial] candidates will grab ahold of this plan and say, ‘This is my objective for early childhood education for the rest of my term,’ ” said Michael Weinberg, with the Thornburg Foundation.

The group’s report does not suggest ways to fund the expansion.

“It doesn’t say, ‘Pull money from here … or there,’ ” said Fred Mondragon, Albuquerque’s interim director of economic development and a former state economic development secretary. “I’m sure the Legislature would appreciate that,” he told the committee, “because that is your role.”

But the plan does call for a $19.8 million investment in the first year above current allocations, followed by investments of $16 million per year for four years.

In fiscal year 2019, New Mexico is set to spend $64 million on pre-K.

The coalition’s plan is modest compared with recent legislative efforts to draw more money from a multibillion-dollar state investment fund to pay for a massive expansion of early childhood programs. Resolutions calling for a ballot measure asking voters to approve a $100 million-per-year cash infusion from the Land Grant Permanent Fund for pre-K, home visiting and child care have repeatedly failed.

Recently, U.S. Rep. Michelle Lujan Grisham, a Democrat who is running for governor, said she would seek to pull about $57 million per year from that fund for preschool programs.

State Sen. John Arthur Smith, D-Deming, head of the Senate Finance Committee, has been a powerful opponent of efforts to pull more money from the roughly $17 billion fund, arguing they would jeopardize the endowment, intended to serve as a source of revenue for public schools and other beneficiaries in perpetuity.

Smith didn’t mention the endowment Wednesday as a possible source of revenue for the pre-K coalition’s plan, but told he members of the group their financial plan for a statewide preschool expansion was the best that he has seen.

Legislators from both political parties embraced the plan’s proposal to create an executive-level position to oversee all early childhood programs. Oversight of programs now is split between the Public Education Department and the Children, Youth and Families Department.

The plan says the state also must do more to offer college scholarships, wage hikes and other incentives to underpaid pre-K workers to encourage them to improve their skills and keep them working in the field.

Rep. Rebecca Dow, R-Truth or Consequences, who has been a strong advocate for pre-K programs and founded a nonprofit early education center in her city, said the plan doesn’t go far enough to address that issue. Currently, about 240 educators can participate in a state scholarship program to get extra training. The plan would increase that number to 688, which Dow said falls short of the need, given there are 1,500 early childhood professionals working in New Mexico.

In an interview after the committee hearing, Dow said the state should “slow down and figure out the capacity of the workforce … slow down on building more [pre-K] slots. We need to build that workforce.”