November 2021
The New Mexico Early Childhood
Education and Care Department
Four-Year Finance Plan 2023-2026
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Early Childhood Education and Care Department Four-Year Finance Plan, 2023-2026
Acknowledgments
The Early Childhood Education and Care Department engaged Prenatal to Five Fiscal Strategies
to lead the nance plan process, including the development of scal models for revenue, service
planning and expenses, across all elements of the new Department, engagement with stakeholders
and the development of the four year plan. The authors, Jeanna Capito, Simon Workman, and
Jessica Rodriguez Duggan, would like to thank the commitment of the following individuals and
organizations to this work:
Children, Youth and Families Department
Children’s Cabinet (Mariana Padilla)
Department of Finance and Administration
(Secretary Romero, Meribeth Densmore)
Department of Health
Early Childhood Education
and Care Department
Early Learning Advisory Coalition
Growing Up New Mexico
Human Services Department
Legislative Finance Committee sta
(Jon Courtney, Kelly Klundt,
Charles Sallee)
NM Association for the Education
of Young Children
Pritzker Prenatal-to-Three Coalition
Public Education Department
The partnership of the Legislative Finance Committee sta over the course of regular meetings
from May through August was invaluable to the structure of the analysis, the stratication of data,
and the linkage to other state departments for critical data on population needs. In addition, the
understanding of services, costs and programs, along with the strengths and needs of families and
communities, could not have been achieved without the engagement of child care providers, home
visiting programs, preschool sta, early intervention providers, and public and private organizations
serving New Mexico’s families and children throughout the state.
Suggested Citation: Jeanna Capito, Jessica Rodriguez-Duggan, Simon Workman, “New Mexico Early
Childhood Education and Care Department: Four-Year Finance Plan, 2023-2026” (Prenatal to Five
Fiscal Strategies, 2021).
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Early Childhood Education and Care Department Four-Year Finance Plan, 2023-2026
Office of the Secretary
PO Drawer 5619
Santa Fe, New Mexico 87502-5619
(505) 827-7683
www.nmececd.org
MICHELLE LUJAN GRISHAM
GOVERNOR
HOWIE MORALES
LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR
STATE OF NEW MEXICO
EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION AND CARE DEPARTMENT
ELIZABETH GROGINSKY
CABINET SECRETARY
JOVANNA ARCHULETA
ASSISTANT SECRETARY for Native American Early
Childhood Education and Care
DR. KATHLEEN GIBBONS
DEPUTY SECRETARY
Dear Governor Lujan Grisham and New Mexico Legislators,
I want to thank you for your steadfast commitment and dedication to improving the lives
of New Mexico’s families and young children. This is evidenced through your substantial
and critical investments in our prenatal to five early childhood system, the creation of the
new department, and your visionary decision to establish the Early Childhood Trust Fund
to ensure the new department would have the resources needed to improve outcomes
for all families, children, and communities.
As the first cabinet secretary for New Mexico’s Early Childhood Education and Care
Department (ECECD), it is my honor and privilege to present to the New Mexico
legislature and Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham ECECD’s first Four-Year Finance Plan.
As required, this plan includes demographic information on at-risk children, data on the
efficacy of early childhood education and care programs and recommendations for
financing the prenatal to five early childhood system (NMSA 1978, §9-29-12 (2000)).
Into the pages of this report are woven the stories of every New Mexican family and
young child. In sharing these stories, we acknowledge the land upon which these stories
were and will continue to be created. This plan is a present, living document that
acknowledges our past, sheds light upon our current experience, and, above all,
embraces our envisioned future - a future in which all New Mexican families and young
children are thriving. Our intent with this plan is not to motivate us into action - we have
already begun this most imperative work.
ECECD will not allow this plan to collect dust - we will use it to hold ourselves and others
accountable and to ensure that our strategies and actions yield the results we intend - a
cohesive, equitable and effective prenatal to age five early childhood system that
supports families, cares for and educates our youngest residents, and builds strong
communities. We are grateful for and humbled by this monumental opportunity, which
we cannot and will not squander.
Sincerely,
ELIZABETH GROGINSKY
Cabinet Secretary
Table of Contents
Section I The Need for a Systemic Approach to Financing the Prenatal to Five System
Section II Towards a Comprehensive Early Childhood System in New Mexico
Section III New Mexico Early Childhood Education and Care Four-Year Finance Plan
Section IV Narrative Action Plan
Conclusion
The Fragmented Fiscal System
The Disproportionate Impact on the Prenatal to Five Workforce
Identifying Strategies to Address the Fragmented Market
New Mexico’s Vision for the Prenatal to Five System
Shared Leadership and Administration
Financing Strategies and Funding Mechanisms
Assessment and Planning
Quality Improvement, Implementation and Evaluation
Professional Development, Training and Technical Assistance
Monitoring and Accountability
Understanding the Need for Services
Understanding the Cost of Services
Understanding Current Revenue and the Total Funding Need
5
11
13
13
17
29
34
34
35
35
36
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37
37
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8
9
9
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Early Childhood Education and Care Department Four-Year Finance Plan, 2023-2026
Section I The Need for a Systemic Approach to
Financing the Prenatal to Five System
N
ationally, the prenatal to age ve eld
of programs and services is facing
a critical juncture. All the discrete
sectors and programs for children and
families in this age group are confronted with
the realities of capacity failing to meet demand,
funding that lacks stability, and a historical
disconnect in understanding the real costs and
funding needs. Additionally, the current funding
structures force prenatal to age ve programs
and services to deal with multiple entities
who often have disconnected and conicting
approaches and administration requirements.
These funding structures drive siloed practices
in the development and delivery of programming
and often result in complex and onerous
management structures which discourage
the collaboration and business practices
necessary to create a cohesive, equitable and
eective prenatal to ve system in states and
communities.
The COVID-19 pandemic has only exacerbated
these issues across the country, destabilizing
child care programs and increasing the needs of
families and children. The federal relief dollars
to help programs rebound oer an exciting
opportunity to rebuild a better system, but it
is critical that the mistakes of the past are not
replicated and that this new funding is deployed
in a strategic way, that maximizes impact and
minimizes burden on providers and families.
Increasingly, states and communities are
acknowledging that programs for young children
too often work in isolation and face capacity and
resource limitations that hinder their
ability to meet the ever-growing and diverse
needs of families and young children. These
programs’ attempts to address complex social
problems – such as ensuring the best outcomes
for children and families, increasing positive
indicators of child health and well-being,
eliminating disparities related to socio-
economic status, providing culturally relevant
practices, and increasing indicators of school
readiness - are hampered by the lack of a
well-funded and robust system that aligns and
integrates investments from the prenatal
period to ve years old. As a result, the
sectors and organizations across the early
learning, family support, and health systems
have been forced into practices that lean
toward isolated impact – inventing independent
solutions to broadly sweeping social issues and
often competing for funding to sustain these
solutions.
1
1 Kania, J. and Kramer, M. (2011) Collective Impact. Stanford
Social Innovation Review, Winter 2011. www.ssireview.org
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Early Childhood Education and Care Department Four-Year Finance Plan, 2023-2026
The Fragmented Fiscal System
One of the most complex challenges raised
in the National Academies of Sciences,
Engineering, and Medicine 2018 report
Transforming the Financing of Early Care
and Education is the patchwork of dierent
funding sources and nancing mechanisms,
which reinforces how issues of isolated
impact and siloed approaches stem in large
part from how programming and systems are
funded. The report underscores the issues that
result from an uncoordinated patchwork, or
non-functioning system, including inequities
in access, quality, aordability, cultural
responsiveness, and accountability, critical
issues that are most acutely felt by the
children and families early childhood programs
are designed to serve
2
. Funding sources and
mechanisms vary in their implementation
requirements and contract approach, based
on the funding entity, and have their own
standards, and reporting requirements.
These variances and the lack of common
understanding of them across the birth to ve
system puts stakeholders at a disadvantage
when attempting to develop policies, develop
funding mechanisms, and implement systemic
changes which will result in eciencies
and economies to benet family access and
program quality.
The process for funding the services and
programs in the prenatal to ve period
represent a fragmented and broken model,
funding that has never met the reality of the
cost of the services. Additionally, sta make
accommodations (e.g. use of personal funds
for materials, working nights and weekends,
management sta working in classrooms
to maintain coverage etc.) to maintain the
work and attempt to meet family needs that
2 National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Med-
icine, “Transforming the Financing of Early Care and Education”
(Washington: National Academies Press, 2018) available at http://
www.nas.edu/Finance_ECE
are untenable, at best. Many of the dierent
programs across the prenatal to ve system,
including child care, home visiting, parent
support, and early intervention experience these
accommodations making it extremely dicult to
sustain the system, provide fair compensation
for the workforce and the quality programming
families and young children need. These
accommodations include:
• low wages, poverty level in most
communities and limited benets for
sta;
• reliance on women, particularly woman
of color, who are undervalued for their
role in child rearing and domestic
eorts; and
• funding mechanisms linked to available
funding, not actual cost of service;
silos across state sectors that are
all seeking to serve and impact the
prenatal to ve period.
Identifying the true cost of providing
programming for young children and families is
critical to addressing the underfunding of the
system. In the early care and education space,
public funding amounts have been determined
based on the market price of child care, which
in turn is constrained by what families can
aord to pay. The result is an inequitable
system, where providers who operate in higher-
income neighborhoods can set tuition rates
closer to the actual cost of programming,
which in turn generates a higher subsidy
reimbursement rate, while those in low-income
communities have to set tuition rates lower
in order to be accessible to their community,
resulting in a lower subsidy reimbursement
rate. This approach also acts as a disincentive
for programs to serve children where the gap
between what it costs to provide care and the
amount families can aord to pay is greatest.
