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Helping you understand where your local school board candidates stand on issues that are important to you.

ELECTION 2024

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ABOUT THE ACTION FUND

Pennsylvania’s children are in trouble. Across the state nearly a half million children face the same troubling circumstances.

We know that good health care, education and enrichment treat the wounds to a child’s development caused by poverty.

Research tells us that ensuring the safety and nurturing the intellect, creativity, and self-confidence of children raised in poverty, is difficult and requires extra resources and efforts to succeed.

In Pennsylvania, these children suffer because lawmakers fail to invest sufficient resources or support the specific policies to meet their needs.

Tens of thousands of children are uninsured, alarmingly growing up without regular access to health care.

The vast majority of low income children attend schools that have far less resources available for their education than their well-off peers.

And far less than half of the at-risk young children in the Commonwealth have access to the benefits of high quality early learning programs that are proven to boost their educational and lifetime chances of success.

That’s why the Children First Action Fund exists.

Our goal is to ensure elected officials make the right investments of public resources so that children burdened by poverty and adversity have the best chance of reaching their full potential.

OUR  WORK

Children First Action Fund strategically works on both sides of the aisle, in a non-partisan fashion, to help lawmakers learn what it takes for children to succeed and persuade them to support our legislative measures.

We are singularly focused on increasing the number of elected officials who will champion investments and policies needed to ensure disadvantaged children are healthy, safe, learning in nurturing environments and engaged in the enrichment activities that, in sum, contribute to lifetime success.

Children First Action Fund employs three proven strategies to accomplish this goal:

  1. Deploying highly effective government affairs strategies to educate and persuade lawmakers to fight for the policies and resources we know are necessary.
  2. Publishing and disseminating information to citizens to enable them to judge how well lawmakers are delivering on the continuum of services and opportunities proven to help these children thrive from infancy to college graduation. 
  3. Engaging policy experts from our partner organization, Children First PA, to educate lawmakers and make the case for the legislation and policy changes we know will make a difference in the lives of children.

OUR BOARD

The Children First Action Fund is governed by a board of bi-partisan volunteers focused on raising funds to support lobbying efforts for improved access to high quality educational opportunities, especially for our poorest children and to let citizens know when their elected officials are making that possible, and when they are not. 

David Laigaie,

Action Fund Board Chair

Partner

Eckert Seamans

Emily Marks,

Action Fund Board Secretary

Partner

Kline & Specter 

Nancy Lucas,

Action Fund Board Treasurer

Retired CEO

Community Behavioral Health

Carolyn Adams

Professor of Geography & Urban Planning

Temple University

Harriet Dichter

Consultant

Early Childhood Systems

Bill Ewing

Attorney

Retired

Shanee Garner-Nelson

Founding Executive Director

Lift Every Voice Phillly

Amy Ginensky

Special Counsel

Pepper Hamilton

Linda Hansell

Independent Consultant

 

Brendan Harris

VP of Community HealthChoices

UPMC Health Plan 

Bill Isler

Former Executive Director

Fred Rogers Company

Sam Patterson

Founder

PK Financial Group

Kate Philips

CEO

Parker Philips, Inc.

Heidi A. Ramírez

Independent Education Consultant

Ebony Staton

Director

Johnson & Johnson

Nora Winkelman

Former Chief Counsel, Democratic Caucus

Pennsylvania House of Representatives

Melissa Young

Founder

Mash Strategies