Santa Fe Public Schools opens child care center for its employees

Aug. 11—Since Elise Trujillo had her daughter Athena two years ago, she's relied on family members to provide child care while working as an educational assistant at E.J. Martinez Elementary School.

In a country where monthly child care costs can be equal to rent — and in a city where the school district's union estimates educators with young kids were paying $954 a month for care in 2021 — Trujillo has watched friends sacrifice job opportunities to care for kids, counting herself lucky.

"Day care lists are long," Trujillo said. "It's expensive. Do I work and pay all of it to day care? Or do I not work and take care of my child?"

This school year should be different for the single mother of four, who recently took a position at Santa Fe Public Schools' new Early Childhood Education Center.

The center has 44 slots and will provide child care specifically for district employees with kids ages 1 to 3 years. Care comes at a cost of $250 a month for teachers and administrators and $150 for other staff, like paraprofessionals.

In getting her new job, Trujillo also secured a slot there for her own daughter.

Athena bounced from toy to toy Wednesday afternoon in one of the classrooms at the center in Ramirez Thomas Elementary School, mingling with a noisy gaggle of other toddlers on the soft carpet floor during an opening ceremony for the center.

"This was one of the reasons I applied for the job," Elise Trujillo said.

Trujillo, who originally left retail to find a job that fit her children's schedule, considers her new role as a classroom teacher for the 1-year-olds a promotion.

Starting pay for regular educational assistants at the district will be $15 an hour this school year, while the pay range for employees at the center is between $16 and $26 an hour based on experience and education.

"It was a big step up for me from my previous position," said Trujillo, who is finishing up her bachelor's degree online at private Arizona-based Grand Canyon University, where she's studying special education and early childhood education.

Since the pandemic, New Mexico has struggled with day care closures and high rates of vacancies. In response, early childhood advocates have repeatedly called for higher wages for child care workers, some of whom were making as little as $10 an hour in 2021.

Recent state investments have bolstered wages, provided stipends and educational incentives to workers and even expanded free child care to families within 400 percent of the poverty line. (About $111,000 for a family of four.)

Once the Early Childhood Center is fully licensed, school employees will be able to use vouchers to cover co-pays for care there, too.

But these initiatives are largely funded by temporary pandemic dollars.

Early Childhood Education and Care Secretary Elizabeth Groginsky previously suggested if in November voters approve a constitutional amendment to withdraw funds from the state's Land Grant Permanent Fund, it could go toward making some of those initiatives permanent — including higher minimum pay for workers.

Santa Fe Public Schools' own effort to make a dent in the child care crisis is also funded with pandemic relief money. The $1.2 million allocated for the Early Childhood Center is set to last through the 2022-23 and 2023-24 school years.

"Our funding is to represent our values," said district Early Childhood Director Patricia Azuara. "A big chunk of the funding is going to staff salaries."

Azuara hopes within two years factors like staff retention and the learning outcomes of the young children enrolled will be powerful enough for the district to seek more funding for the center.

She said the center will utilize the Reggio Emilia approach, an educational philosophy that is "child-led."

"We observe and we document the kids' interests. We go with what we document and observe," she said. "Of course literacy and language are important, but they're going to come in a more natural way."

The district's Early Childhood Center came to be in the wake of an August 2021 survey of school employees conducted by the National Education Association Santa Fe. Of nearly 400 respondents, 84.4 percent called for a child care program for district employees.

Of 305 respondents who answered the question (not every respondent answered every question in the survey), 45.2 percent said they'd had to quit a job, decline a new opportunity or significantly change their job responsibilities in order to provide care to a child.

National Education Association Santa Fe President Grace Mayer, who spoke at the Early Childhood Center opening Wednesday, said stress on employees increased significantly during the pandemic.

"Add to that the almost unbearable fear and anxiety of our staff regarding the health and care of their own children," she said. "We get an unsustainable situation where the Santa Fe Public Schools adult community must choose between their jobs and their family well-being."

Mayer said she saw numerous staff members resign during pandemic-affected school years in order to care for children and family members.

But the center is more than a retention tool — it's a recruitment tool to attract educators with young families in a district where the staff demographics skew significantly toward retirement age, Mayer said.

Once fully licensed, the district's Early Childhood Center will be the only district-run licensed facility of its kind currently operating in the state, according to Early Childhood Education and Care Department spokesman Micah McCoy. Though he added, the state expects to see more in the future.

"We're hoping this inspires people," Mayer said. "And motivates them to do it, too."