The truest measure of our community's quality of life must be a shared vision that touches us all. A retired Las Cruces Public Schools teacher, I have seen how the problem of limited transportation affects the academic success of our students, their families, and their futures.
Our East Mesa area, for instance, is an economically mixed population center with few resources. Financially stressed families are frequently limited to the use of one car. Often, after dropping mom off at her minimum-wage job, grandparents or other relatives must travel to several schools to deliver the family's youngest members. While there may be LCPS buses available, a family with a broad age-range of students is often hard pressed to meet everyone's needs.
Attendance problems persist for middle and high school students who often stay home to tend ill younger siblings. Limited transportation further complicates coordinating preschool hours, addressing medical needs and scheduling after-school care.
High schoolers often contribute to the family income, and find the issue of limited public transportation even more harmful. Recently graduated teens often find themselves unable to get to classes at DACC or NMSU. Parents and grandparents, already isolated from the community by language differences, find it impossible to reach classes in English proficiency to qualify for higher paying jobs.
Family health is also at stake in isolated "food deserts" that lack nearby affordable markets offering healthy food. Fast-food and empty calories take a toll on family health, and problems of obesity, diabetes, and high blood pressure occur. The results are malnourished, listless, and inattentive students, unhealthy parents, and increasing health care costs.
The cost of caring for low-income families should concern us all, as it is a shared burden for all taxpayers, further complicated by increasing rates of depression, alcoholism, drug addiction, physical or emotional abuse, and suicide.
Limited participation in the larger social fabric is a brand of segregation that is not going to get us where we want to go: a community where citizens who wish to better themselves have both the means and the support they need.
It comes back to cost. Whining about "parents who don't care," is nonsense. We carp about people who "don't want to work," but do nothing to help them access work, job-training programs and language-learning centers. We wring our hands over children who join gangs, but refuse to hold out a hand to make sure youngsters can reach after-school recreational activities, league play, scouting programs, and wholesome weekend activities. Filling our local malls, parks, recreation centers, and theaters with kids on the weekends would benefit our local economy at the same time.
It is often difficult to imagine being in a "one-down" position. Instead of focusing on a more vital, better educated, healthier population, we niggle and gripe about sharing our own pennies with those among us who are less fortunate. If we continue in this self-focused short-sightedness, we will beggar our community by encouraging insular pockets of "haves" and "have nots."
Great prophets throughout history and in every culture and religion have been models of self-sacrifice, and in 1791, Samuel Johnson wrote: "A decent provision for the poor is the true test of a civilization." We must meet the challenges of a growing population, so all citizens in our area can enjoy strong social support systems, while our local economy grows healthier and more vigorous.
It is time to commit the will, effort, and funding to bring about an inclusive transportation system for our county serving the areas of Radium Springs, Doña Ana, East Mesa, and southern colonias. Doing less will impoverish us all.