The Early Childhood Investment Corporation (ECIC) and the Think Babies Michigan coalition are gathering information from candidates seeking public office in Michigan about their perspectives on early childhood policy. Our goal is education, not endorsement. ECIC does not endorse, oppose, or rate candidates for public office.
We are collecting responses so that families, early childhood service providers, and community members across Michigan can better understand how candidates think about the needs of children from birth through age five and the families and professionals who care for them. Responses from candidates are published as received, without editing or commentary. Candidates have agreed that their responses may be reproduced and attributed to them in ECIC and Think Babies Michigan communications, including newsletters, social media, websites, and materials shared with coalition partners.
The following responses are from Christopher Girard, Democratic candidate for Michigan House of Representatives District 96.
What do you see as the most pressing early childhood challenge facing the district or communities you seek to represent?
Child care. There is not enough of it in Bay County, and what does exist is often too expensive or does not match the hours people actually work.
I hear this constantly as Mayor. A young parent gets offered a job, does the math on care for an infant, and turns it down because the paycheck does not cover it. An employer cannot fill a second shift because nobody can find care past 5 p.m. A grandparent quits her own job to watch the baby. Those are not separate problems. They are the same problem.
This is a workforce issue as much as it is a family issue. When we talk about growing Bay County, attracting employers, and keeping young families here instead of watching them leave, child care is one of the first things that comes up and one of the last things that gets funded.
Michigan families in many parts of the state live in areas with far fewer licensed child care slots than there are children who need them, and the shortage is most severe for infants and toddlers. What is your view of this issue, and what approaches would you consider if elected?
Infant and toddler care is the hardest to find because it is the hardest to run. Ratios are tighter, costs are higher, and the margins are thin to nonexistent. Providers are not choosing to skip babies out of preference. The math does not work.
So the answer has to deal with the math. I would look at startup and expansion grants aimed specifically at infant and toddler slots, help with licensing and facility costs, which are a real barrier for home based providers, and support for family child care networks so a single provider is not doing payroll, licensing, food program paperwork, and caring for four babies all by herself.
I would also want the state to stop treating rural and small city Michigan as an afterthought. Bay County is not Detroit and it is not Traverse City. Programs designed for one do not automatically work in the other.
What is your perspective on the cost of child care for Michigan families, and on the tools available to state or federal policymakers to address affordability?
Child care in Michigan can cost as much as a mortgage payment, and for families with two kids under five it often costs more. That is not a family budgeting failure. It is a market that does not work for anybody in it. Parents cannot afford it, providers cannot make a living off it, and the gap between those two facts is where the whole system breaks.
Affordability is a core piece of my campaign. On the state side, the tools that matter most are the child care subsidy, both the income eligibility level and the reimbursement rate paid to providers, and making sure families just above the cutoff are not falling off a cliff. Tiered support that phases out gradually is better policy than a hard line.
I also think we should be honest that state dollars alone will not close this. Federal partnership matters, and Michigan should be pushing for it.
Early childhood educators are among the lowest paid workers in Michigan, and turnover in the field is high. How do you think about compensation, benefits, and working conditions in this profession?
I ran a nonprofit for almost 15 years. Do-All Inc. supported people with disabilities in living independently, and our staff did demanding, skilled work for wages that were far below what the work was worth. I watched good people leave for jobs that paid better and asked less of them. Not because they stopped caring, but because they had their own families to support.
Early childhood educators are in the same position. You cannot ask someone to be responsible for a room of one year olds, hold a credential, and take home less than they would make in retail, then act surprised when turnover runs high. Turnover is not just a staffing problem either. Babies form attachments. Losing a caregiver every few months is a developmental issue, not just an HR one.
I support wage supplements, access to health coverage and retirement, and treating this as a profession with a real career ladder. I also support the right of these workers to organize.
Michigan has dedicated funding for many critical services, but nothing specifically focused on the needs of families with young children. Advocates have proposed a dedicated, sustainable state revenue stream for early childhood, separate from the annual general fund appropriations process. What is your perspective on that idea?
I am open to it and I understand why advocates want it.
As Mayor, I deal every day with the difference between money that is dedicated and money that has to be fought for every year. Dedicated funding lets you plan. It lets a provider sign a lease, hire staff, and commit to a family. Year to year general fund appropriations mean everybody is running a program they might have to shut down in twelve months, which is a terrible way to build anything that depends on stability and relationships.
I would want to be straight with people about the tradeoffs. Where the revenue comes from matters, and I am not going to promise support for a mechanism I have not seen. But the underlying principle, that families with young children deserve the same funding certainty we give other essential services, is one I agree with.
If you were setting priorities within a constrained early childhood budget, what would you prioritize first, and why?
Infant and toddler capacity, and the workforce that makes it possible. Those are really one item.
Here is my reasoning. Zero to three is where the developmental return is highest and where the supply gap is worst. It is also where nothing else works without the people. You can fund slots, but if there is no one to staff them, you have funded an empty room. So the first dollars I would spend go toward provider compensation and toward building and keeping infant and toddler capacity.
