PA Youth Wave: 35 schools honored for registering 8000 new voters

Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt announced that 35 Pennsylvania high schools won Governor’s Civic Engagement Awards (GCEA) for student-led efforts to register their eligible classmates to vote during the 2025-26 school year.

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Twenty-one schools won Gold Level Awards for registering at least 85% of their eligible students to vote, and 14 schools won Silver Level Awards for registering 65 to 84% of their eligible students.

For the first time in the GCEA’s nearly 10-year history, two schools — Delta High School in Centre County and Union Area Middle/High School in Lawrence County — registered 100% of their eligible students.

In total, about 2,000 students from public, private, and charter schools in 21 counties helped register approximately 8,000 voting-eligible classmates to win these awards, which the departments of State and Education present.

“These students worked hard to register their eligible classmates to vote, inform them about the electoral process, and hopefully launch them on a lifelong habit of voting,” Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt said at a press conference in the Capitol. “Students in the GCEA program engage the next generation of voters, which is critical for the continued health of our representative democracy.”