Under the Dome Kansas- End of Week Summary March 10, 2023

10:07PM Mar 10, 2023

Speakers:

Marcus Lee

Timothy Graham

Lauren Tice Miller

Keywords:

bill

legislators

people

voucher

schools

private schools

parents

issues

teacher

kids

educators

child

happening

public schools

anticipating

education

debate

organizations

rights

capers

Good morning. Today is Friday, March 10. I'm Marcus Baltzell, the director of communications for Kansas NEA. I'm here again with Timothy Graham, who is our Director of Government Relations and coalition's and Loren Tyson Miller, who is our Director of Government Relations and elections. And we're going to talk a little bit about what's going on under the dome or what has happened this week, what we expect next week. Here's some things that we're kind of looking at right now we see the so called parents Bill of Rights is coming up. We've got this this giant what we've called this Frankenstein voucher scheme. We have firearm safety, where the legislature has done a good job of again, mandating what and how we teach.

And we've got a lot going on with capers and taxes. So maybe we should start at the end this time. So Tim, let's let's talk about capers real quick and talk about our what what's going on in that that those committees and what's going on with capers? What are we what are we tracking what's happening? Well, let me start out by telling you what's not going on.

No real talk about reforming tier three, which is a total mess. What there is widespread agreement in that building, that tier three needs to be reformed, because because it is woefully inadequate. Yet there's been no real talk about reforming it. And there's no real talk about any cost of living adjustment, aka Cola, for retirees. So that's what's not going on. What's going on, instead of that is a culture war debate on ESG, which stands for environmental, social, and governance.

What we know is that ESG is kind of a corporate philosophy that can drive the mission and the vision of a company. Is that fair to say?

Yeah, I pointed out in my testimony to both the House and the Senate committees that ESG business behaviors and patterns have been going on for years and years and years. However, all of the sudden, as this world gets more divided. This is another national debate that is designed to scare people divide people. Again, these behaviors have been going on for years, I use the example of McDonald's buying a Big Mac at McDonald's, you no longer get it in a styrofoam box. That's been gone for 25 years, right? I used an example of buying a car and going on to a car lot. And just looking at the sticker. The sticker has environmental greenhouse gas, I'm reading smog ratings, etc. Just on the sticker, all the major car manufacturers are including that. I talked about how these companies have been doing this for years, and no one has really said much about it. But lately, it's been it's been. It's been a situation that's been designed to divide us. And now everybody at the Statehouse over here is up in arms about ESG investing and how it relates to capers. And now they're going down a path of possibly making capers divest, or eat or break relationships with certain financial companies that can cost our capers Trust Fund billions of dollars.

So in a nutshell, what's happening here is the leadership in the legislature is leading a Kansas arm of this national movement, the corporate version of diversity and inclusion in schools. In other words, not not that not that it's about diversity and inclusion, but it's about something that they want to rally around to say, you know, now, we don't want these woke teachers teaching this stuff. We don't want these woke companies actually being socially environmentally responsible with the way they with the way they do action. And so we can further weaken capers, by attacking those companies, and, quote unquote, divesting from them if if they try and do business with capers is that kind of what we're saying kind of

but let me take it a little bit deeper. Oftentimes, in the legislative process, the biggest blunders that the legislature has made is is to placate small group of legislators when they have bad ideas. And this is one of those bad ideas. This is a culture war. And I can tell you privately, a number of Republican legislators have said things to me like, well, this is a dude, we're trying to get this to be a do nothing. Bill causes no harm. We got to let these folks have their day, et cetera, et cetera. And we've seen this happen far too often. And okay. On a lot of these issues, we can do that. But when it comes to capers, and when it comes to billions of dollars in retirement funds for our teachers, our educators, our police, our Officers, our firefighters, etc, all of our public servants. This is when it becomes a recipe for unintended consequences. And we shouldn't even be mucking around and I use that word. In one of my testimonies, monkeying around in the system, I don't see any of the Kansans that happened to be employed in the fields that I just mentioned, coming up here and saying, Hey, legislator, A, B, and C, please protect me from those woke green energy people, I don't see that happening. What I see is two or three out of state, conferees being allowed to testify. And by the way, one of the individuals that testified was a professor from Princeton, and I was getting text from other lobbyists, colleagues that are that were in the room that were saying This is bizarre. I mean, this guy was reading memes he was quoting, or he was reading poems. I mean, it was, it was weird.

