Advocacy as a Lever for Change

Pre-K Our Way. From 2015 to 2021, Maher Charitable Foundation helped establish and fund Pre-K Our Way, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization created with a singular focus: expansion of New Jersey’s existing high-quality, state-funded, full-day pre-K program. 

When the initiative began, just 35 districts offered pre-K. By 2017, Governor Chris Christie allocated $25 million for pre-school expansion funding and Governor Phil Murphy incorporated universal pre-K in his campaign platform. Since his election in 2018, Governor Murphy has allocated funds to pre-K expansion in every state budget.  

When Pre-K Our Way sunsetted in 2021, the number of districts with funded pre-K had expanded to 175. Additionally, funding was embedded in the annual state education funding formula and budget, and Governor Murphy had signaled a commitment to establish universal pre-K statewide in the near term.

Pre-K Our Way was successful as a combined advocacy and education effort because it: 

  • Established a clear, focused message and purpose. The initiative called for expanding NJ’s existing high-quality pre-K for 3 and 4-year-olds into more communities.

  • Extended advocacy beyond the usual community of support. The group showcased the importance of NJ’s pre-K for child health, working parents and the business community, educational achievement and long-term future success.  The effort motivated in-person outreach across 400+ communities, in all 21 counties and every legislative district.

  • Identified key legislative education opportunities. The Pre-K Our Way team shaped the testimony of more than half of the presenters for the 2015 Senate Education Committee Hearing on Benefits of Pre-K; included pre-K expansion in the Legislative Leadership Policy Agenda Priorities beginning in October 2015 and throughout 2016 and 2017; and maintained focus on pre-K expansion throughout every budget cycle including 2016 and since.

  • Linked pre-K expansion funding to school funding discussions in 2016 and 2017 – and now, beyond. The Murphy Administration included continued and new pre-K expansion as part of a district’s annual school funding formula for districts where pre-K expansion had already been awarded.

  • Conceived, organized, and executed the Campaign for Pre-K Expansion. This focused, enhanced media outreach effort drove home the importance of pre-K expansion to the Governor and Legislature.

Former governors Tom Kean and Jim Florio co-chaired the organization and ten other philanthropic and nonprofit organizations joined Maher Charitable Foundation to enable Pre-K Our Way to achieve significant results.   MaryAnn Preztunik served as executive director of the nonprofit.    

For Maher, the Pre-K Our Way effort was an ideal way to effect significant change enabling more children to receive high quality, pre-K education in the state.  Through its participation, Maher showed: 

  • A willingness to fund advocacy in combination with other forms of support

  • A commitment to work with community partners to identify a key policy opportunity and focus on it.  In this case, inclusion of pre-K in the state school budget had failed, but Maher knew there was widespread public support for pre-K both as an educational intervention AND as support for working parents, and the law, already passed, offered a chance to convince the state government to fund the expansion.  

  • A determination to invest what was needed over multiple years to see Pre-K Our Way succeed, and 

  • A recognition that successful implementation is key to continued funding and support for expansion, with its ongoing support of NIEER and ACNJ for technical assistance and implementation.