Early Care and Education in Governor Shapiro’s 2023-24 State Budget Proposal

HARRISBURG, PA (March 7, 2023) – Today, the principal partners of Early Learning Pennsylvania (ELPA), a statewide coalition of advocates focused on supporting young Pennsylvanians from birth to age five, issued the following statements regarding Governor Josh Shapiro’s 2023-24 state budget proposal. ELPA operates four issue-based advocacy campaigns: Start Strong PA, Pre-K for PA, Childhood […]

With major Medicaid changes ahead, advocates want to see increased staffing for assistance offices

A group of health advocacy organizations are asking the state to improve staffing at county assistance offices, as well as to make other administrative changes the advocates say will lessen the likelihood of people losing their health coverage once the state starts “unwinding” its pandemic-era Medical Assistance. During the pandemic, individuals who got their health […]

Call to Action: More Funding for PA Career and Technical Education

A Pennsylvania advocacy group wants the state budget to include more funding for Career and Technical Education programs, or CTE, for high school students. Backers of more funding for CTE are looking toward Gov. Josh Shapiro’s new budget proposal, expected March 7. Rachael Miller, policy director at Pennsylvania Partnerships for Children, said the current funding […]

Funding early childhood education is always money well spent

New analysis from the Pennsylvania Partnerships for Children presents a lot of the same conclusions and data stakeholders have long known about the impact of funding early childhood education. Essentially, you can never go wrong putting money into programs that boost high-quality programs and make them more accessible to more people. The number of families […]

Shapiro admin can do more as rollbacks to food and health benefits loom in Pa., experts say

Hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvanians could lose their health insurance and nearly two million could face more food insecurity in the coming months due to two sweeping rollbacks to pandemic-era federal policies. Health care advocates argue there is at least one concrete step the state can take right now to mitigate coverage losses. One of […]