But this is part and parcel of of this attempt that they have right now to, to take all of these issues, make them kind of a culture war issue, and not focus on what they were effectively hired to do, which is to solve real problems for Americans every day. And it's a huge waste of time. So moving kind of in a different direction. I want to read a little quote that was in the news today by RuPaul. Charles. And it's this in responding to recent legislation, attacking drag shows and trans athletes and so on and so forth. This is what Paul Charles said, Hey, look over there. A classic distraction technique, distracting us away from the real issues that were that they were voted into office to focus on jobs, health care, keeping our children safe from harm at their own school, you know, but we know that bullies are incompetent at solving real issues. They look for easy targets, so they can give the impression of being effective. They think our love our light, our laughter and our joy, our signs of weakness, but they're wrong, because that is our strength. So I think that's, you know, really apropos to this conversation, not just in regards to, you know, kind of the now Gender Wars and the, you know, rights issues, and so on and so forth. But it kind of leads us down the road of what's happening with the trans athlete bill. So this is a bill that would ban participation by trans athletes in high school and earlier, is that earlier, correct? Yeah. Not withstanding that there's already policies that exists through Keisha have been for for many years, also that this issue is not really an issue in Kansas. We don't have any examples where this has been a problem. Again, we are instead of focusing on real issues, violence in the classroom, of violence against teachers, short staffing, all of those kinds of things. We are attacking marginalized people. So talk to us about where we are on those those issues. Well,

the trans athlete bill is on its way to the governor. So it has worked its way through both sides of the statehouse, both House and Senate. It had its final debate and final action on the Senate side this week. There was let's talk just just to kind of answer your respond to who it affects, there was an amendment that was attempted on the bill that would have applied this bill to seventh graders, and was seventh through 12th, basically, and it would have taken grade schoolers and people all the way down to kindergarten out of the bill. And it was rejected. The thing that was so amazing, just listening to that debate, debate was the absolute. And I want to use the right word here. But the absolute, just anger from the proponents of the overall bill and the anger that anybody would have the, quote, Audacity to try to make the bill a little less egregious, to people that are 678 years old, because we all know, all of us that are parents, all of us that our aunts and uncles, anybody that's been to a youth sports event knows that before the age of about 12. There's a lot of coed teams, a lot of rec teams that have boys and girls both playing on it. And now all of the sudden, we're not completely convinced that this isn't going to create upheaval on all of those teams.

That's the excuse they make. But do we really believe I certainly don't that that really is the motivation behind this. I think the motivation behind this, as you said, anger, I'm just going to call it for what it is. It's hate. And it has to be hate because you can't be angry over something that hasn't happened.

When I used the word anger. It was the anger and the voice during the debate of the supporters of the bill that were angry at the individual that was trying To put an amendment on there, that would have segregated younger people. So yeah, the hate, it starts with the hatred of the issue. But the anger, that just the anger,

the three of us all have children, school aged kids, we know that, you know, in our own experiences with our own kids, that that these issues that they purport to address, that really aren't issues are kids, this is not a thing for them. You know, our kids are not going to school, they kids aren't born to hate, you know, kids, kids are born to engage and interact with each other and learn and discover and all those things. And, you know, it's just it's kind of a shame that the the adult leaders in the room can't, can't see that and maybe take a lesson from that. Lauren, you're gonna say something?

Yeah. So on this bill, I think they're, I think it's really important to know that it's not just scholastic athletics. it specifically states, clubs, sports, intramural sports, and Scholastic sports. So if you have a kid who is six years old, playing on a club team, or you have a kid who is playing in a non competitive intramurals, just wants to try sports for the first time, they're going to have to prove that they have the body parts that these legislators think they should have to be able to play on those teams. And it's been mentioned multiple times in these debates, the opposition has questioned well, how do you determine those body parts, and they have admitted that it could require a genital inspection. And so they try to keep that very, very hush hush. But it needs to be out there, people need to know that this bill does not say anything that prohibits it from happening. So if you've got a club, a club, that is now with private organization, that organization is being told that they can only allow the gender what these legislators are saying are the biological sex of these kids play on the team, that club may think, well, the only way we can really do this is through this inspection.

