 It's great to see everyone welcome to today's webinar the whole child policy table is presenting investing resources equitably and efficiently. I am Linda darling him and present the learning policy Institute I'm joined by Dan Thatcher my colleague at the National Conference of State legislators and a brilliant panel that he will introduce to you shortly. We'd like to give a shout out to our sponsors which include and CSL as well as ASA the school superintendent's association and the soul the lions. This webinar is the fifth in our six part series on transforming state education policy through a whole child approach. If this is your first time joining us. You'll see here the other webinars in the series, and you can view the videos through the link in the chat. I'd also like to extend our appreciation to the Carnegie Corporation of New York Chan Zuckerberg initiative harmony and inspire at National University. William and flora Hewlett Foundation and pure edge incorporated in the Wallace Foundation for supporting the whole child work featured in this webinar series. I'd also like to thank the founders of our work on school finance, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the WK Kellogg Foundation, the rakes foundation and the yellow chair foundation. Today, we're going to be exploring how states can invest resources equitably and efficiently for whole child learning. And I'm going to ask to get the cursors handed to me there I go I see that I can now control the slides. Let's see how it's working. And we're going to talk about how many matters will be digging deeper into some of the research and policy strategies described in the interactive whole child policy toolkit. You can find the toolkit at the link in the chat. I'd like to thank our partners in the whole child policy table for helping to identify the resources and policy examples described there. We encourage you to explore the toolkit. I'll be launching this conversation with an overview of what we found from many years of research on how resource investments can support school productivity and student learning. We need to start with some appreciation for the current realities in the United States. We do have the largest economic disparity since 1929. About 1% of the population controls 10 times more wealth than the bottom 50% of the population combined, we have growing segregation and concentrated poverty, high rates of childhood poverty, food and housing insecurity in the most vulnerable communities. We have teacher shortages. A lot of students who are opting out of school challenges now with chronic absenteeism, not only associated with opting out or being feeling lost in the system, but also with issues of ongoing illness. Not only the COVID-19 virus, but RSV and other things that children are experiencing pandemic effects on the health and mental health of young people and a lot of disruption to the status quo. So that's kind of where we are at this moment. We do have the highest poverty rates in the industrialized world in the United States for children. Those are children are increasingly concentrated in specific districts and they're in schools that are increasingly segregated. In this context, only about 12 states spend at least 10% more on high poverty districts than low poverty districts. Most states spend less on children in high poverty districts, even though the districts need to meet a greater number of needs for those children. When we think about the anatomy of inequality, we really start with that poverty and segregation. We tend to layer on that unequal school resources in many states that leads to an inequitable distribution of well qualified teachers. We find that high minority districts and schools and high poverty schools have three or four times as many underprepared teachers as those in low poverty environments. That then contributes to unequal access to high quality curriculum and to dysfunctional schools, ultimately. When we think about what it means to lack a sufficient supply of well prepared teachers that also then is associated with many of the challenges we find in school. Poorly organized instruction not enough supports and scaffolds to help students learn the material exclusionary discipline is associated with underprepared teachers. Heterogeneous classes, which could help us avoid some tracking are harder to teach they require more skill so the reinforcement of tracking companies that and then quite often students social and emotional needs are not understood if you add to that implicit bias that is common amongst all of us in this community that can sometimes lead to assumptions that students are incapable that families don't care. It can reinforce harsh discriminatory treatment, and it can activate stereotype threat which is the feeling that any of us has when our identities that we hold are marginalized in society and that can be as a function of race or ethnicity or language or immigration status or special education status any number of things and teachers need to be able to understand how to dispel those anxieties and concerns that impede performance. What we know about what boosts achievement we have quite a long history of research in a number of these areas. Many decades of research we find that in fact school finance reforms that increase funding for low income students do improve educational attainment later employment and wages at very significant levels we've seen that in multiple states across the country in many many states, high quality preschool we know boosts achievement. We know that having fully experienced, fully certified and experienced teachers, and those who have national board certification which is an expert designation for those who demonstrated those skills actually have a greater effect on student gains than race and parent education combined, but teachers with those features are disproportionately allocated to more advantaged students. We know that from recent studies having a black teacher for even one year significantly increases achievement and graduation and college going for black students and you know number of studies, showing the particular supports that black teachers are providing for black students. We know that social emotional supports and restorative practices improve achievement graduation and mental health and reduce achievement and discipline gaps. And we know that community schools which provide wraparound services, mental health health services, social services as well as a very personalized approach to children and families also improve attendance achievement and graduation rates so when we think about how to spend money, we need to be thinking not only about the amount of money, and the formula that allocates it, but also the degree to which the money is spent on those things that really the research really leads us to a whole child approach where we can aim resources that people needs where we can put in place a 21st century curriculum with the kinds of assessments that are focused on the higher order skills and problem