The Albuquerque Journal

It's the kind of reform you can really sink your teeth into - actually, the kind thousands of New Mexico schoolchildren can. 

At the urging of the nonprofit New Mexico Appleseed, the state's Education and Human Services departments are pooling resources to ensure students whose families are on public assistance wait just weeks instead of months to be automatically enrolled in the National School Lunch Program. Until now, officials checked Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (food stamp) rolls every few months. Now they will also check Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (welfare) rolls, and they will check both monthly. Children in those families will automatically be signed up for reduced/free school breakfast and lunches. 

That efficiency helps ensure children get two hot, balanced meals a school day ˜ even if their family just moved into the neighborhood, their financial situation recently changed for the worse, their parents don't know to enroll them in the first place. 

And that nutritional assistance requires a small investment that feeds future success. As state HSD Secretary-designate Katie Falls says, “the small amount of work for us this requires … will allow more New Mexico children access to nutritious meals during the school day when they need energy the most.” Because as Education Secretary Veronica Garcia points out, “If (students) are hungry, they can't focus in the classroom.”

Thankfully, state officials sliced through some bureaucratic red tape to focus on that important bottom line.