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It's a hazy August morning, and Judyn Martinez is dropping her daughter off at Kids Campus, a sought-after childcare center in Santa Fe that is now free for any eligible family in New Mexico.
"It's an amazing school so far. She loves it. I love it," Martinez said. "Everyone's nice. She's learning, growing already."
A year ago this month, New Mexico became the first state to offer free childcare to every family, regardless of income. To qualify, families must be residents of New Mexico and adults in the house must be working, looking for work, in school or unable to work.
Many parents, including Martinez, told NPR that it's been life-changing.
"I'm really grateful for universal childcare because I wouldn't have been able to send her," Martinez said.
There's just one drawback for families: Right now, the state doesn't have the capacity to meet the demand, which has left some families waiting without childcare. Martinez said it took her about a year and half to get off the waitlist for Kids Campus — a waitlist that, today, has nearly 700 children on it.
When she first spoke with NPR in September, Lilia Doyle said her 2-year-old son was on six different waitlists.
"I'm 97th on a multi-hundred person waitlist. I'm 75th on something. And some, I'm not even getting calls back," Doyle said.
Doyle, a children's librarian with a background in early childhood education, lives in Santa Fe. She acknowledged that she's selective when it comes to childcare. Still, she said, it should be easier.
"I have great belief in this program, but as it currently stands, I think the rollout needs a lot, a lot of help."
According to the state, New Mexico has about 67,000 children 5 and under, and about 50% of them are enrolled in the universal childcare program. Some of the remaining families participate in other free public programs, like New Mexico PreK and Head Start.
But many children aren't enrolled in any public, free childcare program, and it's hard to know exactly how many are in Doyle's position, unable to access universal childcare because of limited capacity. New Mexico officials acknowledged to NPR that the program needs to expand.
In order to work for every family, the program will have to overcome both a shortage of childcare workers and childcare slots — two challenges that are also playing out at the national level.
Because of that, across the country, policymakers and childcare advocates are keeping a close eye on this Southwestern experiment.
Cynthia Osborne, who leads Vanderbilt University's Prenatal-to-3 Policy Impact Center, said New Mexico is "going to provide lessons that the rest of the states are going to have to pay attention to."
"If New Mexico can show us how to build the infrastructure, I think other states will say that's an investment that we should make."
But the challenges to building that infrastructure – and keeping costs under control – are very real.
The program has built-in safeguards in case economic downturns make it harder to pay for – and one of those safeguards was recently triggered: The annual Consumer Price Index rose above 3%, which means wealthier families – who make more than $198,000 for a household of four – will soon have to start making a copayment. According to the state's Early Childhood Education and Care Department, ECECD, that copay won't exceed $148.50 a month. The department says this change will affect about 10% of enrolled families, and will remain in effect through the fiscal year.
How it happened in New Mexico
Like many states, New Mexico previously offered childcare subsidies to low-income families, and free childcare to the lowest-income families. For a while, the state was raising the income limits for those programs.
Families, providers and grassroots organizers had also been campaigning to do away with those limits entirely. One of the big sticking points was how to pay for it, and the answer came in 2022, when New Mexicans voted to dedicate a portion of the state's Land Grant Permanent Fund to early childhood education. Much of that fund consists of taxes and royalties on the state's vast oil and gas production, and it's large enough to provide hundreds of millions of dollars to support childcare every year.
Then, in September 2025, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham announced a plan for free, universal childcare and prekindergarten, which would begin Nov. 1 of that year. After it launched, the program was approved by the Democrat-majority state legislature and was officially written into law in March 2026.
Any licensed or registered childcare provider in New Mexico can participate in the program. The state offers higher reimbursements for centers that pay workers higher wages and operate a minimum of 10 hours, five days a week.
"I think childcare is a gamechanger for every single thing that a state ought to deliver for its families," Lujan Grisham told NPR.
The governor said this year is going "stunningly well."
"I can't go anywhere in New Mexico… where I don't have a parent tell me that this is life-changing and transformative," she said.
But she knows more capacity is needed.
"We need to keep growing," Lujan Grisham said. "It is not a stagnant set of opportunities."
In 2025, ECECD set a goal to create 12,000 new childcare spots in the first few years of the program, but did not share a specific deadline with NPR. According to the department, they are more than halfway there.
A nationwide childcare shortage
It was no surprise that accessibility would be an issue for a program like this.
Nearly half of all U.S. children, ages 5 and under, live in a licensed childcare desert, where demand for care outpaces availability, according to the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning think tank.
Olga Grays, a childcare provider for more than 20 years, said she fields messages every day from desperate parents who she isn't able to give slots to. That's one reason she's part of a group chat that includes over 40 childcare providers in her area.
"Every time somebody calls me, you know, I put their name and the age of their kids in that group. And I'm like, 'Does anybody have openings?' You know, but the sad thing is that not a lot of people have openings, especially for infants."
Grays, a single mother of five, operates out of her home in Las Cruces, in the southern part of the state.
At Mrs. Olga's Daycare, the living room has been transformed into a classroom, with cushioned, fall-safe floors. The outdoor space is part children's playground and part garden oasis.