So the very people who purport to be proponents of small government and liberty and freedom, want to use government to essentially do these exams on children, who are, you know, not developed, who are playing, you know, in private organizations? What about, you know, I used to be when I was much younger, and before I was a teacher, I was a program director at for the YMCA. And in the YMCA that I worked in, you know, we didn't keep score. There were, you know, they were little kids. We didn't keep score. It was about learning, you know, competition. And, and like Tim said, there were there were mixed gender, you know, and, of course, that none of that was an issue. So, so does it apply to if they don't keep score? Do we still have to do these inspections? Because, you know, if their point is, and this is their, their big argument on this is that, you know, it's not fair. There's a there's a fairness issue here. Really, are we you know, are we having kids competing for scholarships at eight years old? Go ahead.

Yeah. So that's a great question. And the, the biggest proponent of this bill brought that up, she said during the amendment that I'm talking about that would have excluded K through six. In this bill, she brought it up, she said, those of us that are elite athletes, let me not be snarky. She said, those of us that are elite athletes, we start our journey. Well, before the sixth grade well, before the seventh grade, I guess, is what she said. She said, we started at the ages of five, six and seven. Now I'm paraphrasing her, but that's what she said, yeah, they start competing for their so called career. Yeah, their sporting career and their scholarships. Well, before the seventh grade, she said

that and those struggling with gender identity can relate to the fact that that struggle begins very early on. So I think it's really kind of ironic that, you know, they would use that argument that they're using the power of government to force on two parents, while at the same time they over they work over here and say that they're going to, you know, support this parents Bill of Rights or whatever. Not in this case so much. Go ahead, Lauren.

If you if you think about all the time they have spent on this bill, which is House Bill 2238. They've spent on Senate Bill 180, which is the so called women's bill of rights that also involves genital inspections more or less.

And the multiple bills that are out there trying to prohibit gender affirming care,

among a number of other bills, focusing on Trying to oversimplify people as male or female, the legislator has spent far more time worried about what are what's in our kids pants than what's in their pantry? Like, why aren't we working on things like the food sales axing the food sales tax? Why? Why aren't we making sure that our kids have access to health care and food and, and all of the basic necessities in their life to be successful human beings in this world? But instead, we're spending hours upon hours worried about what's in their pants?

Well, no, I mean, really, they would say, you know, they are worried about, you know, at risk kids and poverty. And indeed, you know, that's why they're, they're pushing these voucher schemes that start at the, at what, 300% of the poverty level. Right. Right, which is why I'm laughing because, you know, there's there's always these these kinds of reasons for justifying stripping rights and, and, you know, gaming the system that they try and do. But I, you know, I don't think a lot of people believe that they really care about those things. Actually, what they're really trying to do is get a situation where organizations, the things that they don't like are weakened, and the things that they do, like are strengthened. It's, it's pretty much that simple. Yeah. Go ahead, Tim.

It's interesting that you talk about that, because the we're, we're never going to sit back and be okay with a lot of this legislation. But they're not even hiding. No, they're not even hiding their motives anymore. They used to hide their motives. 1015 years ago, they're not even hiding them now, which I guess it's great that they're being more honest about where they're coming from. But again, we're never going to be in favor of a trans athletes ban, we're never going to be be in favor of vouchers. But if they were more sincere in the way that they approached the debate, the way they approached the process, then we would probably be a little less amped up about it and angry ourselves about the process and about the arguments that are going on over there. And then maybe, if that happened, we could all get together and tackle some of these issues that matter. And let the other people and find out the issues that don't and hope that they go nowhere,

we as public educators, have a duty to to teach and learn with every kind of student who has every kind of need. And so pushing kids to the margins, you know, really is troubling for for educators, because, you know, they have they deserve respect. They deserve a place in our schools, they deserve to learn and to have that same opportunity. What are some of the other things we're watching? Where are we on the status of vouchers, parents Bill of Rights, that's we've written a lot about that. But let's go we've had a lot of philosophical discussion. Let's go into the details really quickly about where those bills are. Okay.

So on the parents Bill of Rights, there was a hearing held yesterday and Senate Education Committee, this is House Bill 2236. This bill has already passed the House. And so now it is working its way through the process in the Senate. They had a hearing on it yesterday. Again, in Sticking with the theme of the session, there were two proponents and five, five opponents who testified orally yesterday. And then there were several other written opponents submitted as well. So it was an interesting hearing. The gist of it is that, you know, they're still this is still needed. Because parents there, there are parents out there who aren't familiar with the processes that school districts have already in place. And then we also have the voucher bill, which is house substitute for Senate Bill 83 right now. And we were anticipating seeing debate on that from the House on Thursday, and then it got postponed. So we have heard that the house is going to be ProFormance are not in session on Monday. And so we are anticipating it being on the calendar for Tuesday. So they will debate the bill and then we'll then take the final vote on it

