Lawrence A. Feinberg is a member of the Haverford Township school board in Pennsylvania.

He is a hero of public education and a model for parents, educators and activists across the nation.

He is a businessman who cares passionately about public education.

Feinberg runs an outstanding website that keeps parents and educators (and people like me who don’t live in Pennsylvania) informed about the events in the state.

Here is a great example of the information that mobilizes parents and activists. In this post, Feinberg and fellow volunteers follow the money and the legislation that affect the future of public education. This one shows how $4 billion dollars in taxpayer funding is paid out to charters in the state with no real oversight. It demonstrates who gets the money and who is making big political contributions to politicians who fail to provide oversight.

Feinberg is a leader of the Keystone State Education Coalition. This is how it describes its work on its website: “Established in 2006, the Keystone State Education Coalition is a growing grass roots, non-partisan public education advocacy group of several hundred locally elected, volunteer school board members and administrators from school districts throughout Pennsylvania. Our mission is to evaluate, discuss and inform our boards, district constituents and legislators on legislative issues of common interest and to facilitate active engagement in public education advocacy.”

Feinberg became active in school board issues as a parent of children in Haverford Township. He has been elected to his local school board since 1999, endorsed by both Republican and Democratic parties.

Pennsylvania is lucky to have Lawrence Feinberg. If every state had advocates as dedicated as Feinberg, we could turn this nation’s education policies around to serve the interests of children, not entrepreneurs, politicians, and privatizers.