The second thing I would protect is the services that keep small problems from becoming crises, home visiting and early intervention in particular. Those are always the first line items on the chopping block and they are the ones that save the most money down the road. Cutting them looks like savings for about two years.
Michigan has made significant strides to promote maternal and infant health, though federal policy changes put many of these programs at risk. How would you work to preserve and expand access to important programs that promote maternal and infant health including Medicaid?
Medicaid covers a large share of births in Michigan, and in a county like Bay it is a huge share. If that coverage gets cut or narrowed at the federal level, the effects land here immediately: worse prenatal care, more preterm births, more emergency room use, and rural and small city hospitals under more strain than they already are.
At the state level I would fight to protect eligibility, keep the twelve month postpartum coverage extension, and make sure we are not quietly making enrollment harder through paperwork and red tape. Coverage you technically qualify for but cannot navigate is not coverage.
I would also push to protect the pieces that are easy to overlook, doula and midwifery coverage, mental health screening for new mothers, and transportation. In a county where a mother might be 25 minutes from her provider without a car, transportation is a maternal health issue.
Think Babies supports more funding for programs that support nurturing relationships and well-being for babies and caregivers — like home visiting, consultation, and intervention services —to help address and prevent stress and trauma before they become a crisis. How familiar are you with these kinds of programs, and would you support increased funding for them if elected?
I am very familiar with them, and yes, I would support increased funding.
My wife Molly and I fostered more than 47 children over 15 years, and we adopted five of our daughters. A lot of those kids came to us as babies and toddlers carrying things no baby should have to carry. I have seen up close what early trauma does and I have also seen what consistent, supported caregiving can undo. Home visiting, infant mental health consultation, and early intervention are the difference between a family getting help in the first year and a family showing up in crisis in year six.
I also serve on the board of Bay Arenac Behavioral Health, so I see the other end of that pipeline, what it costs when nobody intervened early.
These programs are not soft spending. They are the cheapest thing we do.
The Early On Coalition — which is part of Think Babies — has advocated for increased funding to support families with infants and toddlers who have disabilities and developmental delays to make sure they get the individualized early intervention services they are entitled to. What is your perspective on increasing funding for Early On?
I support increasing funding for Early On, and this one is personal and professional both.
For almost 15 years I was CEO of Do-All Inc., an organization to support people with disabilities live independent lives in their community. Everything I learned there points the same direction: the earlier the support starts, the more independence a person has later. Early On is exactly that principle applied to babies.
Michigan has historically underfunded Early On compared to what federal law entitles these families to, and the gap gets filled by local systems, by school districts, or by nobody. Families end up on waitlists during the window when intervention matters most. A delay of six months at age two is not the same as a delay of six months at age twelve.
Funding Early On adequately is both a legal obligation and one of the better investments the state can make.
If elected, how would you gather input from parents, caregivers, and early childhood professionals in your district when making decisions that affect them?
The same way I do now as Mayor, which is by going to where people already are instead of expecting them to come to a hearing at 7 p.m. on a Tuesday.
Practically, that means regular office hours in different parts of the county, showing up at child care centers, Head Start sites, the ISD, and Great Start Collaborative meetings, and asking providers directly what a proposed policy would do to their operation before I vote on it. Providers can tell you in about ninety seconds whether a rule is workable, and they are almost never asked.
I would also want a standing group of parents and providers I check in with, not a formal commission that meets twice a year, but people I can actually call. And I would make sure my office is a place where a parent who is stuck in a subsidy or Early On process can get help getting unstuck.
Is there anything else you would like Michigan families, early childhood professionals, and advocates to know about your approach to young children and their families?
Molly and I fostered more than 47 children over 15 years and adopted five daughters. We have twelve grandchildren with one on the way. So when I talk about babies and toddlers, I am not talking about a policy area I read a briefing on.
What that experience taught me is that families do not fail in isolation. They fail when the supports around them are missing, and most of the time those supports are small and inexpensive compared to what it costs to intervene later. A home visitor. A child care slot. A therapist who shows up at the house. Somebody who answers the phone.
I also want to be a legislator who is easy to work with. Send me the bill language. Tell me what is broken in the rule. I would rather get something right the first time than pass something that sounds good and does not work on the ground.
Are there early childhood issues you believe are being overlooked in the current policy conversation in Michigan?
Three that I do not hear discussed enough.
First, foster and kinship care for infants and toddlers. Grandparents raising babies are often doing it with no support, no licensing, and no idea what they qualify for. That is early childhood policy and it rarely gets treated that way.
Second, non traditional hours. Bay County has manufacturing, health care, and service work. People work second shift, third shift, and weekends. Almost no licensed care operates then. Every affordability program in the world does not help a nurse working 7 p.m. to 7 a.m.
Third, the geography gap. Most early childhood policy is written with big metro systems in mind. In a county our size, one provider closing can wipe out care for an entire township. We need program designs that work at small scale, not scaled down versions of Detroit programs.