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Early Childhood Education and Care Department Four-Year Finance Plan, 2023-2026
Providers also face a disincentive to invest in
quality because the current funding approach
fails to compensate providers for the higher
costs of operating at higher quality levels. Not
only does this approach impact the availability
of quality early care and education opportunities
for young children but it also places a heavy
burden on the workforce. Despite increases in
public funding over the past decade, child care
wages have remained largely stagnant, with
educator compensation constrained by the lack
of funding to cover the true cost of education
and care. With the move to alternative
methodology for rate setting, New Mexico is
leading the country in using the actual cost of
care and quality to inform subsidy.
Much of this is also true for other prenatal
to ve programs where a contract or grant
approach dictates how much revenue is
available to a program, irrespective of the cost
of delivering the service. For example, early
intervention programming relies on rates paid
out by contracts - true costs of services are not
the driver in making these contract decisions.
In addition, costs increase year after year
often without an increase in the payment rate.
Therefore, the payment rate does not cover the
cost of the service. Early intervention programs
are faced with heavy caseloads and stang
shortages due to low compensation and high
workload.
Home visiting and parent education programs
often see the same challenges that exist in the
early intervention sector. Contracts to these
programs are often competitively oered,
which forces smaller, community-based
organizations - which may be more reective
of the community the services are designed for
- to compete with large entities, who typically
win the grant due to their infrastructure and
organizational capacity. These larger entities
may not serve communities that have the
greatest need for the services, or the ability to
truly engage the hardest to reach families, yet
they win in a competition for the funding due to
their organizational acumen. This demonstrates
that families with the greatest need are not
necessarily receiving the services they can
most benet from nor receive services from
the program and sta which best reects their
linguistic and cultural diversity. Home visitors
are professionals who take on an enormous
amount of stress as they work with many
families with varying needs. However, they are
not compensated anywhere near the level they
should be for the amount and type of work
they do for families of young children. At no
point was this more apparent than during the
pandemic as home visitors took on even more to
best support the families they work with.
Each program that is part of the prenatal to ve
system can benet from robust quality supports
that enhance professional development and
increase the quality of services oered. Many
of these supports are embedded in contracts,
and are a small piece of the overall budget.
Quality supports for child care, home visiting,
parent education, and early intervention are not
resourced at the level truly needed to provide
the professional training, capacity building and
access to sta mental health that is needed for
the type of emotionally and trauma-responsive
work this relationship-based service presents.
Providers are burnt out and frustrated; leading
to high turn-over which in turn aects families
and young children. The work providers
undertake is valuable and essential - yet they
are not compensated or supported in the way
they should be. While contracting for services
removes the market from the determination
of rates, if that contract is based on available
resources rather than an accurate accounting
of what it actually costs to provide all of the
services needed, programs still face signicant
gaps between these costs and revenue available
to cover that cost. Across the prenatal to ve
system, the impact of these gaps often falls
heaviest on the workforce.
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Early Childhood Education and Care Department Four-Year Finance Plan, 2023-2026
The Disproportionate Impact
on the Prenatal to Five Workforce
The prenatal to ve workforce performs a
critical service, providing care and education
to young children and support to families at
a critical time in their lives. This support not
only includes child care and preschool, but
also family support services such as parent
education, home visiting, and early intervention
programs. Unfortunately, this work has long
been undervalued, with most providers and sta
in the eld barely making a livable wage. Child
care workers are paid an average of $12.34 an
hour nationally and only $10.26 per hour in New
Mexico, and PreK teachers make only marginally
more.
3
These poverty level wages across the
dierent sectors of the workforce lead to high-
turnover, which can harm child development
given research showing the benets of stable
caregiving arrangements during a critical time in
brain development.
4
In addition to low pay, child care providers are
often unable to provide health insurance and
other benets to educators and sta, leaving
the workforce relying on public assistance or
other family members to survive.
5
Many family
support programs report hiring sta at part
time in order to avoid the expense of having to
include health insurance in compensation, as
the revenue streams do not cover the full cost
to deliver the service. For the home-based child
care providers this reality is magnied, with
most providers realizing actual hourly wages far
below minimum wage when accounting for the
3 Bureau of Labor Statistics “Occupational Employment
Statistics, May 2020” available at https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/
oes_nm.htm
4 Daphna Bassok, Anna J. Markowitz, Laura Bellows, and
Katharine Sadowski, “New Evidence on Teacher Turnover in Early
Childhood” Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, March 2021,
Vol. 43, Issue 1, pp 172-180. Available at: https://journals.sage-
pub.com/doi/10.3102/0162373720985340; https://www.nap.edu/
read/19401/chapter/11
5 Caitlin McLean, Lea J.E. Austin, Marcy Whitebook and
Krista Olson, “Early Childhood Workforce Index – 2020” (Berkeley,
CA: Center for the Study of Child Care Employment, University of
California, Berkeley, 2021). Available at: https://cscce.berkeley.edu/
workforce-index-2020/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/02/Ear-
ly-Childhood-Workforce-Index-2020.pdf
long hours they work, and the minimal revenue
remaining at the end of the month once all
expenses are paid. Similar nancial challenges
are seen within the family support sector, as
sta are often times paid the bare minimum
and they too rely on public assistance and
additional income provided by family members.
Building a cohesive, equitable, and eective
prenatal to ve system that can meet the needs
of all families and young children will require a
stable professional workforce and a pipeline of
future talent. This in turn requires investments
in professional compensation for early childhood
professionals (e.g. early interventionists,
teachers, home visitors etc.), improvements
in the early childhood preparation programs,
and ongoing professional development. As
such, workforce compensation must be at the
heart of any initiatives intended to support the
prenatal to ve system. Without professional
compensation (i.e salary, paid time o, and
benets), the system will never meet the full
spectrum of needs faced by families and young
children.
New Mexico has taken steps to address this
need by moving to paying child care subsidy
rates based on a cost estimation model rather
than market price. This cost estimation model
includes a $12.10 minimum wage for low-skilled
sta working in facilities licensed at the basic
level, sets rates for family child care home
providers comparable to lead teachers in child
care settings, and includes the cost of health
insurance. While state leaders acknowledge that
salaries need to increase beyond this minimum
wage, the cost model reects that the high
proportion of total cost is compensation (60-70
percent), New Mexico has laid the groundwork
for sustained and future investments in
professional compensation by using the model
for rate setting.
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Early Childhood Education and Care Department Four-Year Finance Plan, 2023-2026
Identifying Strategies to Address
the Fragmented Market
To meet the needs of families and young
children and address the inequities within the
prenatal to ve system will require a signicant
increase in public funding. However, it is also
necessary to alleviate the silos and barriers
that add excessive complexity and cost to
the system and ensure that increased public
funding is coupled with a more ecient system.
At the systems level it is important to align
program requirements, eligibility, and reporting
as much as possible to remove the burden from
providers and families when accessing multiple
programs and funding streams. Payment
practices should also reect the reality of how
providers and families operate within the system
and start from a point of positive support rather
than compliance and accountability. New Mexico
already moved to paying child care assistance
based on enrollment rather than attendance,
which provides for some stability in providers’
nances. States also have the option to further
align child care assistance payment policies
with tuition payment policies by providing
payment in advance rather than after the service
has been delivered. This ensures that providers
with minimal reserves have funds available
to cover their expenses as they are incurred,
rather than carrying debt until the child care
assistance payment is received. States can also
move to purchasing child care slots through
contracts rather than the individual voucher-
system that currently exists. Not only can
these slot purchase contracts be set at the
cost of quality, rather than market rate, but
they can also promote stability by guaranteeing
a set amount of income over the course of
the contract. Strategies such as these are an
important part of rebuilding the prenatal to ve
system in a way that better aligns with the goals
of funding streams and promotes eciency.
Understanding the impact of such policies and
identifying additional strategies to support the
system and address inequities is a critical part
of the scal analysis that is necessary to achieve
system goals.
ECECD is also re-designing the state’s home
visiting system. An initial scal analysis and data
collection of the current New Mexico system,
suggests that the current system is not scally
ecient and does not meet the true needs
of the communities across the state. Limited
number of models are available; therefore,
providing expensive services to families that
may not need highly intensive services, but
then not providing intense-enough services
to families with higher needs. Since families
present with a continuum of needs, coordinating
and implementing dierent models with varying
service intensity has been identied as a
strategy that will improve service coordination
and outcomes for families and young children
and eciently maximize funds.
New Mexico’s Vision for the
Prenatal to Five System
To address the complexity of the needs of
children and families and the non-system in
which those needs exist, requires states to set
a vision for how to increase investments, better
align current investments, and develop funding
and governance structures that maximize
eciency and minimize burden. Through
this comprehensive approach to the Early
Childhood Education and Care Department’s
Four-Year Finance Plan, New Mexico is thinking
strategically about the best way to fund the
prenatal to ve system, how partners at all
dierent levels can best collaborate, and what
role communities, sovereign nations, the federal
government, business, and philanthropy should
play. New Mexico’s scal vision for the prenatal
to ve system is in service of the statewide
vision for young children:
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Early Childhood Education and Care Department Four-Year Finance Plan, 2023-2026
A prenatal to ve system that meets the
needs of every child and family and is
supported by sucient and stable funding
streams that provide maximum exibility
for families, ecient administration and
infrastructure, and minimum burden for
program providers.
Operationalizing this scal vision is supported by
a set of guiding principles. These principles drive
the important work of a cohesive, equitable, and
eective prenatal to ve system to best support
families and young children. These principles
focus on a system that:
• works for all children and ensures that
programming reaches and positively
impacts those children farthest from
opportunity.
