The lifeblood of our businesses and communities are people.  When you are building a business, inspiration and sweat equity can usually only take you so far and then comes that fateful day: You hire an employee.

From there, your success or failure is directly related to the quality of the people you hire and train to represent and grow your business.  Many factors contribute to the abilities of those people but, like the foundation of your home, it is built from the ground up and Pre-K education plays a significant role.

The value of Pre-K education is a well studied subject and we see that common thread in our company's proven performers.

Over the past 40 years, research has shown the clear and dynamic benefits of quality early education: reduced illiteracy, higher earnings, home ownership, and, generally, more productive citizens.

Quality education for our children today prepares them for high quality jobs tomorrow.  A high quality work force empowers us to compete nationally and globally, improving the quality of life for all.  Consider this: Every $1 spent on such education can save $7 in future expenditures in special education, delinquency, crime control, welfare and lost taxes (visit www.papromiseforchildren.com). That's a return rate that makes sense to any business person.  Regrettably, disposable cash in most businesses is used to fight the fire of today, not invest in the opportunity of tomorrow, let alone one that won't bear fruit for over a decade or more.  But smart business says we have to start and the sooner the better.

Fortunately, we discovered a program here in Pennsylvania that allows us to seize this opportunity using the dollars we already have to spend for every business's favorite line item, taxes: the Educational Improvement Tax Credit Pre-K Scholarship Program.  This program does not change whether we do or don't have to pay taxes.  It does give us the chance and satisfaction of keeping that money in our community to nurture the benefits highlighted above.

The program is simple:  in lieu of sending our tax check to Harrisburg, we contribute to an approved pre-K scholarship organization, such as Smart Start-Centre County.  And the process is painless: you apply (one page form) to the state for available credits, you contribute to a pre-K organization, the pre-K organization acknowledges receipt of your contribution, you forward that acknowledgment to the state and the state issues credits to your tax account.  Credits are issued dollar- for-dollar up to $10,000 and 90 cents on the dollar up to $150,000 (see your accountant or visit www.newpa.com/eitc). Thus, no matter where you fall in the tax bracket, like us, you have the opportunity to keep those dollars invested in our community as we have for the past five years.  Your business and our community then reap the benefits of that investment in the people who work with us to grow our business.