Listen to the LFC and streamline early education programs

NEW MEXICO early childhood education and family support is a super complex challenge for which there may be an effective solution: create a state-level function to coordinate and collaborate among the 21 providers of 33 current state and federal ECE stovepipe programs.

Our New Mexico Legislative Finance Committee consistently identifies “lack of coordination and collaboration” among programs, providers and recipients. The LFC says that creates duplication, overlapping and misalignment of personnel, programs, funding and spending.

The historical response to that has been a collective shrug, so those 33 programs and 21 providers remain unstructured and uncoordinated at a state umbrella level.

Creating a state-level umbrella-level coordinator should cost less than $2 million per year. But if that focus could wring 1 percent in savings, it would pay for itself. That 1 percent savings would amount to $3 million per year that could be returned to improving program delivery efficiency and effectiveness. A 2 percent improvement would redirect $6 million per year. And if the LFC is right, a percent improvement might be quite achievable.

Implementation? Challenging! But consistently improving ECE outcomes benefit all of us into the foreseeable future. Georgia state’s “Bright From The Start” program is one existing model for consolidating ECE programs into a single Department of Early Learning. Their experience could ease New Mexico’s path to doing the same.

“Things” are always changing, and they will change even more rapidly in our future. The best way to take advantage of relentless, inevitable change is with a good steering mechanism solidly linked to clear positive and negative feedback mechanisms.

A state-level umbrella coordinator for ECE and family support could be that steering mechanism. TOM MILES Albuquerque