• is fair to providers and supports
their developing capacity for quality
implementation.
• compensates the workforce at a level
that allows for nancial stability and
acknowledges their signicant impact on
child development.
• uses public resources wisely and
eciently, augmenting private resources
from those families who can aord
services.
• acknowledges embedded societal
inequities and implements changes to
remediate inequity.
• supports the entirety of a child’s
experiences before entering kindergarten,
including prenatal supports for expectant
mothers.
This system brings together family support,
education, maternal health, and child health
sectors to coordinate funding eorts and goals
needed to create an equitable and accessible
system for families. Families of young children
benet most when investments are made in a
systemic manner to truly meet the unique needs
of their community, and are based on intentional
and meaningful funding practices across the
state and community levels.
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Early Childhood Education and Care Department Four-Year Finance Plan, 2023-2026
Section II Towards a Comprehensive Early
Childhood System in New Mexico
Under the leadership of Governor Michelle
Lujan Grisham and her Children’s Cabinet, New
Mexico has taken signicant steps in recent
years demonstrating the state’s commitment
to a systemic approach to early childhood
education and care. In 2019, the Governor signed
the Early Childhood Education and Care Act
into law, which created the New Mexico Early
Childhood Education and Care Department
(ECECD). The Act also created the position of
Assistant Secretary for Native American Early
Education and Care and required ECECD to
prepare and update a four-year nance plan
with recommendations for nancing the early
childhood education and care (ECEC) system.
In 2020, the Governor enacted, with bipartisan
legislative support, the Early Childhood Trust
Fund (ECTF) that distributes funds annually
to ECECD, and in 2021, the NM Legislature
approved House Joint Resolution 1 allowing
voters to decide whether a portion of the state’s
Permanent Land Grant can fund ECEC. These
activities represent NM’s intentions to address
the fractured governance of and limited funding
for programming for families and young children.
The creation of ECECD brought together pro-
grams that previously resided within several
other agencies of state government. As of July
2020, the NM ECECD administers child care
licensing and assistance, Child and Adult Care
Food Program, Families FIRST, a perinatal case
management program, Part C of the Individuals
with Disabilities Education Act, Head Start State
Collaboration, federal and state home visiting,
NM PreK (public and private), quality initiatives,
and early childhood workforce development.
As New Mexico works to build a more cohesive,
equitable, and eective prenatal to ve early
childhood system, ECECD uses a rich tapestry
of recommendations, plans, and priorities
from key stakeholders and communities with
clear next steps for necessary governance and
scal strategies. These include the ECECD
Transition Committee’s strategic priorities
and action plans, the ECECD Advisory Council
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Early Childhood Education and Care Department Four-Year Finance Plan, 2023-2026
recommendations, the New Mexico Early
Childhood Strategic Plan, and the Pritzker
Children’s Initiative Prenatal to Three Policy
Implementation Plan. The comprehensive nature
of ECECD’s approach is further solidied by not
only working across the various sectors, early
care and education, maternal and child health
and development, family support, but also
engaging in work across all system components.
The comprehensive system work embedded in
New Mexico’s approach includes the following
components:
• Governance and Shared Leadership
• Financing and Fiscal Strategies
• Assessment and Planning
• Continuous Quality Improvement and
Implementation
• Professional Development and
Technical Assistance
• Monitoring and Accountability
With this Finance Plan, ECECD is working deeply
on scal strategies and funding mechanisms.
Changes in response to the nance plan, along
with the new Department’s infrastructure,
will encompass analysis and improvements in
governance and accountability mechanisms. As
part of creating the ECECD Four Year Finance
Plan, the newly formed department has built
an action plan to support implementation; this
action plan underscores how necessary each
of these components of the system is to the
system wide change and the clear intersection
of scal strategies with all aspects of prenatal
to ve programming. For the scale of work
discussed, which is designed to encompass
meeting all children’s needs, a system-wide
lens to not just the nancing but also the full
functioning of all elements of the direct service,
quality support and infrastructure is needed to
achieve this work.
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Early Childhood Education and Care Department Four-Year Finance Plan, 2023-2026
Section III New Mexico Early Childhood Education
and Care Four-Year Finance Plan
As evidenced above, New Mexico’s commitment
to improvement of the overall early childhood
system is steadfast. Part of the work in
executing New Mexico’s vision is a deep
understanding of both the need and the cost
of the services provided across child care,
PreK, home visiting, and Family, Infant, Toddler
(FIT) programming. The Four-Year Finance Plan
highlights important data for both identifying
needs and justifying costs across the four
dierent programs from FY23 through FY26.
Understanding the Need
for Services
The number of young children and families
that need access to child care, PreK, home
visiting, and FIT is estimated based on birth rate
projections, provided by the University of New
Mexico Geospatial and Population Studies unit.
For the purposes of this Finance Plan, ECECD
is using the ‘low birth rate projection’ provided
by UNM which assumes that fertility rates will
continue their current downward trend. Table
1 provides the estimated number of children in
each age cohort from 2022 to 2026. The number
in the 0–1-years row indicates the projected
births in that year. Numbers for older children
are drawn from prior year projections, or actual
births where available. As shown in the table,
births are estimated to decrease each year at a
rate of around two to three percent.
Each program funded and administered by
ECECD is intended to support a specic need
and as such each program applies its own
methodology to the data in Table 1 to estimate
the number of children and families to be
served.
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Early Childhood Education and Care Department Four-Year Finance Plan, 2023-2026
Table 1: Birth cohort projections, by age, by year
Child Care Assistance
In 2021 New Mexico expanded access to
subsidized child care to families earning up
to 350 percent of the federal poverty level,
which is just over $92,750 per year for a family
of four.
6
To estimate how many families and
children qualify for subsidized child care at this
level, ECECD used the birth cohort projections
provided in Table 1 as a starting point. Based
on income eligibility thresholds, it is estimated
that 85 percent of New Mexico families would
meet the eligibility requirements for child care
assistance, so the total eligible population was
estimated at 85 percent of each age cohort.
From this, the numbers were further adjusted
to account for the fact that not all families need
care.
According to the American Community Survey
census data, approximately 63 percent of
young children in New Mexico have all available
parents in the workforce as of 2021.
7
Therefore,
6 New Mexico Early Childhood Education and Care Depart-
ment, “Child Care Assistance Income Guidelines, April 2021-March
2022” available at: https://www.nmececd.org/wp-content/up-
loads/2021/07/Poverty-Guidelines-2021-to-include-400-FPL.pdf
7 The Hunt Institute, “New Mexico Early Childhood Edu-
cation and Care Department Transition Committee, Final Report
and 18-Month Action Plan,” November 2020, available at: https://
hunt-institute.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/New-Mexico-ECE-
CD-Transition-Committee-Final-Report-18-Month-Action-Plan.pdf
the projections were further reduced by this
percentage, to reect the population who will
need care. Research has shown that there is a
strong link between parental employment and
access to aordable child care; when families
have access to aordable child care and
preschool they are more likely to work, work
longer hours, or attend school.
8
As New Mexico
continues to invest in child care assistance over
the period of this Finance Plan, it is assumed
that parental employment will increase, which
in turn will increase the need for child care.
This increase is reected in the estimates for
how many children will need child care each
year, increasing from 63 percent in FY22 to 67
percent in FY26. Table 2 summarizes the total
potential need for child care assistance for FY23
through FY26.
8 U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Oce of
the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, “The Eects
of Child Care Subsidies on Maternal Labor Force Participation in
the United States” (Washington, 2016) available at: https://aspe.
hhs.gov/eects-child-care-subsidies-maternal-labor-force-par-
ticipation-united-states; Rasheed Malik, “The Eects of Universal
Preschool in Washington, D.C.” (Washington: Center for American
Progress, 2018) available at: https://www.americanprogress.org/
2022 2023 2024 2025 2026
0-1 years
21,110 20,535 19,961 19,385 18,793
1-2 years
21,550 21,110 20,535 19,961 19,386
2-3 years
21,820 21,550 21,110 20,535 19,961
3-4 years
22,966 21,820 21,550 21,110 20,535
4-5 years
23,038 22,966 21,820 21,550 21,110
5-6 years
23,708 23,038 22,966 21,820 21,550
TOTAL UNDER 6
134,192 131,019 124,362 124,362 121,335
6-13 years
184,498 180,411 176,198 172,172 167,750
TOTAL 0-13 318,690 311,430 304,140 296,534 289,085
15
Early Childhood Education and Care Department Four-Year Finance Plan, 2023-2026
Table 2: Child Care Assistance estimated need, FY23-26
Table 3: NM PreK estimated need, FY23-26
PreK
Estimating the projected need for PreK requires
accounting not only for the number of three-
and four-year olds residing in the state each
year, but also an understanding of the other
settings in which children might be served. For
this age group, children can also be served by
Head Start, including Tribal settings, so the
projected need is adjusted accordingly (Table
3). In this Plan, ECECD uses birth cohorts,
instead of public school kindergarten enrollment
cohorts, for two fundamental reasons. First, this
ensures a consistent methodological approach
across all early childhood programs. Second, by
using the birth cohort all children are counted.
The department’s previous methodology only
took into account those students that enrolled
in the K-12 public school system, which did not
represent an accurate measure of PreK need.
In projecting PreK need, kindergarten enrollment
data is sometimes used in the eld, despite
its aforementioned limitations. In Section III,
the Plan does note the percentage of children
served using kindergarten enrollment cohorts
to compare the dierence in the percentage
of need when using the two dierent
methodological approaches. The birth cohort
projections from Table 1 were used as a starting
point, and then the number of children served
by Head Start was deducted from this total
to calculate an estimate of the number of
three- and four-year-olds potentially in need of
services through NM PreK.
