Now is the time to reclaim our commitment to our children – enough is enough. It’s time we start re-prioritizing the issues we focus on at the Legislature. Our top priority must be our children – not wedge issues used as political fodder for the next election.
Gerry Bradley, a labor economist and policy thinker with New Mexico Voices for Children, said in an interview that over decades New Mexico’s economy has hardly changed. The types of jobs we have here and the proportions of our workforce in each job category barely budge. At the same time, Bradley said, demand for labor in New Mexico appears to be low. Low demand combined with an ill-equipped workforce, which Bradley blames on inadequate investment in human capital, gets you consistently low wages.
This latest WalletHub survey “is not surprising, but it is alarming,” said Veronica Garcia, executive director of New Mexico Voices For Children. “These rankings are more than measures of children’s outcomes, rather they are indicative of how we’ve failed our children” and how the state is “sorely missing a comprehensive plan to address child well-being.”
A liberal policy group, New Mexico Voices for Children, charged that Martinez’s reductions made “corporations a higher priority” than the state’s “working families and their children.”
Veronica Garcia, director of the advocacy group New Mexico Voices for Children, said the state’s poverty rate is cause for concern because it affects children in many negative ways. To break the cycle of poverty, she said, the state should invest more money in programs focusing on early childhood, usually defined as prenatal to age 5. Many advocates for early education say it helps prepare children for success in school, leads to more high school and college graduates, and reduces prison populations.
"Aren't we tired of hearing these low numbers? Yes, we are. But we can't get hopeless about it," said Veronica Garcia with child advocacy group New Mexico Voices for Children. Garcia has seen the reports year after year. This year's Kids Count report ranks New Mexico only ahead of Mississippi for child well-being. Since last year, graduation rates improved and there are fewer teens doing drugs and drinking alcohol. But other factors, not so much.
The book went on to say that a lot of New Mexico kids and teens live in unemployed or single-parent homes. New Mexico Voices for Children told Action 7 News the two factors that bothered them the most were that a tremendous amount of kids and teens live in poverty and are uninsured. "That's of grave concern," Dr. Veronica Garcia, NM Voices for Children, said.
“New Mexico is still struggling to recover from the recession, and too many are struggling to feed their families,” said Veronica C. Garcia, Ed.D, executive director of New Mexico Voices for Children. “Until the state starts creating jobs that pay a living wage, punishing people for not finding work is only going to make a bad situation worse.”