as soon as early as Wednesday is what we are anticipating. The biggest thing is it's a terrible bill. There's going to be a lot of push on messaging over the next few days to try to convince legislators that they need to vote for it. Because in committee, Christy Williams and others tried to offer amendments such as what they are claiming is increasing teacher pay, which is a complete farce. There's absolutely no Oh, no new money attached to that. And so they are taking existing funds that would be going to schools and freezing them and earmarking it for teacher pay. And it's and it's only teacher pay. So it's got extended to any other staff member in the school building, and it completely undermines negotiations and local control. So it is absolutely a farce. There is no actual teacher pay increase included in that bill.

It's a political tactic. Right. It's a political tactic. Yes, it

is absolutely a political tactic. We saw it very much in committee when Christie Williams said All in favor of increasing teacher pay. And then you had the four members in the minority party, vote against it. And so it made it look like you had four members of the of that committee who were opposed to increasing teacher pay, which is is not the case, they knew that this isn't actually a genuine effort to provide additional funding to increase teacher pay. It's it's an attempt to try to sweeten the deal and confuse legislators into thinking that there's something good here, and they need to support it. And the same is true with with the special ed funding that they added in there. As I said to somebody yesterday, it's a it's a spoonful of sugar to help the arsenic go down. This is it's,

it's not even sugar, because because really what it sounds like it is is it's an effort to say I dare you to vote against this. Yes, because if you do vote against this, we're going to throw out some postcards that say you're against teacher raises, which aren't actually raises at all

right. And you're opposed to special ed funding, you're you're voting against the governor's plan to increase funding for special education. It's a trap. It's a trap. They are gotcha votes.

Yeah. And, you know, the interesting thing about that is is the other side, you know, the message could be I mean, if you if you really don't allocate your money, if you mandate that it goes in a certain way, once that once that goes, then teachers could effectively have a pay cut in future years, you know, that that could be something that happens as funding levels change? Yes. You know, as, as all of the the kids move to private schools under their voucher schemes and enrollment declines, you know, neighborhood schools dry up entirely, which is, you know, by the way, that's the real game here, isn't

it? Right? Well, and on top of that, it ties the hands, it really ties, the hands of the local board and how they are handling their entire budgeting process, if they've got a freeze on a certain portion of their money, they may not be able to afford running the rest of their district. And so you know, what good is it to try to give an increase to their teachers, if there's no school, there's no classroom for their, for their teacher to teach in.

So let's talk about more, you know, leaning towards the voucher schemes that we have going on right now.

So on the voucher schemes. So again, we've got you know, how sub for Senate Bill 83, which is the Frankenstein bill, it has the ED savings accounts counts piece to it. It's got all of the other pieces that we just discussed. Like I said, we're anticipating it showing up on the calendar next week, then we still have several schemes out there that seek to expand the existing, quote unquote, low income tax credit scholarship program. The Senate version of that is more or less dead because they've used that bill to strip out and add in this Edie savings account stuff. But as we've mentioned previously, just because the numbers dead or the concept may be dead, it can always come back to life in the form of an amendment. So there is a house version of that bill, that still is an in house K 12. Budget. On Monday house K 12. Budget is scheduled to take action on the K 12 budget. And so they have a vehicle. I believe it's Senate Bill 113, which was a completely unrelated education bill. So all they're using it for as as a shell. So they're going to come in, they're going to strip the the original contents out of that bill. And they're going to place the contents of the K 12 budget. And we are anticipating them potentially also adding in this voucher scheme language about expanding the Low Income Tax Credit scholarship program. And again, this is 100% a voucher scheme. It is a tax break for the wealthy to supplement private schools. And so we're again we're anticipating seeing money tied to bad policy.

In reality. What we have here is a situation where this is again the Kansas arm of a national movement to make schools private, it's that simple to move public dollars to make everyone in the state pay for people to make private school choices and private school choices in schools that have zero measures of accountability, like public schools do. So again, when when leadership or, you know, partisans get out there and say, hey, you know, we want transparency, we want accountability for our tax dollars, that's a lie. Because what this does is it makes, it assumes that those dollars are going to go and be used in some helpful way. And of course, when you're able to pick and choose, the students you take, and the students that you leave behind, it's very easy to show that your your educational practices are six, you know, and entirely successful. When you don't have to deal with exceptionalities, you don't have to deal with, you know, any kind of at risk or, you know, poverty issues. You can just, you can make things look really good.