FY23 FY24 FY25 FY26
0-1 years 11,346 11,198 11,040 10,702
1-2 years 11,663 11,520 11,368 11,040
2-3 years 11,906 11,843 11,695 11,368
3-4 years 12,056 12,090 12,022 11,695
4-5 years 12,689 12,241 12,273 12,022
TOTAL UNDER 5
59,660 58,892 58,398 56,827
5-6 years 12,728 12,884 12,426 12,273
6-13 years 99,677 98,847 98,052 95,534
TOTAL 0-13 72,388 71,776 70,824 69,100
FY23 FY24 FY25 FY26
3-4 years 18,170 19,325 17,888 17,904
4-5 years 19,316 18,170 20,785 20,808
TOTAL
37,486 37,495 38,673 38,712
16
Early Childhood Education and Care Department Four-Year Finance Plan, 2023-2026
Home Visiting
Research demonstrates that all families of
young children may benet from home visiting
services, yet not all types of home visiting will
meet the need of every family.
9
In this service
area, there is a continuum of types of programs
and intensity in services, which have dierent
costs per child served.
To understand need for home visiting, the
population of families of young children needs
to be broken down according to strata driven by
high need or at-risk characteristics, reective
of the populations in the state. As a rule,
population-wide stratication of need seeks to
sort the population in to high, moderate and low
risk, according to characteristics present in the
population. As part of this process for
New Mexico, several characteristics that put
families of young children farther from equal
opportunities, and their associated incidence
data for New Mexico, were reviewed, including:
9 Geary, C., Capito, J., and Duggan, J. (2020) Home Visiting
Provides Essential Services: Home Visiting Programs Require
Additional Funding to Support More Families. Georgetown Center
on Poverty and Inequality, Washington DC.
New Mexico has a high proportion of the
population who are covered by Medicaid during
pregnancy and through the birth of the baby; 74
percent of all pregnant women in New Mexico
are covered by Medicaid. Access to Medicaid
is an income driven eligibility, therefore nearly
three-quarters of all pregnant women in New
Mexico fall at or below 250 percent of the
federal poverty line. Many of the other at-
risk factors considered as part of the home
visiting need stratication process overlap
with the population of Medicaid eligible and
served families. Medicaid covered births was
established as the population of the high need
category with the acknowledgement of the need
to further stratify this high need population in
to tier 1, greatest need, those families in deep
poverty (50 percent or less of poverty and child
protective services involved) and tier 2, high
need families falling between 50 percent of the
poverty level and 250 percent of poverty.
The next stratication of need is the families
at moderate need, which make up 21 percent
of the birth cohort. The population in this
category include families eligible for TANF and
WIC benets, families with well managed or
moderate chronic health conditions, mother
or children, and maternal mental health risk
factors. For New Mexico, the low-risk category
is established at approximately 5 percent of
the birth cohort and represents the general
population with no known factors related to
high or moderate risk. Table 4 summarizes the
stratication of need by these three levels, with
tier 1 and 2 in high need, for the birth cohort
projections from FY23-FY26.
• Births covered by Medicaid
• Poverty level/deep poverty
• Child Welfare involvement
• Pregnant women in, leaving or within one
year of prison or jail release or detention
• Women aected by substance use
disorder
• Women aected by social emotional
disorders or mental health conditions
• Birth disparities/health disparities by
race/ethnicity that are prevalent in NM
• Women with high-risk chronic conditions
(physical or cognitive)
• Preterm birth (0-1) or major child chronic
condition (1-5)
• Women in abusive relationships
• Women experiencing homelessness
• Children with mild or moderate or well-
managed chronic conditions (physical,
cognitive, social/emotional)
• Families receiving TANF benets
17
Early Childhood Education and Care Department Four-Year Finance Plan, 2023-2026
Table 4: Home Visiting estimated need, FY23-26
Family Infant and Toddler
The determination of eligibility for the
Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA)
Part C program is administered through ECECD’s
Family Infant and Toddler (FIT) program. FIT
diers from other services, as it is dictated by a
developmental delay or disability. IDEA is a state
and federally funded entitlement program for
children and adults with delays or disabilities.
Part C of this act is specic to services to
children and families from birth to three years of
age. Eligibility criteria for FIT services relates to
a percentage delay in the child’s development,
or one of several diagnoses or risk criteria within
the family unit. ECECD works in partnership with
local vendors in required Child Find
activities to ensure that children and families
who may qualify for services under FIT are
identied, screened, and assessed and enrolled
in the appropriate therapeutic services. As such,
New Mexico has a strong history of nding and
serving FIT eligible children and families. Using
year over year data from the last ve years of
services, the population eligible for FIT was
projected forward to FY26. In the case of FIT, it
is a requirement that those eligible are served
therefore projections on eligibility match with
the service projections for the FIT program
(Table 5).
Understanding the
FY23 FY24 FY25 FY26
Highest Need Strata (74% of
births, Medicaid eligible)
15,093 14,671 14,249 13,813
Tier 1: Births under 50% FPL
(59%) and CPS involvement (5%)
9,660 9,390 9,119 8,840
Tier 2: 50% FPL to all Medicaid
eligible births
6,188 6,015 5,842 5,663
Moderate Need Strata (21%
of births)
4,312 4,192 4,071 3,946
Low Need Strata (5% of
births)
1,027 998 969 940
18
Early Childhood Education and Care Department Four-Year Finance Plan, 2023-2026
Table 5: Family Infant Toddler estimated need, FY23-26
Cost of Services
ECECD has developed projections estimating the
cost to provide the services detailed above to
New Mexico children and families. These costs
fall into two categories: 1) the cost of the direct
service, and 2) the cost of infrastructure and
quality supports.
Direct Service
Child Care Assistance
To estimate the cost of providing child care
assistance to all families who need it, ECECD
used the cost estimation model developed in
2021 to inform child care assistance rate setting.
This model was informed by a cost study that
identied what it costs to meet state licensing
standards, with age, region and program level
variations, and the additional costs related to
increasing quality and workforce compensation.
FY23 projections use the child care assistance
rates established as of July 1, 2021, informed by
the cost estimation model. These rates provide
for a $12.10 minimum wage in both child care
centers and family child care homes, which was
the highest minimum wage in the state at the
time the model was developed. This minimum
wage oor applies to the lowest paid members
of the workforce for a program at the licensed
level, with other salaries adjusted proportionally;
Lead teachers and family child care providers
are compensated at $13.19 per hour under this
model. As providers increase their rating in the
state’s Tiered Quality Rating and Improvement
System (TQRIS), wages increase; for the FY23
estimates, lead teachers are compensated at
$16.73 per hour in a 3 Star program, $18.40 in
a 4 Star program, and $20.07 in a 5 Star rated
program.
For FY24 and FY25, the rates are increased
to ensure they are sucient to provide a $15
minimum wage to the child care workforce
in a program meeting minimum licensing
standards, which increases lead teacher wages
to $20.74 per hour. In FY26 the rates increase to
cover an $18 minimum wage, which increases
lead teacher wages to $24.89 per hour. In
addition, rates were increased to account for
ination. The estimates use data from the
Social Security Administration which uses a
2.4% annual increase as its benchmark. The
estimated baseline child care assistance rates
under these scenarios are detailed in Tables
6-9 below. These rates are used for programs
meeting minimum health and safety licensing
regulations; quality dierentials are paid on top
of these rates based on a program’s level in the
state’s TQRIS.
Estimating the overall cost of child care
assistance in each year required developing
a system-wide model that accounts for the
distribution of children across settings and
quality levels. ECECD used data on the current
distribution of children across settings, and
the distribution of program quality level across
these settings to inform these estimates. Table
10 illustrates the distribution of total capacity
across settings and quality levels. Further,
given the signicant dierence in the cost of
child care for children at dierent ages, it is
FY23 FY24 FY25 FY26
FIT Eligibility
24% 25% 26% 28%
0-3 years
15,167 15,402 15,569 16,279
TOTAL UNDER 3
15,167 15,402 15,569 16,279
19
Early Childhood Education and Care Department Four-Year Finance Plan, 2023-2026
Table 6: Monthly cost per child estimates, child care center, FY23-26
Table 7: Monthly cost per child estimates, small family child care, FY23-26
Table 8: Monthly cost per child estimates, group home, FY23-26
Table 9: Monthly cost per child estimates, registered home, FY23-26
important to also estimate the distribution of
children across settings by age. Based on the
number of children in each age cohort needing
care, ECECD estimates that 40 percent of the
total capacity needed is for children under two,
21 percent for children two to three, 13 percent
for three- to ve-year-olds and 26 percent by
Infant Toddler Preschooler School-age
FY23
$880 $635 $575 $441
FY24
$1,090 $774 $697 $510
FY25
$1,113 $791 $712 $521
FY26
$1,264 $890 $799 $577
Infant Toddler Preschooler School-age
FY23
$875 $850 $700 $412
FY24
$1,112 $1,080 $889 $560
FY25
$1,122 $1,090 $898 $565
FY26
$1,377 $1,377 $1,101 $648
Infant Toddler Preschooler School-age
FY23
$855 $830 $680 $428
FY24
$1,092 $1,060 $869 $546
FY25
$1,102 $1,070 $877 $551
FY26
$1,263 $1,226 $1,005 $632
Infant Toddler Preschooler School-age
FY23
$375 $375 $325 $300
FY24
$464 $464 $403 $373
FY25
$464 $464 $403 $373
FY26
$556 $556 $484 $447
school age children. This distribution was used
to inform estimates of the cost of providing
sucient capacity to meet the need. Combining
data on the cost per child - with variations by
setting, program quality level, and child age
– with the distribution of capacity by setting,
program quality level, and child age, allowed for
20
Early Childhood Education and Care Department Four-Year Finance Plan, 2023-2026
Table 10: Distribution of Capacity across Program setting, TQRIS level
an estimate of the total cost of providing child
care assistance to all who need it. Currently,
New Mexico serves approximately 45 percent of
all eligible children under six, and 6 percent of
eligible school-age children.
