ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — For many households, Jessica and Adrian Garcia, residents of the mountain resort community of Ruidoso, needed to piece together various child care arrangements for their son after returning to work following his birth in 2023.
In August 2021, New Mexico broadened access to subsidized free child care for families earning up to 400 percent of the federal poverty threshold—at that time, $87,840 for a household of three. The Garcias’ income exceeded the limit to qualify.
Jessica, employed at the local campus of Eastern New Mexico University, and Adrian, a police officer, opted for a part-time daycare schedule twice a week, costing $300 monthly for their son’s attendance two days per week, as they could not afford full-time care. Jessica’s mother also assisted. During that period, Adrian frequently negotiated with his supervisor to manage overnight shifts and childcare duties, and any change in his schedule forced his wife and mother-in-law to adjust their own work plans on short notice.
Eventually, Jessica faced an ultimatum from her employer: without consistent full-time work hours, she would be demoted to a part-time role and lose the family’s health insurance benefits.
Their fortunes changed last November when New Mexico became the first state in the nation to introduce free, universal child care for children from birth through age 13, irrespective of household income. The move to a fully universal program “was just a big blessing to us,” said Jessica, who subsequently enrolled her son in full-time care. “It’s been a huge help.”
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New Mexico attracted widespread attention when Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham announced in September that all families in the state would qualify for child care assistance. “Child care is essential to family stability, workforce participation, and New Mexico’s future prosperity,” she stated at the time.
In March 2026, program requirements shifted. Families earning up to 600 percent of the federal poverty level now qualify for free child care with no copayments, equivalent to a four-person household earning $198,000 annually. Copayments beyond that threshold also depend on whether oil prices decline. Participating families can select from a variety of options, including center-based care, home-based providers, before- and after-school programs, and faith-based centers. On average, the universal program is projected to save participating families $12,000 each year. (Private providers retain the option to decline serving families receiving child care assistance and may continue charging tuition.)
What has garnered less notice outside New Mexico, however, is the state’s effort to fairly compensate the long-overlooked and underpaid early childhood workforce.
Because the state now oversees early education through the universal program, it has also assumed responsibility for child care wages. It has had to address questions such as how to balance experience against education in setting child care wages, how to financially encourage centers to adopt rigorous quality standards, and a range of other issues typically left to the market.
Yet the child care “market,” as it currently operates in other states, has largely resulted in poverty-level wages for workers and prohibitive costs for families. There is hope that if New Mexico can resolve these challenges, it can pave the way for other jurisdictions considering universal programs, such as New York City. Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced earlier this year that the city will create 2,000 free child care slots for 2-year-olds, aiming to eventually scale up a universal, free program for all young children—but the city would need 30,000 new child care workers to achieve that goal.
New Mexico has currently allocated $60 million for increased wages for its child care workforce. A working group is now refining a “wage scale and career lattice framework” designed to support experience, education, and quality.
“It’s so exciting to see New Mexico grapple with these questions,” said Lena Bilik, a senior program manager at the Roosevelt Institute, a left-leaning think tank advocating for universal child care. “Other countries have realized this is a place where the government has to step in. If you’re going to expand your system, you can’t do it without increasing wages. That’s starting to be a bigger conversation.”
Related: Young children have unique needs and providing the right care can be a challenge. Our free early childhood education newsletter tracks the issues.
Child care providers and advocates in the state hold differing views on the efforts so far.
Barbara Luna Tedrow, owner of a child care center in Farmington, first launched her business, A Gold Star Academy, over 25 years ago with 60 children and 10 staff members. Farmington is situated in oil and gas country, surrounded by badlands and grayish sands. It also lies just outside Navajo Nation, making it a border town with a significant Native American population.
Around 2012, Tedrow was approached by an oil field worker—New Mexico is the nation’s second-largest oil producer—who offered to finance the construction of a second child care center. Over the following decade, grant funding and strong relationships with city officials helped her expand to five branches. Now, her team cares for 700 children, with 400 of those slots added in the past three years alone. Part of her success, she said, stems from advocating for child care as a complement to oil and gas jobs.
“If you want cities to flourish, they need high-quality child care,” she said. “All of these new employees want to go to work, but they can’t without it.”
Tedrow’s employees receive medical, vision, and dental insurance, as well as a 401(k) retirement plan, costing $15,000 per employee on top of their salary. Consequently, Tedrow expressed concern about potential declines in state reimbursement rates in the future or if the state raises the minimum wage for employees without correspondingly increasing state reimbursements.
“We’re dependent on the state for wages, benefits and everything else to run a high-quality child care center,” she said.
Mirna Polendo, director of Imagination Station, a Christian preschool in the mountain resort town of Ruidoso, implemented several changes to her program when the state transitioned to a universal system. New Mexico offers enhanced rates to centers open at least 10 hours daily and that pay increased wages to teachers. Polendo extended her hours from 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. and raised employee wages to $17 an hour to qualify for more state reimbursement.
In return, Polendo receives $1,400 per month from the state to care for an 18-month-old infant, $1,075 for a toddler, and $890 for children ages 3 to 5. Across the board, the state reimburses more for care than private tuition ever did.
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If her center meets certain quality standards, state reimbursements could be even higher. However, one of those quality measures would require her to increase staff wages to $18 an hour. That is right on the edge of what Polendo can afford to pay staff while remaining profitable, she said— “I can’t do higher than that.”
Olga Grays, a home daycare provider in Las Cruces, has worked as an early childhood educator for 20 years and is licensed to care for up to 12 children at a time in her home. In her backyard and garden area, vibrant streams of papel picado—colored paper with intricate perforated designs—are taped across the shaded patio. Colorful play structures and swings are a few steps away. The setup feels very personal, which Grays attributes to the nature of the business.
“Home daycares have this connection with parents that a lot of centers can’t,” she said. Some days, Grays opens at 4 a.m. to accommodate a family and closes as late as 11 p.m.
Grays must pay her employees $16 an hour to accept state subsidies and has chosen at this time not to make the changes to her business that would unlock larger reimbursements from the state.
“I’d rather spend my time in daycare with children providing the services they need,” she said. “I don’t believe that taking the time out to do that paperwork will help them.”
But that means any of her employees could leave for another center paying more, she noted. She supports linking wages to years of experience and educational achievements rather than focusing solely on a center’s quality metrics.
While the remaining work is complex, that should not overshadow the years of effort and advocacy required for the state to reach this point, said Jacob Vigil, chief legislative officer for New Mexico Voices for Children, a state advocacy group.
“It took over a decade for us to get here,” Vigil said. “It was a campaign that was broad based and that had a diverse base of folks that really understood and coalesced around the messaging of why early childhood is important.”
Contact editor Christina Samuels at 212-678-3635 or samuels@hechingerreport.org
This story about universal child care was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.
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by Karen Fischer, The Hechinger Report June 10, 2026