An Early Childhood Education Rally takes place in Jamrich Hall at Northern Michigan University on Friday. The effort brought awareness to the availability of child care in the area. (Journal photo by Christie Mastric)

MARQUETTE — A Friday rally at Northern Michigan University brought attention to what some people believe is a need for increased child care in the community.

The Early Childhood Education Rally took place in Jamrich Hall, attracting local families and others who support the effort.

Shilpa Jhobalia, local community organizer, and Rachel May, associate professor at NMU, co-chair the NMU Early Childhood Education Center Task Force to encourage NMU administration and the Board of Trustees to create an early childhood education center — accredited by the National Association for the Education of Young Children — on campus for faculty, staff and students to use for their children and babies.

“Here in Marquette and throughout the Upper Peninsula, there’s a huge child care crisis,” Jhobalia said. “Infant child care is practically non-existent. Toddler and pre-school child care can have one- to two-year wait lists, and we really are urging Northern to build an early childhood education center here on campus that would serve faculty, staff, students and possibly community members as well.”

Additionally, she said the facility could serve as a learning lab on campus for students to obtain professional training, including students in psychology, social work, and speech and hearing. It also would open up space for the public, with faculty and staff currently taking up child care spots in the community.

“So, it would be a real win-win situation if we could have this early child education center here on campus,” said Jhobalia, who indicated that she will start a new position as parent liaison for the Great Start Collaborative on Monday.

She said part-time care can be difficult to find in this area while drop-in care is not available, and children with special needs often are turned away because providers are not equipped to take them.

Jhobalia pointed out that some health care workers have 12-hour work shifts, while many child care providers are not open that many hours to accommodate their needs.

“Child care has a lot of different angles to it, and we really need to come together as a community to figure this out because families cannot go back to work if they don’t have child care,” she said, “and I think it would really boost our economy to have more child care solutions.”

The Department of Education announced it is leading an effort to increase the number of licensed child care programs across Michigan, investing $100 million to provide space, start-up funds and staff, and support entrepreneurs, to grow existing programs and start new ones.

NMU administration already has been discussing child care options.

At a March 15 All-Student Forum, NMU Board of Trustees Chair Steve Young said the board is having “active discussions” on addressing the situation regarding a possible child care program for students and community residents.

“We think between affordable and accessible child care, and affordable, accessible housing, these are a couple of the biggest challenges we face right now when you look outside the box and you get away from programming and academics and some other things,” Young said. “It’s a very high priority.”

Gavin Leach, NMU vice president of finance and administration, said at the forum that options include in-home child care services. He also noted that some individuals need to drop off a child for several hours’ care while others need all-day service.

“There’s a variety of needs, so I think it’s not a ‘one-size-fits-all answer’ to this problem, so we’re trying to work with a couple of models to try to build something that will work for faculty, staff and students on campus,” Leach said.

Jhobalia said, “We really think Northern can be a leader in solving this problem and we also think it would recruit more students so that student-parents would come back to school if they knew they had child care provided.”

Nikki Loehr, a mother of two who lives in Negaunee Township, took part in the rally.

She said child care should be available for school-aged youngsters as well as the early childhood demographic.

She also acknowledged that finding seasonal care is a challenge as well.

“Summer care is a struggle,” Loehr said.