The Four-Year Finance Plan builds towards a
goal of serving 100 percent of eligible children
under age six by FY26. The saturation of eligible
children served increases each year to reach
this goal. The number of three- and four-year-
old children who need to be served by child
care assistance is adjusted to account for the
parallel increase in the number of children in
these age groups receiving access to NM PreK.
While a portion of these children will still
require care beyond the 6-hour PreK day, this
is anticipated to be aligned with the estimated
need of school age children rather than the
need of infants and toddlers. Table 11 details the
increase in eligible children served each year,
broken out by age. The total cost to provide
service at these saturation levels is detailed in
table 12.
Center Family Child
Care
Group Home Registered
Homes
% of total capacity
85% 6.5% 2% 6.5%
Licensed
5% 29% 26%
2 Star
6% 30% 26%
2+ Star
11% 26% 8%
3 Star
17% 3% 9%
4 Star
11% 5% 8%
5 Star
50% 7% 23%
21
Early Childhood Education and Care Department Four-Year Finance Plan, 2023-2026
NM PreK
New Mexico PreK supports access to high-
quality prekindergarten programming for
three- and four-year-olds in public school or
community-based sites. ECECD sets half-day
and full-day rates for NM PreK, with dierent
rates for 4-year-olds, 3-year-olds, and mixed
age classrooms.
Table 11: Estimated number of children to be served by Child Care Assistance FY23-FY26
Table 12: Estimated cost of child care assistance program FY23-26
Table 13: NM PreK Rates
FY23 FY24 FY25 FY26
Service Saturation – 0-5 years
47% 75% 85% 100%
0-1
5,332 8,399 9,384 10,702
1-2 years
5,482 8,640 9,663 11,040
2-3 years
5,596 8,882 9,940 11,368
3-4 years
1,700 1,700 1,700 1,700
4-5 years
1,500 1,500 1,500 1,500
TOTAL UNDER 5 19,610 29,121 32,187 36,310
Service Saturation – School age
7% 8% 9% 10%
5-6 years 891 1,031 1,118 1,227
6-13 years 6,977 7,908 8,825 9,553
TOTAL 0-12 27,478 38,060 42,130 47,090
FY23 FY24 FY25 FY26
Child Care Assistance
$213,092,489 $373,951,403 $416,304,137 $533,509,927
FY23 FY24 FY25 FY26
3-4 years
Part day
$4,375 $4,480 $4,585 $4,690
Full day
$8,750 $8,960 $9,170 $9,380
4-5 years
Part day
$3,500 $3,584 $3,668 $3,752
Full day
$7,000 $7,168 $7.336 $7,504
To estimate the cost of expanding access to
PreK through FY26, the current rates are used,
but adjusted for ination/cost of living from
FY24 through FY26 at a rate of 2.4% per year, in
line with Social Security Trustee estimates.
10
The rates used in the modeling are shown in
Table 13.
10 Social Security Administration, “COLA Estimates Under
the 2021 Trustees Report”, available at https://www.ssa.gov/oact/
TR/TRassum.html
22
Early Childhood Education and Care Department Four-Year Finance Plan, 2023-2026
New Mexico pays the same rate regardless of
setting, so adjustments are not made in the
cost estimates based on setting. However, the
estimates do make assumptions about how
many children participate in half-day PreK
compared to full day PreK.
In the nance plan projections, the number
of children served by full day programming is
increased each year.
New Mexico has a goal of providing universal
PreK to all families who want it. This four-year-
plan builds on the states progress to reach
this goal in FY26. To accurately estimate the
potential need for PreK, the data in Table 3
was adjusted to account for the experience
from states that have implemented universal
preschool who have found that around 75-85
percent of preschool-age children enroll in PreK.
The estimates are further adjusted to account
for children served through Title I. Table 14
illustrates the results of this analysis, identifying
the number of 3- and 4-year-olds estimated to
be served by NM PreK from FY23-26.
Table 14: Number and percentage of 3 and 4-year olds served by NM PreK
Table 15: Estimated cost of NM PreK FY23-FY26
Currently in FY22, 50 percent of 4-year-olds are
estimated to be served by NM PreK. A further 17
percent are served by Head Start, and 5 percent
by Title I. As a result, across Head Start, Title I
and NM PreK, 72 percent of the birth cohort will
be served. This is the equivalent of 80 percent
of the estimated kindergarten cohort.
11
In FY26, 61 percent of 4-year-olds are estimated
to be served by NM PreK. A further 11 percent
are served by Head Start, and 4 percent by Title
I. As a result, by FY26, across Head Start, Title I
and NM PreK, 76 percent of the birth cohort will
be served. This is the equivalent of 85 percent
of the estimated kindergarten cohort.
12
By FY26, 17 percent of 3-year-olds are estimated
to be served by NM Early PreK. A further 25
percent are served by Head Start and 3 percent
by Title I. As a result, by FY26, across Head
Start, Title I and NM Early PreK, 45 percent of
the 3-year-old birth cohort will be served. This
is the equivalent of 50 percent of the estimated
kindergarten cohort.
13
The total cost to provide
service at these saturation levels is detailed in
table 15.
11 Based on authors analysis of data from LFC estimating
kindergarten cohort, based on 90% of 2018 birth cohort.
12 Based on authors analysis of data from LFC estimating
kindergarten cohort, based on 90% of 2022 birth cohort.
13 Based on authors analysis of data from LFC estimating
kindergarten cohort, based on 90% of 2023 birth cohort.
FY23 FY24 FY25 FY26
3-year-olds
2,896 3,462 3,334 3,515
Percent of birth cohort
13% 16% 16% 17%
4-year-olds
11,737 12,060 12,895 12,904
Percent of birth cohort
51% 55% 60% 61%
FY23 FY24 FY25 FY26
NM PreK
$107,500,540 $112,419,370 $120,667,566 $125,622,136
23
Early Childhood Education and Care Department Four-Year Finance Plan, 2023-2026
Home Visiting
New Mexico has home visiting programming for
families from the prenatal period to ve years
of age. In the delivery of home visiting, the
most positive impacts on child development
and family well-being are achieved when the
program model is matched up with the needs
or risk factors of the children and families
served. A continuum of home visiting programs
is necessary to meet the various needs of the
children, families and communities served.
One home visiting model will not meet the
needs of all families or have the same impact
on all families. Home visiting programs are
developed with research on their service model
used with populations of families; from there
an evidence base for the impact of a given
home visiting model is developed. In order to
maximize investment in home visiting, states
use an understanding of need, such as the need
stratication completed for New Mexico (see
Table 4), to support selecting and implementing
home visiting models that are designed and
proven to have the desired positive impact on
child and family outcomes.
Home visiting models are not the same in their
delivery elements or intensity, and therefore
have dierent program costs. Models with
proven impact on the highest risk populations
are typically the most intense service models
and this intensity has a higher cost per child
family served annually. These are the models
designed to serve families in the highest need
strata. Services for families in the moderate
risk category are less intense, with fewer
touchpoints between the family and home
visitor and thus a lower cost per child/family
annually, and services for the low risk strata are
the lightest touch, least intense and typically
cost the least annually per child/family served.
With this need stratication process, combined
with analysis of current program model
implementation, ECECD is actively engaged
in a process to ensure the home visiting
services delivered to families are matched to
the family need and that program funding is
commensurate with the cost of the service.
For the purpose of planning, the cost per
family needs to be increased for the services
to families in the highest need strata and
more discernment of the cost per family
for the models used to serve families in the
moderate and low risk strata. Currently all home
visiting programs are paid between $4,500 and
$6,000 annually per family served, Table 16
demonstrates the approach to funding rates
through to FY26, which distinguishes among
need strata, increasing that rate and adds
services for the low risk category in future years.
Table 16: Annual Cost Per Family, by scal year
FY23 FY24 FY25 FY26
High Need, Tier 1
$6,000 $8,000 $8,000 $8,000
High Need, Tier 2
$6,000 $6,500 $6,500 $6,500
Moderate Need
$4,500 $4,500 $4,500 $4,500
Low Need
N/A $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
24
Early Childhood Education and Care Department Four-Year Finance Plan, 2023-2026
Table 17: Percentage and number of families served, by need stratication and scal year
Table 18: Universal touch model service numbers by scal year
Table 19: Total home visiting service numbers and estimated cost by scal year
Additionally, in scal year 2022, ECECD, in
partnership with the Department of Health,
launched a universal touch home visiting
model in Bernalillo County; through Family
Connects every family receives a connection
with a home visitor at the birth of their baby.
Families may receive one to three more visits
after this newborn connection, based on need
and families are linked to additional resources
through this process, including an intensive,
ongoing home visiting program, as appropriate.
This universal touch model is estimated to
have an annual cost per family of $500 and is
included in the nance plan modeling.
In order to project the costs of expanding
access to home visiting year over year, across
the dierent need levels, saturation amounts
were established, linked to each level of need. It
is a goal of ECECD to envision that the highest
need families are served with home visiting
aligned to their needs and funded at the actual
cost per child/family. In Table 17, the percentage
of the birth cohort aligned to each need level
that is projected to be served is delineated,
along with the number of children.
