Senator Birkholz asked and was granted unanimous consent to make a statement and moved that the statement be printed in the Journal.
The motion prevailed.
Senator Birkholz's statement is as follows:
This resolution urges Congress to invest in Head Start and early childhood day care. It is very, very timely because they are beginning to talk about and discuss that budget at this point in time. It will send a very strong message to our federal policymakers that we need increased investments in quality early childhood programs here in Michigan.
Michigan has made a strong bipartisan commitment to early childhood education. During these difficult economic times, some additional help from the federal government helps us help our most vulnerable, and yet, our future before us.
Head Start has been in existence since 1965. High-quality Head Start programs do so much for us as a state and as a country. As many of you know, I worked for several years in a high-quality Head Start program in Holland. I'm here to tell that the children who graduate from a high-quality preschool education program are much more likely to be successful in school, are much less likely to participate in special education programs, are more likely to graduate, have higher paying jobs, and many of them will go on to some form of secondary education. Importantly, far fewer of them end up in our prison system later on.
So I encourage your support of the resolution before us.