A Toilet on the State Capitol Steps?! – Dec 9, 2022

 

Prevent Our Kids’ Futures from Going Down the Drain

At least once a week, people ask us the same question: why did you put a toilet on the Capitol steps?  

After years of using charts and graphs to prove that students in Pennsylvania were harmed by the state’s failure to fund the schools, we decided a toilet would make the case perfectly clear. 

It dramatized that the state’s failure to fund the schools is flushing the future of our children down the toilet. But it did so much more.  

This toilet, with a line of 75 child advocates waiting to speak in front of it, starkly demonstrated what it looks like in some of our schools where there is only one working toilet for 75 children. 

Of course, it’s one thing to produce a powerful stunt to make a point; it’s another to get results. We got the results because we worked so effectively with partners across the state!

Because you supported Children First, 2022 was a banner year for the funding of public schools.

State politicians listened to us, delivering the largest state increase for schools in the history of the Commonwealth – a $1.1 billion increase in funds for public education! 

That sounds like a lot but still too many children languish in underfunded schools, start school without pre-k, and still thousands more cannot get the health care they need.

We need إلى do much more في the year ahead.

Please donate to our work this year so we can build on this success next year! Our schools are still billions of dollars short of what they need.

As the year comes to an end, we are grateful that despite hyper-partisan efforts to narrow our school curriculum and make schools less welcoming, we are proud to say that our strategy delivered for public education.

Thank you for donating all you can to Children First so we can build on this great foundation and end the school funding crisis in Pennsylvania.   

Tell Congress to be nice and pass a budget that includes critical funding for child care.

انقر هنا to email your lawmakers in Washington that child care tops many desperate families’ wish lists.

Parents in 37 states – including PA – aren’t legally protected to use earned paid sick leave to care for sick children, forcing them to choose between a child and a paycheck. Get some insight into their struggle here.

The lingering impact of COVID is still hurting our children and teens. 

Delaware County leaders came out strong in favor of giving parents, schools, and communities resources to recover.

Hear what they – and community members – had to say at our event on Monday. Watch here

“The loss of the expanded child tax credit
could not have come at a worse time. Just
as families were getting some breathing
room on expenses, inflation kicked in,
driving up prices for food, gas, and utilities.”

المستعلم مجلس التحرير