Table 18 outlines the service projections for the universal touch model, which has launched in FY22
and will increase in services each year.
The total numbers of children/families to be served by home visiting, across all the need levels and
service types, and the associated costs through FY26 is covered in Table 19.
Service Saturation by Strata
FY23 FY24 FY25 FY26
High Tier 1 served
2,898 (30%) 3,756 (40%) 4,104 (45%) 4,420 (50%)
High Tier 2 served
1,547 (25%) 2,406 (40%) 2,629 (45%) 2,832 (50%)
# Moderate Need served
647 (15%) 1,866 (45%) 1,832 (45%) 1,973 (50%)
# Low Need served
0 599 (60%) 775 (80%) 940 (100%)
FY23 FY24 FY25 FY26
Percentage of birth cohort
7% 30% 40% 50%
Annual Universal Service Numbers
1,437 5,988 7,754 9,396
FY23 FY24 FY25 FY26
Total Served
9,839 20,256 23,165 26,168
Estimated HV cost
$49,526,657 $92,585,705 $100,276,042 $108,713,168
25
Early Childhood Education and Care Department Four-Year Finance Plan, 2023-2026
Family Infant and Toddler
New Mexico Family Infant and Toddler program
has demonstrated high levels of accessing and
engaging the eligible population into Part C
funded services. While the state performs better
than many other states in this area, there is
some room for growth; however, estimates of
cost increases year over year are not driven by a
goal to saturate increasing amounts of the birth
cohort but instead to ensure eligible children
and families are served.
The payment rate for FIT providers was
increased in FY20 and FY21 to meet the rates
established in the 2017 rate study. A rate study
is planned for this year. An estimate of what
the increase would be, using the percentage
of previous rate increases as a basis, was
completed in order to project cost for the FIT
program through to FY26 (Table 21).
Table 20: Service projections in FIT program, by scal year
Table 21: Annual cost per child for FIT services and total annual costs based on service projections
Quality Supports And ECECD Infrastructure
Quality supports for programs and providers/
professionals are necessary to the delivery of
quality direct services to children and families.
These quality supports exist within an overall
system or infrastructure which must be
adequately funded to meet the size and capacity
of the system, ensuring coordination across the
system, access to services and resources, and
continually implementing improvements and
evaluation in order to ensure the high-quality
services are available. New Mexico has pieces of
these quality supports and overall infrastructure
in place for each of the program areas analyzed
and projected out in the four years of the
nance plan. While some of the areas of growth
in quality supports and infrastructure are clear,
there is a great need to focus on the concepts
of what quality supports are invested in,
whether these meet the program, professional
and system needs, and adjust the activities and
investments accordingly. This work is further
described in the Narrative Action Plan section
of this report and detailed in ECECD’s System
Action Plan, created in July 2021.
Growth in both quality supports and ECECD
infrastructure is projected, (see tables 22-
26) as the numbers of children and families
served year over year will increase. Additional
renement of the scale and types of
investments will occur as ECECD focuses on
these components of their system growth.
FY23 FY24 FY25 FY26
FIT Eligibility
24% 25% 26% 28%
0-3 years
13,903 15,402 15,569 16,279
FY23 FY24 FY25 FY26
Cost per child
$4,535 $4,762 $5,000 $5,250
Estimated FIT cost
$63,049,652 $73,338,093 $77,844,070 $85,463,022
26
Early Childhood Education and Care Department Four-Year Finance Plan, 2023-2026
Table 22: Child Care Quality Support and Infrastructure Expenses, FY23-26
Table 23: NM PreK Quality Support and Infrastructure Expenses, FY23-26
FY23 FY24 FY25 FY26
Child care slots
27,479 38,059 42,130 47,091
Licensed child care providers
850 900 950 1000
Families Served
16,164 22,388 24,783 27,701
Professional Development/ Training
$399,607 $510,654 $654,529 $810,563
QRIS Counsultation, Child Care Resource
and Referral and Statewide Training Registry
$4,670,000 $4,926,176 $5,182,353 $5,438,529
Child Care Data Management and Payment
System
$2,800,100 $3,000,000 $3,200,000 $3,400,000
Higher Education Grants
$3,500,000 $3,500,000 $3,500,000 $3,500,000
Call Center
$2,121,218 $2,121,218 $2,121,218 $2,121,218
Supply Building
$0 $2,500,000 $2,500,000 $2,500,000
Other
$56,702 $56,702 $56,702 $56,702
Child Care Regulatory Sta (Salaries
and Benets)
$2,600,500 $2,819,554 $3,047,624 $3,285,018
Child Care Assistance Sta (Salaries
and Benets)
$4,698,112 $4,810,864 $4,926,327 $5,044,559
TOTAL
$20,846,239 $24,245,168 $25,188,753 $26,156,589
Child care grants, capacity, and
business (CRRSA)
$7,000,000
Accelerated AA cohort (CRRSA)
$840,000
CC information sytstem (CRSSA)
$200,000
TOTAL Relief Funding
$8,040,000
FY23 FY24 FY25 FY26
PreK slots
14,633 15,522 16,229 16,418
Private PreK (community)
6,965 7,388 7,725 7,815
Public PreK
7,668 8,134 8,504 8,603
PreK Classrooms
813 862 902 912
PreK Parity Wage Supplement
$4,000,000 $4,242,921 $4,436,207 $4,487,966
Quality coaching and supports
$6,296,265 $6,678,639 $6,982,885 $7,064,357
Early childhood observation tool
$150,000 $150,000 $150,000 $150,000
LETR-S, Literacy coaching
$750,000 $750,000 $750,000 $750,000
NM PreK PSEB Stang
$965,210 $1,023,828 $1,070,468 $1,082,958
Total
$12,161,475 $12,845,388 $13,389,560 $13,535,281
27
Early Childhood Education and Care Department Four-Year Finance Plan, 2023-2026
Table 24: Home Visiting Quality Support and Infrastructure Expenses, FY23-26
Table 25: FIT Quality Support and Infrastructure Expenses, FY23-26
FY23 FY24 FY25 FY26
Families Served
9,839 20,256 23,165 26,168
Home Visitors
430 753 822 901
FY23 FY24 FY25 FY26
Children Served
13,903 15,402 15,569 16,279
Administrative Services (Falling Colors)
$1,386,746 $2,592,400 $2,807,729 $3,043,969
Centralized Intake and Referral
$0 $500,000 $500,000 $500,000
Reective Supervision, Continuous Quality
Improvement, Data Management, Parent
Education
$2,459,132 $2,435,749 $2,435,749 $2,435,749
Infant Mental Health Endorsement
$105,000 $105,000 $105,000 $105,000
Curriculim Support
$9,990 $9,990 $9,990 $9,990
Home Visiting Sta (Salaries and Benets)
$551,671 $967,233 $1,055,740 $1,157,146
Total
$4,512,539 $6,610,372 $6,914,208 $7,251,854
Data System
$199,053 $220,509 $222,912 $233,076
Third Party Medicaid Biller
$153,766 $170,341 $172,197 $180,048
Family Resource Centers
$302,800 $280,461 $283,517 $296,444
Continuous Quality Improvement
$491,946 $571,396 $577,622 $603,958
Interagency Coordinating Council
$64,475 $64,475 $64,475 $64,475
FIT Sta (Salaries and Benets)
$815,280 $957,267 $957,267 $1,000,913
Total
$2,027,320 $2,264,449 $2,277,990 $2,378,914
System Infrastrucutre (ARPA funded)
$624,252
28
Early Childhood Education and Care Department Four-Year Finance Plan, 2023-2026
FY23 FY24 FY25 FY26
Research and Evaluation
$1,000,000 $1,000,000 $1,000,000 $1,000,000
Annual Outcomes Reports
$195,646 $202,920 $202,920 $202,920
Higher Education Scholarships
$2,978,403 $2,978,403 $2,978,403 $2,978,403
Wage Supplement Program
$1,000,000 $1,000,000 $1,000,000 $1,000,000
Mentor Network
$732,913 $200,000 $200,000 $200,000
Dolly Parton Imagination Library
$275,000 $275,000 $275,000 $275,000
ECECD Sta (Salaries and Benets)
$10,071,659 $10,071,659 $10,071,659 $10,071,659
Other
$569,400 $277,000 $277,000 $277,000
New Initiatives:
Infant Early Childhood Mental Health
Consultation (IECHMHC)
$1,000,000 $2,000,000 $6,000,000
$8,000,000
Child Care Health Consultation
$0 $2,000,000 $3,000,000
$4,000,000
Food, Farm, and Hunger Initiative
$70,000 $1,000,000 $1,500,000
$2,000,000
Tribal Investments
$1,575,000 $3,100,000 $4,100,000
$6,100,000
Local Early Childhood System Building
$2,700,000 $3,000,000 $3,000,000 $3,000,000
Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery
Act (CARA)
$690,980 $690,980 $690,980 $690,980
TOTAL
$22,859,001 $28,295,962 $35,007,395
$40,723,057
Total Relief Funding
$2,268,007
Table 26: ECECD Quality Support and Infrastructure Expenses, FY23-26
29
Early Childhood Education and Care Department Four-Year Finance Plan, 2023-2026
Table 27: Child Care Assistance Funding Sources and Revenue projections for direct services by scal year
Understanding Current
Revenue and the Total
Funding Need
The next step in nance planning is to
compare current revenues to funding needed
to underscore gaps and places where needed
expenses are covered by funding. For New
Mexico and ECECD, this work builds on the need
and cost data gathered and analyzed across all
direct services and the current quality support
and infrastructure elements.
