Enough is enough. New Mexico is and has been at the bottom of every national measure of child well-being and educational achievement for years. Too often we read reports about the needs and underachievement of the child care and educational system in our state (“Study: N.M. has nation’s worst high school grad rate,” May 11, and “Hope comes from home visits,” My View, April 17).
Libraries in Aztec, Bloomfield and Farmington, along with those throughout the rest of the state, are sponsoring summer reading challenges to engage students in activities and improve their reading skills.
Ten percent of New Mexico children have had at least one parent incarcerated at some point in their lives, one of the highest such rates in the nation, according to a study released Monday by the Annie E. Casey Foundation.
More than 52,000 kids in New Mexico – about 10 percent of the state’s child population – have had a parent who at some point in their lives served time in jail or prison, according to a new Kids Count report from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, a national advocacy organization working to improve the lives of at-risk children and families.
Perhaps the harshest and most valid criticism of Gov. Susana Martinez’s State of the State speech wasn’t so much for what she said as what she didn’t say. She made no mention of child poverty in New Mexico.
The annual scorecard found that more New Mexico children lived with parents who lacked full-time employment in 2014 than those in 2008—35 percent and 30 percent, respectively. Amber Wallin, director of New Mexico Voices for Children, which published the 72-page report, said poverty holds back the state’s children.
"Once upon a time, in a cafe in Ramallah, or somewhere in the West Bank, I was trying to explain to some young fellow where it was that I was from in the United States. Mexico? NEW Mexico? Never heard of this. Where was that? I drew a map. Even I can draw a map of the Southwest and western Plains. Kansas, New Mexico, etc., how tough is that?"
At 6:55 a.m. Tuesday, the first day of this year’s legislative session, the Albuquerque nonprofit Voices for Children released its annual report that ranks states on the well-being of their children. A troubling statistic stood out: New Mexico’s child poverty rate had fallen to worst in the nation.
"The annual Kids Count data book released today shows New Mexico with the highest childhood poverty rate in the country. The state has a long way to go in order to make improvements, and some business leaders have advice on where to start."
It’s ironic that the Legislature opened the same day that the annual Kids Count Survey released figures showing New Mexico at the bottom of the rankings when it comes to the rate of children living in poverty. The condition of the state’s children is our most pressing issue.