Yeah, well, and, you know, so two things here, I also want to mention that, you know, if you factor in what they're trying to do with parents Bill of Rights, which would allow a parent to dictate how their child's education will go based on their beliefs, values, or principles, which are not defined. So it's, it's at the discretion of anybody's interpretation on what exactly that means. So you could have parents, in continuing to send their kids to public schools, but saying, Well, my kid's not going to my kid needs to be exempted from half of their coursework, and you will still have kids who then who are completing everything. So

you could under this bill, under this bill of rights, you could opt your child out of anything, and the language is that the parents have the right to direct their child's education, without consequence to their academic record. And so, so effectively, if my child struggling, but it's just barely maintaining enough to participate, I can opt them out of the next test, the grades don't matter, that child gets to go ahead and play ahead of some other person on the team who has been doing the work. And then, you know, there are many questions of and I think you brought this up in your testimony, Lauren, have, you know, again, the kind of secondary impacts of this, which we shouldn't believe are just happenstance. But so so when when all of these people are opting their children out, and suddenly the, you know, their college entrance exam doesn't go so well, or their AC T is is not what they hoped it would be? Because they haven't gotten a full education and met those standards. Are they going to then point back and say, See, we told you, these schools are failing, we told you these teachers are failing, when, in fact, it is that these kids have been, you know, withdrawn, and have not been able to, you know, have a full education because of, you know, some other ulterior motive. So, you know, that's, that's kind of their their game here, it seems

well, and there's so there's that tie in, and eroding the trust in public schools. But there's also the tie in to again, going back to the time that vouchers, they're not concerned about extending these rights to the parents of those with kids in in private schools or non public schools. The bill specifically is written to reference school districts, private schools, home schools, any other operating non public schools don't operate in school districts. So these are parents rights being established only for the purpose of being used for public schools. So and I know of several examples off the top of my head of private schools that currently operate under the quote unquote, low income tax credit scholarship program, that require parents to actually sign an affirmation that they support all of the educational programs in that being offered by that school in order to be admitted to the school. So if the parent doesn't sign on to that they are denied admission to the school, but they're setting it up that in the in the public schools, the parents have the ability to object to everything,

so so it's not in their mind, you know, again, if you need any more evidence, this is all about ideology, culture, you know, ethics, morality, all of those things, you know, it's public dollars that we're talking about with these these voucher schemes that are moving to private schools to your tax dollars, my tax dollars, but there are no measures of accountability. There are no equivalent, you know, bills of rights, allowing people to use those public dollars and to direct their child's education. In this case, the private school is unaffected and they get to do whatever they want. It's you know, there's an irony in the contradiction of all of this, that we use big government to regulate even at the even in the private sector, who can and can't participate in sports. But when it comes to this, suddenly it's hands off the private school. And we know that they, you know, we've seen their their lobbyists up there demanding complete autonomy and freedom from any regulation. So

well, and that was the second point that I was going to make, as I go back to what Tim was talking about earlier with the capers bills, and it's the theme all session is you've got two or three proponents. In most cases, they're they're from national organizations. In some cases, they're being flown in out of state versus hundreds of testimony from organizations like us, and then also from private citizens. And like, in the case of the vouchers, there were 265 opponents, and these were from educators. They were from administrators. They were from parents, private citizens, compared to three to five proponents from national organizations that are the dark funded, dark, money funded organizations that are looking to and have in many cases blatantly said their mission is to destroy public schools.

Right, right. Destroy your neighborhood school. Okay, so we are running very long on time. So we've got two quick issues to get to. One is I know that there is the firearms education bill, which mandates for districts to use the NRA Eddie Eagle program. Again, we'll we'll ignore, I guess the fact that, you know, we have this national lobbying group that is under ongoing investigation for corruption. But somehow, they are the best to get into the schools into let's be, let's use their language for a minute, which we shouldn't do. But we're going to indoctrinate kids around firearms. Certainly we all believe that firearm safety is important. Absolutely. But when it comes to who teaches that firearm safety, who's the best, you know, to bring that into a classroom, we believe that the local boards of education that are elected by, you know, citizens in those districts are the people to determine that. But here again, we have these, you know, anti big government, supposedly legislators who say, well, but in this case, we want to use the power of the big government to tell you what to do and how to do it. So where's Eddie Eagle going? I think that was passed out of that. That's right. Yeah.