Sources
FY23 Operating
Budget Request
(9/1/21)
FY24
Projection
FY25
Projection
FY26
Projection
General Fund
$49,498,300 $49,498,300 $49,498,300 $49,498,300
TANF (Federal)
$31,527,500 $32,000,000 $32,000,000 $32,000,000
Other State Funds
$1,100,000 $1,100,000 $1,100,000 $1,100,000
CCDF (Federal)
$70,688,700 $73,512,000 $73,512,000 $73,512,000
CRRSA (ends 9/30/23)
$7,000,000 $0 $0 $0
ARPA Discretionary (ends 9/30/24)
$61,970,798 $0 $0 $0
Total Revenue
$221,785,298 $156,110,300 $156,110,300 $156,110,300
Projections, Children served
27,47 9 38,059 42,130 47,091
Projected Expenses amounts
$213,092,489 $373,951,403 $416,304,137 $533,509,927
Direct Service
For each area of programming the current
revenues were mapped, projecting out on
potential revenues through FY26. Tables 27
through 35 detail the projected revenues for
each service area. The revenue needed was
compared to these revenue projections, based
on the need and cost information specic to
each type of programming.
30
Early Childhood Education and Care Department Four-Year Finance Plan, 2023-2026
Sources
FY23 Operating
Budget Request
(9/1/21)
FY24
Projection
FY25
Projection
FY26
Projection
General Fund $15,276,694 $14,970,900 $14,970,900 $14,970,900
Title IV-E (Federal) $0 $0 $0 $0
TANF (TRANSFERS) $5,000,000 $5,000,000 $5,000,000 $5,000,000
Federal MIECHV $5,145,700 $5,146,000 $5,146,000 $5,146,000
Medicaid Centennial $20,000,000 $20,000,000 $20,000,000 $20,000,000
Medicaid Match $0 $0 $0 $0
Early Childhood Education Trust
Fund
$5,000,000 $0 $0 $0
Total Revenue
$50,422,394 $45,116,900 $45,116,900 $45,116,900
Projections, Children served
9,839 20,256 23,165 26,168
Projected Expenses amounts
$49,526,657 $92,585,705 $100,276,042 $108,713,168
Table 29: Home Visiting Funding Sources and Revenue projections for direct services by scal year
Table 28: NM PreK Funding Sources and Revenue projections for direct services by scal year
Sources
FY23 Operating
Budget Request
(9/1/21)
FY24
Projection
FY25
Projection
FY26
Projection
General Fund - public preK $43,145,100 $43,145,100 $43,145,100 $43,145,100
General Fund - private preK $32,712,300 $32,712,300 $32,712,300 $32,712,300
TANF - public preK $3,500,000 $3,500,000 $3,500,000 $3,500,000
TANF - private preK $14,100,000 $14,100,000 $14,100,000 $14,100,000
Early Childhood Education Trust
Fund- public
$4,834,600 $2,834,600 $2,834,600 $2,834,600
Early Childhood Education Trust
Fund- private
$10,869,500 $7,765,400 $7,765,400 $7,765,400
Total Revenue
$109,161,500 $104,057,400 $104,057,400 $104,057,400
Projections, Children served
14,633 15,522 16,229 16,418
Projected Expenses amounts
$107,500,540 $112,419,370 $120,667,566 $125,622,136
31
Early Childhood Education and Care Department Four-Year Finance Plan, 2023-2026
Sources
FY23 Operating
Budget Request
(9/1/21)
FY24
Projection
FY25
Projection
FY26
Projection
General Fund $8,758,000 $8,758,000 $8,758,000 $8,758,000
CCDF (Federal) $12,381,300 $12,381,300 $12,381,300 $12,381,300
CRRSA (ends 9/30/23) $1,000,000 $0 $0 $0
ARPA Discretionary (ends 9/30/24) $10,000,000 $0 $0 $0
Total Revenue
$32,139,300 $21,139,300 $21,139,300 $21,139,300
Projected Expenses amounts
$28,886,239 $28,245,171 $25,188,754 $26,156,590
Quality and Organizational Infrastructure Revenues
and Total Revenue Needed
Table 31: Child Care Assistance Funding Sources and Revenue projections for quality supports by scal year
Sources
FY23 Operating
Budget Request
(9/1/21)
FY24
Projection
FY25
Projection
FY26
Projection
General Fund $19,099,000 $20,000,000 $20,000,000 $20,000,000
DOE, Oce of Special Education
Programs
$2,229,793 $2,229,793 $2,229,793 $2,229,793
Medicaid $37,829,791 $44,002,856 $46,706,442 $51,277,813
Private Insurance $1,056,000 $1,056,000 $1,056,000 $1,056,000
Early Childhood Education Trust
Fund
$600,000 $600,000 $600,000 $600,000
Total Revenue
$60,814,584 $67,888,649 $70,592,235 $75,163,606
Projections, Children served
13,903 15,402 15,569 16,279
Projected Expenses amounts
$63,049,652 $73,338,093 $77,844,070 $85,463,022
Table 30: FIT Program Funding Sources and Revenue projections for direct services by scal year
32
Early Childhood Education and Care Department Four-Year Finance Plan, 2023-2026
Sources
FY23 Operating
Budget Request
(9/1/21)
FY24
Projection
FY25
Projection
FY26
Projection
General Fund - public preK $3,540,600 $3,540,600 $3,540,600 $3,540,600
General Fund - private preK $9,277,927 $4,677,927 $4,677,927 $4,677,927
Early Childhood Education Trust
Fund - private
$4,000,000 $3,000,000 $3,000,000 $3,000,000
Total Revenue
$16,818,527 $11,218,527 $11,218,527 $11,218,527
Projected Expenses amounts
$12,161,475 $12,845,388 $13,389,560 $13,535,281
Sources
FY23 Operating
Budget Request
(9/1/21)
FY24
Projection
FY25
Projection
FY26
Projection
General Fund $2,540,545 $2,540,545 $2,540,545 $2,540,545
TANF (Transfers) $69,453 $69,453 $69,453 $69,453
Federal MIECHV $817,006 $817,006 $817,006 $817,006
Early Childhood Education Trust
Fund
$73,669 $0 $0 $0
Total Revenue
$3,500,673 $3,427,004 $3,427,004 $3,427,004
Projected Expenses amounts
$4,512,539 $6,610,371 $6,914,208 $7,251,854
Sources
FY23 Operating
Budget Request
(9/1/21)
FY24
Projection
FY25
Projection
FY26
Projection
DOE, Oce of Special Education
Programs
$1,949,605 $1,949,605 $1,949,605 $1,949,605
Total Revenue
$1,949,605 $1,949,605 $1,949,605 $1,949,605
Projected Expenses amounts
$2,027,320 $2,264,449 $2,313,515 $2,314,439
Sources
FY23 Operating
Budget Request
(9/1/21)
FY24
Projection
FY25
Projection
FY26
Projection
General Fund $18,084,001 $18,695,962 $19,407,395 $20,123,057
Federal Relief dollars $5,968,007 $0 $0 $0
Total Revenue
$24,052,008 $18,695,962 $19,407,395 $20,123,057
Projected Expenses amounts
$25,127,008 $28,295,962 $35,007,395 $40,723,057
Table 32: NM PreK Funding Sources and Revenue projections for quality supports by scal year
Table 33: Home Visiting Funding Sources and Revenue projections for quality supports by scal year
Table 34: FIT Program Funding Sources and Revenue projections for quality supports by scal year
Table 35: ECECD Overall Infrastructure and Organizational Funding Sources and Revenue projections by
scal year
33
Early Childhood Education and Care Department Four-Year Finance Plan, 2023-2026
Revenue and Expense Gap Analysis
The following tables provide projected expenses
and revenue projections across the four
dierent programs and the quality infrastructure
by scal year. Table 36 shows the expense
As can be seen in Table 37, in FY23 revenues
are higher because of federal COVID-19 relief
dollars, but the gaps in Table 38 show signicant
increases in the additional funding needed in
subsequent years. While additional federal funds
may be on the horizon to support some of this
programming, to promote stability of the sector
New Mexico will need to identify a strategy to
address these projected nancial gaps with or
without these federal funds.
The signicant growth of the Early Childhood
Trust Fund will support these nancial gaps.
Additionally, if the voters of New Mexico support
the use of the Land Grant Permanent Fund
for early childhood, revenues can be used to
fund the nancial gaps. Continued investments
will be essential to cover these gaps across
programs and ensure that quality and
accessibility remain a priority in best serving
families and young children.
Table 36: Summary of Expense Projections by scal year
Table 37: Summary Revenue Projections by scal year
Table 38: Gap between expenses and revenues, all programs by scal year
FY23
FY24
FY25 FY26
Child Care
$213,092,489 $373,951,403 $416,304,137 $533,509,927
PreK
$107,500,540 $112,419 $120,667,566 $125,622,136
Home Visiting
$49,526,657 $92,585,705 $100,276,042 $108,713,168
FIT
$63,049,652 $73,338,093 $77,844,070 $85,463,022
Quality Supports and
Infrastructure
$72,714,582 $74,261,341 $82,713,432 $89,981,220
TOTAL
$505,883,920 $726,555,912 $797,805,247 $943,289,473
FY23
FY24
FY25 FY26
Child Care
$221,785,298 $156,110,300 $156,110,300 $156,110,300
PreK
$109,161,500 $104,057,400 $104,057,400 $104,057,400
Home Visiting
$50,422,394 $45,116,900 $45,116,900 $45,116,900
FIT
$60,814,584 $67,888,649 $70,592,235 $75,163,606
Quality Supports and
Infrastructure
$78,460,113 $56,430,398 $57,141,831 $57,857,493
TOTAL
$520,643,889 $429,603,647 $433,018,666 $438,305,699
FY23
FY24
FY25 FY26
Revenue Needed
-$14,759,969 $296,952,265 $364,786,581 $504,983,775
projections, rising from $505.8 million in FY23
to $943.2 million in FY26. Table 37 provides a
summary of the revenue projections, with Table
38 demonstrating the gap between the expenses
and revenues.
