Vote Tuesday, November 3, 2026 · Detroit
Putting Students First.Preparing Detroit’s Future.
A lifelong Detroiter, entrepreneur, husband and father. President of the Eastside Colts youth football team and an after-school programme coordinator across multiple Detroit sites. Bobby has spent years creating places where young people can learn, grow, lead and succeed.
Election day
Why Bobby
Bobby Christian is a Detroit father, coach and mentor who has spent years doing the unglamorous work of showing up for other people’s children.
Every name on a school board ballot promises to put students first. Bobby Christian has the receipts — years of Saturdays, practices, programme sites and parents who already have his number.
More about Bobby
Eastside Colts
Youth football and cheer on Detroit’s east side, run by volunteer parents.
After-school coordinator
Running programmes across Detroit — the hours after the bell, every week.
Detroiter
Entrepreneur, husband and father, raising his children in this district.
What this seat is actually about
A school board vote is not abstract. It lands in buildings like these, on Monday morning, on children whose names somebody knows.
Bennett Elementary
Southwest Detroit
Harms Elementary
Southwest Detroit
Denby High School
East side
Credit where it is due
Bobby is not running against Detroit’s schools — his children are in them. Real progress is happening, teachers and families made it happen, and it deserves saying out loud before anyone starts listing what is left to fix.
Up from a previous record of 78.3%, and from 64.5% just four years earlier — now within a single point of the Michigan state average. Gains came at 18 of the district’s 24 high schools, 13 met or beat the state average, and two reached 100%.
DPSCD / Michigan Department of Education, February 2026After twelve years away, Davis Aerospace Technical High School returns to Coleman A. Young International Airport — a 53,000 sq ft terminal rebuilt for nearly 200 students, with aircraft maintenance, flight operations and drone technology on site. A $14.6 million project, $7 million of it appropriated by the State of Michigan.
DPSCD Foundation · Chalkbeat DetroitStarting with this year’s ninth graders: honours, dual degree, career-ready, arts and Michigan merit pathways, an added eighth period, and more hours off campus through dual enrolment at Wayne State, U-M Dearborn, Ferris State and Wayne County Community College.
DPSCD, May 2026Congratulations to every DPSCD teacher, family and student who moved these numbers. Bobby wants a seat at the table to keep them moving.
What Bobby will work on
Detroit families already know how their schools are doing. What a board member owes them is a clear account of what he intends to do about it.
Priority 01
Parents want to be involved in their children’s education. What stops them is usually a work schedule, a bus route, or a missing laptop — not a lack of caring.
Bobby will build stronger partnerships between DPSCD and trusted Detroit community organisations, and bring parent engagement into neighbourhoods and community spaces rather than expecting every family to come to a school building.
The goal: When parents have the support they need, students have a stronger foundation for success.
Priority 02
Every child deserves to learn somewhere they are supported, respected, and given the tools they actually need.
Bobby will push for the staffing that makes inclusion real — classroom assistants and paraprofessionals — and will listen directly to the parents who know best what their children are up against.
The goal: No child should have to fight for the support they need to learn.
Priority 03
A diploma should open doors. Students should leave with skills, experience, connections and a plan for what comes next.
Bobby will expand partnerships between DPSCD high schools and Detroit employers across technology, the skilled trades, healthcare, manufacturing, construction, hospitality, finance, transportation and the creative industries — and strengthen entrepreneurship education so students can see themselves as owners, not only employees.
The goal: Every student should graduate with a pathway — not just a diploma.
Priority 04
Students have to be in the classroom to benefit from the classroom. Absence is usually a symptom, not a choice.
Absenteeism is tied to transportation, healthcare, family circumstances, housing instability and disengagement. Bobby will make attendance a community priority and treat the causes, not just the record.
The goal: Every day in school is a chance to learn, connect, and move closer to graduation.
60.9%
of DPSCD students were chronically absent in 2024–25
Michigan average: 28%
In Michigan a student is “chronically absent” after missing 18 days of a 180-day school year — about two days a month.
Priority 05
Parents and Detroit residents deserve to know what is happening in their school district — before it has already happened.
Bobby will push for district decisions that families can actually follow, for input gathered before major decisions rather than after, and for a board member willing to ask difficult questions when results do not match what was promised.
The goal: No parent should have to hear about a decision affecting their child’s education after it has already been made.
Bobby’s vision
Schools cannot do this work alone. Parents need support. Teachers need resources. Students need opportunity. Businesses need pathways to connect with the next generation. Community organisations need a seat at the table. And the district must be accountable to the people it serves.
Who Bobby is
Bobby Christian is a Detroit father, coach and mentor who has spent years doing the unglamorous work of showing up for other people’s children.
He is the President of Eastside Colts Inc., a 501(c)(3) youth football and cheer organization on Detroit’s east side. Hundreds of children have come through it — for practice, for structure, for a hot meal, for somewhere to be on a Saturday and someone to answer to on a Tuesday. It is run by volunteers, mostly parents, mostly out of their own pockets.
That work is the whole argument for this campaign. Bobby has spent years on the receiving end of decisions made by people who never meet the children those decisions land on — and he has watched what it costs when adults get it wrong. He is not running to learn about Detroit’s young people. He already knows them by name.
The board sets the direction. Bobby has spent years on the receiving end of those decisions — in gyms, on fields and in after-school rooms, with the children the decisions land on.
Already doing the work
He was doing this before there was a ballot to be on.
This is bigger than one seat
Bobby’s platform runs on parent involvement — not as a slogan, as the mechanism. A board member can ask the questions, but a room full of Detroit parents is what makes anyone answer them. That work starts before November and carries on whatever the result is.
Decisions get made in public, usually in front of very few people. Turning up is the cheapest power a parent has.
One parent is a complaint. Ten parents in the same room is a position the district has to answer.
At your school, this term, in plain words. He would rather hear it from you now than read it in a report next year.
Everything you need, in order
In Michigan you can vote by mail, vote early in person, or vote on the day — and you can register right up to 8pm on Election Day. Here are the dates that matter.
September 24
Absentee ballots start going out
Clerks begin mailing ballots to everyone who asked for one. This is also the first day you can vote in person at your clerk’s office.
October 19
Last day to register online or by mail
After this you can still register — but you have to do it in person at your clerk’s office and bring proof of where you live.
October 24 – November 1
Early voting, statewide
Every community has to offer in-person early voting at a designated site during this window. Some open earlier and some add Monday November 2.
October 30, 5:00 pm
Deadline to request an absentee ballot by mail or online
Cutting it this close is risky — there is no guarantee the ballot reaches you in time to send it back.
November 3, 8:00 pm
Election Day — polls close
Every absentee ballot has to be in your clerk’s hands by 8:00 pm, not postmarked by then. You can also still register and vote in person all day.
Also on your ballot
Separately from the candidates, DPSCD is asking voters to approve an operating millage — a property tax that funds the district’s day-to-day operations. The proposal would set an 18-mill maximum annual levy for 20 years, running 2026 through 2045, and is estimated to raise about $112 million in its first year for general operating purposes.
It is a separate question from the board race. You vote on both.
Awaiting Bobby’s position
This section publishes his stance in his own words. It stays empty until he gives it — nearly the whole field is silent on the millage, so saying something clear here is an opportunity, but it has to be his sentence.
Get involved
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