New here? Our Schools Now was a real, high-profile 2018 Utah ballot campaign to raise taxes and increase school funding statewide. It's registered with the state as a Political Issues Committee (PIC) — a different category than a candidate-focused PAC, which is why it doesn't turn up in a standard PAC search. What makes it relevant to this project: its own state filing names "Education First" as its formally affiliated organization, and its four governing officers are the exact same four people who run Education First Utah's Executive Committee.
1. What Was This Organization?
Our Schools Now's own Articles of Incorporation, filed 10/12/2016, state its purpose in plain language: "to pass a citizen's ballot initiative to increase funding for Utah schools." It was organized under IRC 501(c)(4). Its PIC registration with the Utah Lieutenant Governor's office — created 11/9/2016 — lists two additional names it operated under: "Our Kids 1st" and "Utah Students for Question 1," the latter naming the actual 2018 ballot measure (Question 1) the campaign was built around.
A separate DBA, "Our Schools Now PAC" (Utah entity #11248246-0151), was filed 4/8/2019 — active to this day, last renewed 2022. Its own principal-information filing names its owner directly: "Education First, A Utah Nonprofit Corporation" — the exact same parent entity (#10572869-0140, same "Corportion" misspelling) that owns the Education First Utah DBA covered in this project's companion case file.
2. The Education First Affiliation
This isn't an inferred connection. Our Schools Now's own PIC registration with the state has a field for "Organizations Affiliated with the PIC" — and it names "Education First," at the identical phone number (801) 693-2803, PO Box 10, Centerville, UT address used by the PIC's own Secretary/Treasurer.
Nonprofit Corporation
(#10572869-0140)"] EF -->|"owns"| EFU["Education First Utah DBA
'not advocating any tax increases'"] EF -->|"owns"| OSNPAC["Our Schools Now PAC DBA
filed 2019"] OSN["Our Schools Now / Our Kids 1st /
Utah Students for Question 1
(#10127348-0140)"] OSN -->|"formally declared
affiliated organization"| EF OSN -->|"raised $2,029,434.54
for a tax increase, 2018"| Q1["Question 1
ballot initiative"] OSN -->|"transferred $87,268.78
in campaign surplus, 2019"| EF
This isn't just a declared affiliation — money actually moved between the two organizations. Disclosures.utah.gov shows Our Schools Now transferring its 2018 campaign surplus directly to Education First: $86,853.10 on 3/18/2019 and $415.68 on 5/13/2019, totaling $87,268.78. That accounts for the large majority of the $95,918.74 Our Schools Now spent in 2019 — the leftover funds from the withdrawn tax-increase push didn't go back to donors. They went to the same organization whose own site says it doesn't advocate tax increases.
Scott Anderson
Listed at Zions Bank's own headquarters, 1 South Main, 2nd Floor, Salt Lake City. Also Education First Utah's own Co-Chair, and a confirmed $50,000 personal donor to CMV PAC in this project's separate case file.
Robert Scott Marquardt
Uses his mtctrains.com email on this official filing. Listed occupation: CEO of Management & Training Corporation. Education First Utah's own site lists him only as "President" — this state filing is more specific about his title.
Nolan Karras & Jesselie Anderson
Both also sit on Education First Utah's Executive Committee. Karras is Former Utah Speaker of the House. Together with Anderson and Marquardt, these four people make up the entire governing board of both organizations.
The same four people who run Education First Utah's Executive Committee are, name for name, Our Schools Now's entire governing board. Not overlapping membership — the identical small team, confirmed independently via both OpenCorporates' officer records and Our Schools Now's own official PIC registration with the state.
3. The Money
2019 and 2021 show only residual winddown activity — $415.68 raised and $95,918.74 spent in 2019, and under $12 spent in 2021 as a final closeout. The entire campaign happened in calendar year 2018.
Management & Training Corporation gave $101,046.32 directly to a tax-increase campaign — not through an executive's personal check, the company itself. Combined with Gail Miller's $250,000 and Clyde Companies' $55,000, three names already documented elsewhere in this project's Education First Utah/CMV PAC network account for over $400,000 of this campaign's funding.
4. Donor Explorer
All 292 named contributions to Our Schools Now in 2018 (one $1 entry from "Erin Wynn" and similar are included; a handful of entries under $50 are omitted from notes but present in the data). Search by name, or filter to the largest gifts.
| Date | Donor | Amount |
|---|
5. Worth Asking
- A single parent nonprofit owns two differently-branded PACs — one that says it doesn't advocate tax increases, one that spent $2 million trying to pass one. Is that two organizations with genuinely different positions, or one operational team keeping both messaging options available depending on the moment?
- Management & Training Corporation, a private prison company, gave over $100,000 directly to a public school funding campaign — while its own general counsel, treasury director, and CEO run the parallel PAC that avoids taking a tax position at all. What does a private corrections contractor gain from either position on school funding?
6. Research Status
Resolved since this page was first built:
- Whether money ever actually moved between Our Schools Now and Education First, beyond the declared affiliation and shared officers — confirmed: $87,268.78 transferred in 2019 (see Section 2).
Still being checked — not yet confirmed one way or the other:
- The 355 individual 2018 expenditures haven't been analyzed the way the 293 contributions have — vendor names, consultants, and signature-gathering costs (a $44,820 payment to "Gather Inc" is visible in the raw data) could reveal another layer of the same network.
- Whether "Our Schools Now PAC" (the 2019 DBA, owned by the Education First parent) has ever reported any of its own contributions or expenditures under that specific DBA name — the $87,268.78 transfer confirmed above was filed under "Education First," not "Our Schools Now PAC" specifically.
- David H. Broadbent, an inactive former Our Schools Now officer, hasn't been cross-referenced against anything else in this project.
- Whether the "MP" stamp visible on the original Articles of Incorporation filing is Michael Petrogeorge's initials (he filed Education First Utah's own DBA in a similar fashion) — plausible but not confirmed from the document alone.
Sources
- Utah Lieutenant Governor's Office, disclosures.utah.gov — full raw DEX itemized contribution/expenditure exports for Our Schools Now (PIC), 2018-2021, the only years with reported activity
- Utah Dept. of Commerce, Division of Corporations & Commercial Code — Articles of Incorporation, Our Schools Now (#10127348-0140), filed 10/12/2016; Business Entity Search results for Our Schools Now and Our Schools Now PAC (#11248246-0151)
- Our Schools Now's own PIC registration statement, Utah Lieutenant Governor's Office — officer/director information and "Organizations Affiliated with the PIC" field naming Education First
- OpenCorporates — Our Schools Now officer records (Wolfgramm, Jesselie Anderson, Karras, Robert S. Marquardt)
- This project's own companion case file: Education First Utah & Utah Behavior Services
