If you get kids ready for kindergarten and elementary school, it is always a game-changer in your proficiency outcomes. I learned as a governor, and it’s appalling to me, that here in New Mexico we don’t teach the science of reading, or we didn’t; we do now. I tutor with a program that worked with 17,000 kids last summer, and all those kids had double-digit increases in their literacy outcomes. We require that you teach the science of reading in K through 12, we’ve reinvested in retraining our K through eighth-grade educators, and we’re building a state-of-the-art literacy institute in Albuquerque. We’ll be giving kids full scholarships for tutoring and mentoring. We’re going to build a math institute to tutor kids in math. We’re going to do the bricks and mortar of what a school system is always rooted in, so that it’s more developmental in New Mexico.

I predict—I’m a bit bullish, and I don’t know if I’ll get those outcomes while I’m governor, but doesn’t matter—I think New Mexico is going to be the place where educational outcomes shift in a way that real stability and developmental outcomes occur, and then a lineup of better graduation rates in college will also occur. I think it’s why businesses are coming here. I think it’s why they’re really excited about our investments. It’s been a very methodical enterprise.

How do you see the second Trump administration affecting the childcare and early childhood education initiatives that you’re working to build out?

They’re backing away from their responsibility in public education and they’re backing away from special education, which creates equality. New Mexico’s got one of the highest vaccine rates in the country for kindergarteners, but seeing the federal government back away from science, back away from investments in maternal health, in environmental toxins, back away from vaccines, back away from anti-poverty programs for states that improve child wellbeing, is so sinister and wrong in my mind.

We are literally creating a bigger minority divide for a melting-pot country. It makes no sense. Who builds this country and who are the folks behind small businesses? These are minority small-business owners. New Mexico is going to be a shining star in this regard; we’re going to lean in full-throttle and with our permanent funds and our early childhood trust fund, which is $9 billion. We’re putting real money where our mouth is in creating stability. But it doesn’t have to cost states so much if we all work together to put the federal government and Congress back in a position where they’re true partners in getting families out of poverty. People not being able to keep their health care coverage creates instability, unhealthy families, more money spent in emergency rooms, more risk for states, and none of this is good for children.