Governor Martinez's people at work again to harm the children in our state. The CYFD need fixing before things like this get out of hand and our children have no place to go.
From Save Our Centers,
The Save our Centers Campaign fights this week to stop the Children, Youth & Families Department from paying child development centers LESS than the cost of care. Dozens of centers have closed in the past few years because CYFD reimbursement rates simply don't cover their costs.
Now CYFD is rolling out FOCUS—a plan to increase quality and reimbursement rates to centers. The problem? FOCUS makes demands of centers that cost more to implement than the increased reimbursement rates.
Center owners are just beginning to understand the flaws in FOCUS because the new program was designed without their input and its details have been kept under wraps until recently. CYFD needs to learn what most people already understand: Quality can only improve at child development centers if teachers and center owners are leading the process.
Write CYFD Secretary Yolanda Berumen-Deines at yolanda.berumen-deines@state.nm.us. Tell her it was a mistake to cut child development center owners and teachers out of the process. Do not implement FOCUS until teachers and owners have had a chance to identify flaws in the program that CYFD is committed to fix. Otherwise, we'll have to keep fighting to Save Our Centers, and FOCUS will be be just another well-intended fix that makes things worse for our hard-working preschool teachers and center owners.