34
Early Childhood Education and Care Department Four-Year Finance Plan, 2023-2026
Section IV Narrative Action Plan
New Mexico is ensuring that the transformation
of the entire early childhood system, which
began with creation of the new department,
involves ongoing change at the state level
to support local early childhood system
development, including strengthening local
governance structures and enhancing revenue
sources and scal strategies. The system
components are:
• Shared Leadership (Governance) and
Administration
• Financing Strategies and Funding
Mechanisms
• Assessment and Planning
• Quality Improvement, Implementation and
Evaluation
• Professional Development, Training and
Technical Assistance
• Monitoring and Accountability
The ECECD System Action Plan covers these
system components and has identied more
detailed and measurable strategies and action
steps in each area. The workplan, nalized in
2021, demonstrates the interrelatedness of
these system components to improve nancing
and governance for New Mexico’s prenatal to
ve early childhood system along with how
dependent this system growth is on many other
state partners including the Children’s Cabinet
and the departments of Public Education,
Higher Education, Human Services, and Indian
Aairs. Nearly every element of the System
Action Plan workplan, and the signicant system
change New Mexico is engaged in, relies on
sustainable funding and ecient mechanisms
for administering the funds.
System Component: Shared Leadership and
Administration
System governance requires leadership,
oversight, and management of the system
encompassing how the connection between
state and local governance and administration
occurs. The rst activity is to rene and
implement a governance structure which fully
represents programs, funders, prenatal to ve
agencies, communities, and families, using a
systems approach to support the multi-model,
locally variable implementation approach
which is exible, and targets need, and ensure
cross sector engagement within the system.
Next, support for leadership, oversight, and
management of the system, including funding,
technical assistance and more, at both state-
and local-levels must be developed to ensure
these roles advance opportunities, fairness, and
access to resources for those eected by racial
inequity. The deep work on equity that has been
a focus of ECECD is a critical step in supporting
35
Early Childhood Education and Care Department Four-Year Finance Plan, 2023-2026
leadership at the state, tribal and local levels
and ensuring the resources exist to carry out
the work.
Outcomes:
• Establish common communication structures
that are bidirectional in nature and cut
across the many elements of the system
• Decrease the administrative burden faced
by organizations in running publicly funded
programs.
System Component: Fiscal Strategies and
Funding Mechanisms
Fiscal strategies activities include
developing and implementing scal strategies
and core system functions to allow NM
stakeholders to utilize comprehensive
information on funding of the programs (federal,
state, and local), the role of aligning funding,
and the funding needs of local programs and
system-level supports as part of the system
approach and in guiding decisions. The next step
of this work is to implement strategies to
further integrate funding sources, and address
distribution and funding mechanisms, for
both programs and system. The development
of scal strategies focuses on a decrease in
administrative burden for organizations, increase
eciency in using the funding, which could
increase the reach of the dollars, and increased
accountability of the public entities for their
implementation of funding.
Administration of funding Programs and
providers may be able to access several
funding streams to support their services, but
too often the administration of these funding
streams is disconnected and cumbersome,
placing an undue burden on programs and
providers. This forces them to spend time
and resources complying with funding stream
requirements that may be contradictory or
repetitive, attempting to layer dierent funding
streams to ll gaps in their budgets. While
eorts to address this have begun with the
contracting approach for home visiting funding,
improvements are still needed in the state’s
administration of funding.
One way to address this challenge is through
rate increases so that the amount providers
receive from a funding stream is sucient to
cover the full cost of its intended use. New
Mexico can also address this challenge by
improving how dierent funding streams work
together. The creation of a unied department
covering all early childhood services in the state
provides an opportunity to streamline funding
mechanisms, increase eciency and decrease
administrative burden for programs and
providers, thus maximizing the amount of money
going to child and family services.
One funding mechanism that is already under
development is contracting for child care
slots. By using child care assistance funding to
contract with providers, programs are provided
with a stable and predictable source of funding
to support operations. Contracts have the
potential of remediating several inequities in the
child care system as they guarantee payment
for a specic number of children, may guarantee
payments over several years, pay on enrollment,
and may be paid prospectively, providing
even more stability for a child care provider.
Contracts can promote eciency by being paid
on the actual cost of delivering quality so that
providers do not have to layer funding. States
can also design accountability for contracts in
a way that does not require the daily reporting
required under the voucher system and align
contract requirements and reporting with
existing funding mechanisms.
36
Early Childhood Education and Care Department Four-Year Finance Plan, 2023-2026
System Component: Assessment and
Planning
Assessment and planning are necessary to
understand and implement a system that
realizes the vision for children and families. In
a collaborative approach to a system, planning
that is built from an active needs assessment
and data analysis approach is necessary to allow
all partners to have a clear understanding of
their roles and responsibilities and to detail out
expectations, goals, and outcomes (at system,
community, program, child, and family
levels). To support this change, ECECD will
develop technical assistance on using state-
level needs assessment data sources and
develop a community assessment process to
guide a consistent, collaborative approach in
communities, aligned with equity change levers,
that is inclusive of community need, continuum
of service possibilities, capacity of organizations,
workforce and more. ECECD will facilitate
disaggregation of state-level data, including
service utilization and needs assessment
data sources, in order to analyze data from
perspective of equity change levers.
Outcomes:
• A statewide expansion plan for early
childhood including community driven
assessment and planning
• Cross-system and interagency assessment
and planning aligning with all equity change
levers: personal, interpersonal, institutional
and structural
• Organizations that intentionally contribute to
racial equity and economic justice outcomes
System Component: Quality Improvement,
Implementation and Evaluation
To create the level of system change needed
to support all programs and providers requires
a deep understanding of program needs and
consistency in the experience of programs and
their ability to access quality and infrastructure
supports. One key to achieving this is to build an
integrated approach to quality, implementation,
evaluation, and professional development
across all programs. Building this approach
relies on an analysis of current investments
against the needs of programs and the system.
This work begins with mapping all ECECD
programs and functions to understand program
standards, regulations, and existing professional
development infrastructure and supports. This
information gathered can then allow the state to
plan for an aligned approach to maintaining and
growing these system supports.
Information gathered through this mapping
analysis will help identify the needed
changes in the system to support a long-
range plan for addressing how to govern and
fund an integrated approach to quality and
implementation of services. With ECECD, New
Mexico has set the stage for the governance
and funding that will be necessary to achieve a
truly integrated approach to quality supports,
implementation science eorts, evaluation
and professional development that grows and
strengthens the workforce. The approach itself
relies on strong governance and robust funding
of the overall system, both for initial launch and
ongoing maintenance.
Outcomes:
• The quality and capacity of all types of
programs will be supported by a coordinated,
comprehensive, and fully accessible
continuous quality improvement (CQI)
system.
• Establish a fully accessible CQI process that
includes data systems that support program-
and system-level decision-making related to
closing racial disparities.
37
Early Childhood Education and Care Department Four-Year Finance Plan, 2023-2026
System Component: Professional
Development, Training and Technical
Assistance
Through a system, professional development
activities coordinated at the state level (training
and technical assistance) have the ability to
be responsive to the results of evaluation
and continuous quality improvement eorts.
Racial equity will be addressed, in part, through
eorts to recruit and support practitioners
in developing competencies and enhancing
practice to understand their own values and
beliefs. This focus on professional development
activities is aligned with all eorts to advance,
recruit and retain a diverse and well-qualied
and compensated workforce.
Outcomes:
• Consistency and accessibility of programs
and communities to professional
development, training, and technical
assistance supports.
• Alignment of workforce and professional
development, training and technical
assistance to increase retention of
quality sta and improve organizational
sustainability.
System Component: Monitoring and
Accountability
Monitoring and accountability activities are
coordinated across all elements of the system,
including agencies, funding streams and
programs. The goal of system monitoring and
accountability is to ensure the system carries
out the roles it was intended for, which include
positive impact on programs and their ability to
meet the needs of families with high
quality services. Coordination of monitoring
and accountability eorts supports the
implementation of multiple programs within
communities, along with working to ensure
the system includes all aspects necessary to
support quality programming.
Outcomes:
• Measures for monitoring and accountability
of early childhood programs are aligned
across funders and models and demonstrate
linkage to statewide goals for the early
childhood system.
• Shared leadership and collective power
oering new and reconstituted systems of
accountability.
• Policies and programs are developed and
monitored for their impact and outcomes.
Conclusion
New Mexico’s success to the strengthening of the prenatal to ve system relies on
the strong foundation of scal support to ensure equity, eciency, accountability, and
accessibility. As expressed throughout this scal plan, fragmentation in funding streams
and lack of coordination within the system leads to duplication, ineciencies, and
mismatches in services to families and children. New Mexico and ECECD have identied
the importance of a strong system for its youngest residents, with equity and quality at
the forefront. The scal strategies and plan outlined provides a comprehensive lens to
the structure and approach to ensure a viable and sustainable system in New Mexico. As
one of the rst states in the nation to undertake such an important endeavor, New Mexico
is demonstrating a commitment to ensuring the state is the best place to raise a child,
providing opportunity for all.
Oce of the Secretary
PO Drawer 5619
Santa Fe, New Mexico
87502-5619
(505) 827-7683
www.nmececd.org
REVISED DECEMBER 9, 2021