"[The children] can play with water, with dirt, grass. They ground themselves. It makes a world of a difference," Grays said.
She wishes she didn't have to turn any children away.
"I think that's one of our biggest issues right now, is making sure that we have enough spots available for everybody coming in," Grays said. "And I think that's one of the flaws that perhaps other states can learn from."
According to the Center for American Progress, rural areas especially struggle with childcare deserts — and New Mexico is very rural.
"It's not a lack of funding, it's a lack of providers," the state's speaker of the house, Javier Martinez, told NPR. He's a Democrat and an advocate for universal childcare. "We have communities that are miles from any type of population center. Hundreds of miles sometimes. And so there are communities where that market isn't quite there to support a business."
The tension around providing free childcare to wealthier families
The program's current operating budget is almost $600 million.
But there's concern among some state lawmakers that it's projected to be about $50 million over budget this year.
"By calling it universal, all we've done is add the wealthier folks," said state Sen. Steve Lanier, a Republican representing the northwest corner of New Mexico.
Lanier sued to stop the governor's universal childcare initiative — a lawsuit that was ultimately unsuccessful.
He told NPR that the steep price tag for this program is why he only supports childcare assistance for some.
"My daughter's a school teacher. She has two young boys. She gets free childcare. So, from a personal view, I see where it is needed. I mean, that helps her and her family immensely," Lanier said. "But somebody that's making $450,000, $600,000, do they really need that assistance?"
Catron Allred, who oversees the early childhood center at Santa Fe Community College, doesn't see it that way.
"To me, I think it's a mentality of early childhood as a public good," she explained. "Nobody questions a wealthy family sending their kids to public school and it should be the same for early childhood."
It's not a one-size-fits-all model
While New Mexico is the only state with free, universal childcare right now, other states and cities have made progress in that direction, including Oregon, Connecticut, Washington, D.C., New York City and Vermont, which has tapped into payroll taxes for funding.
In New York City, which already has free prekindergarten for 3- and 4-year-olds, Mayor Zohran Mamdani recently rolled out free daycare for thousands of the city's 2-year-olds.
As in New Mexico, "Both the biggest challenge and opportunity in New York City is our scale," explained Emmy Liss, executive director of the Mayor's Office of Child Care and Early Childhood Education.
"We know that every family's childcare needs are different. We know that our diverse landscape of childcare providers offer a really wide mix of services that families value," Liss added. "But to build a system that incorporates all of those different providers and meets the needs of all of our families is a complex challenge."
Liss said the goal is to have free pre-k for every 2-year-old by the end of the mayor's first term. But instead of expanding access to everyone all at once, as New Mexico has done, she said the city is growing capacity "in parallel" with access by creating more slots and matching them with families.
"We are working to build the infrastructure, the workforce, the physical capacity and the support to providers to ensure that we can continue to scale access to care here," Liss told NPR.
She said her office has been in conversation with leaders in New Mexico, and has had the chance to learn from them. But ultimately, she said, "Our realities are different."
"I think we're making slightly different choices in how we are implementing expanded access to care, which is good. I think we should be making different choices, responsive to the needs we hear from New Yorkers."
Childcare can make or break a parent's work life
Veronica Ramirez lives in Ohkay Owingeh, a federally recognized tribe and pueblo in northern New Mexico. She said she learned about universal childcare when it was in the news last year and decided to enroll her 2-year-old daughter.
"For my daughter, I think it's really opened doors for her," Ramirez told NPR.
"Just being able to be around other little human beings that are her age...I've seen her go up to other little kids in public and say hi or just start playing with them. And I'm like, 'Oh, well, she's social now. She's not clinging to mom only.' "
For Ramirez, having consistent childcare has enabled her to do more nonprofit work, including as an outreach coordinator at a birth center that primarily serves indigenous clients in nearby Española. It helps that her 7-year-old son is in school for the same hours as her daughter is in daycare.
"Now I'm able to work more and make more money and support my family a little bit better," Ramirez said.
The childcare help has opened other doors for her, too.
"I'm trying to get my bachelor's. I had my son when I was 19, right when I graduated high school," Ramirez said. "It's taken me a little bit longer, but I'm getting closer to getting a degree."
A new paper from Arizona State University found that lower-income mothers in New Mexico have seen significant gains since free, universal childcare was enacted, with full-time employment increasing by 23%.
But for Lilia Doyle, in Santa Fe, working full-time won't be an option until she gets her son off a waitlist and into consistent childcare. When she first spoke to NPR in September, she said she and her family are living on her husband's income.
"Hopefully our finances will be able to absorb it," she said. "We'll buckle down, and we'll make it through, but … it's not ideal."
Then, in October, Doyle got some news: A childcare center told her they found a spot for her son – but it wouldn't open up until August 2027.
This story was supported by a reporting fellowship from the Education Writers Association.
Digital story edited by: Nicole Cohen
Audio produced by: Maddie Barron and Rennie Svirnovskiy
Audio edited by: Jenny Schmidt
Fact-checking by: Greta Pittenger
Engineering by: Kwesi Lee
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