So the House version, which is contained in House Bill 2304, passed yesterday on a vote of 78 to 43. It will now go over to the Senate, the Senate has passed their version, which is Senate Bill 116. And it is now over in the house going through that process. So I am anticipating we will see one of them reach the governor's desk at some point this this session.

So whether you like it or not the NRA is in your child's classroom in the near future. Unless the parents Bill of Rights comes around, in which case, then you can just direct your child that they won't be a part of that. Yeah,

well, and quick sidenote here on Eddie eagle is they're specifying at Eagle specifically for grades K through six in the bill, I believe. And the older grades have options. It doesn't have to be at Eagle. But when you look at the materials for Eddie Eagle, it's branded with the NRA information. And it at times directs them to go to the NRA website. And it's not a a standalone website. It is actually the NRAS website. So then you are opening up avenues avenues to look at all of their political action, among other things, and if I mean, I can only imagine if there were some other organization that had a curriculum like this that did the same thing. It absolutely would be going nowhere. Oh, absolutely,

absolutely. Imagine if, you know, well, we won't go down that road that everybody can think of examples there. But so the point is, if you believe that politics and and politicians should stay out of your child's classroom, and I think, you know, by and large, that's what we all believe, then this is this is a bad bill for that reason, regardless of how you feel about the NRA and whether you support it or not. It just opens that door for others to come in and do what they want. So the last thing we need to talk about real quick is we have we just you know spent more than In a half an hour talking about all of these, you know, things that are that are happening and that are troubling. So what do we want our members to do about this? What do we want educators? What do we want citizens to do? Aside from what they're doing right now, which is listening and getting informed? What's what's the real action we can take here. And author that Tim, you had something to talk about with that

as we've gone through this exercise today. And as we're getting into about day, three of no sunshine, lots of rain cold. And all of these issues that Lauren and I have dealt with, we probably sound a little amped up and a little bit cantankerous. And for, for good, for good reason, political boxing matches and intend to not get emotionally upset over a lot of this stuff. But this week, I've had my fill of have a lot of this stuff, particularly when, when they're messing with marginalized folks when they're messing with pensions, you know, just in all the misinformation. So I guess what I'm saying, and this is as much to me as it is to everybody that's listening, we've given you a lot to digest today. And it's been fairly, the sky is falling type of stuff. So let's walk back a second and just remember, to try to still find some silver lining in all of this madness that's going on at the Statehouse. And that silver lining will be me continuing to be a broken record, on the importance of relationship building. And finding those legislators that actually may be on the other side of our issues, but at the same time, be reasonable people with a sense of fairness that are willing to listen to us. And the reason I say that is because I've had a number of discussions this week, just based on a couple of my testimonies. And it's interesting that the more provocative I got in testimony, the more people that were willing to talk to me and talk to me on a friendly basis. And I'm starting to find as his Lauren, I believe, we're starting to find that there are people on the other side that really do want to hear from us. Now, at the same time, I've had a couple of discussions this week with people that I thought might have been reasonable. And I found out that they are absolute loss causes, I'm not going to call those folks out. But we certainly will keep track those folks this week. So in to answer Marcus's question on on what to do know who your legislator is, most of you do. Reach out to them in as positive of ways you can on these issues. And try to help us figure out if they're really willing to listen and really willing to take into account the concerns we have on those folks that are willing to actually go to bat for us. And whether it be this session or sessions down the road?

Well, I'm going to say something that's a little bit more specific, maybe, which is, you know, as Tim said, you want to build those relationships, but as much as you can, and you are an educator in a classroom, tell your story, talk to your legislator, tell your story of what you actually see in the classroom. So so get behind the wall of hyperbole and rhetoric and all that and say, Hey, I know this is you know, what I'm hearing is going on, but this is what we actually need. And the more that they hear that the more that they that it's very easy to do these things and to, you know, advance this partisan agenda, whatever, when when you don't have a name and a face and a personality, behind any opposition when that comes forward. And they know that they're going to see you in the community and that you're working hard for kids. And here's how you're doing it. That's really important to them. So writing this postcards, certainly writing emails, but making actual, you know, human contact with these people is a very important thing. But as Tim said, we really need for folks out there to be educating others, we need this information to be shared. So anyway, we're going to end it there because we've gone so long. So we've given you a lot to think about today. Thanks for taking some time to listen with us. We'll have more next week. Follow us at WWW dot under the dome chaos.org You can look at our testimony there you can read our posts, and you can interact and and see what's going on help others, educate others and follow along. Okay. Thank you for listening today. We'll see you again next week.