solving that we need in this age that is supported by skill teachers and leaders by the wraparound supports that many children need to be in school, able to concentrate on a regular basis and by early childhood education. When we think about community schools and I mentioned the wraparound supports they also include things like extended learning time. After school before school in the summer, where we can take advantage of learning recovery opportunities that we structure that time, productively as well as a variety of enrichment opportunities that make kids excited about coming to school. The supports that include social emotional supports for students, so they feel attached to and connected to school, the health programs and social services. So, creating environments where we know that we can find a way to meet all students needs not only helps improve student learning, it helps improve teacher retention as well because teachers then get the additional resources for their students that allow them to be effective in their teaching. We're seeing more and more state investments in community schools all across the country because of the effects of the pandemic and the recognition that these supports really make a difference in student engagement attendance and achievement. California perhaps the largest with $4.1 billion but also New Mexico, Illinois, New York, Georgia, Vermont, Maryland, Florida and others that are now considering this kind of an investment. We're seeing states increase the level of support prioritize funding for the highest need schools, using evidence based strategies so that the implementation is effective, and then investing in technical assistance, so that the work is productive. Now we know something about the policies that drive state achievement differences. The, this chart shows a pre pandemic ratings of states you can see a Massachusetts New Jersey, Vermont and Connecticut at the top of the rankings in eighth grade reading. And at the bottom Louisiana California Mississippi in Washington DC, a post pandemic in 2022. We actually see that New Jersey has climbed to be number one in the country in eighth grade reading that's that little red number with a star next to it. And that California has climbed to meet the national average. And there are real stories around the funding strategies that were used in these states that I'm going to talk about in my next remarks. What are the investment strategies that made a difference for student learning this report that you saw they're investing for students success tells the stories in some detail of several of the states I'm going to talk about. One of them is Connecticut one of the first major initiatives back in way way back in 1987, where they equalized funding primarily by raising and equalizing teacher salaries and salaries for school leaders as well. And they did that on an equalizing basis so as districts got to their minimum salary. They got more if they were a lower wealth higher poverty district, they raise standards for teacher education entry and professional licensing at the same time. So that as they were able to buy more teachers as you as salaries went up, they were also able to improve the quality of teaching. And that included mentoring there were performance assessments for beginning teachers they put a lot of resources into principles abilities to support instruction, and they were doing the same thing with principle mentoring and performance assessments and then teaching them how to support teachers as a key aspect of the principal's job. They put a lot of resources into professional development and reading writing math and science they developed standards and assessments that were really focused on higher level thinking and student performance and problem solving. And when they did all of these things. You can see that this is the chart for fourth grade reading in a very short period of time their achievement went up over the course of that next decade to be number one in the country, not only in reading but in math, science, and really buoyed them to the top rankings of states where they have mostly stayed ever since, although they've had some regression in the way that their formula operates they have maintained most of those kinds of investments. Massachusetts followed after Connecticut early in the 1990s they had a major reform in 1992 with a new formula that was weighted by student needs so depending on the student need including poverty and special education and other needs like that. Districts got more money so it was a very progressive formula they invested in preschool and health care for children at the same time they raise standards as Connecticut had for teaching and for teacher education. They established student standards again they use high quality open ended assessments of critical thinking skills. They did a lot around school redesign and then they stayed as Connecticut did in that groove with the same policies for more than 15 years they did that. In both states with bipartisan commissions that were established to come together and create a consensus reform with participation from the business community, from the community of parents and of advocates in the state etc. And then they were able to really stay the course and that's a critical aspect of reforms that work. I'm just trying to get this to move to the next one. There we go. You can see how a state funding went up in Massachusetts that's that top line, the gray line, and basically state funding almost tripled between 1995 and 2005, and then it has bounced around in that area since then. So that then eliminated many of the disparities in funding wealth that exists between and among the towns in Massachusetts. And we find this in many states where the little towns and districts you have very different capacity. New Jersey is the story that is an interesting one. They came online with their reforms after Massachusetts they began in 1998 they had 30 years of school finance reform lawsuits, nine different court cases asking the state to equalize spending between and among the districts. And finally in 1998 it was Republican Governor Christie Todd Whitman who created with the legislature the parody funding formula for Heine districts that brought them up to the level of sort of top 100 districts in the state in terms of funding. They put in place high quality preschool book for both three and four year olds it turns out that those two years of high school of preschool make a very big difference in achievement. And then did curriculum and assessments focused on performance skills thinking skills open ended assessments. They put in place strong bilingual education and put in place bilingual libraries and all of the preschool and elementary school classrooms. And what we know is that when that's done well it actually promotes stronger literacy in both languages but in English as it's evaluated later over time that they made similar teacher and leader learning investments and then they did engage in reform models, including the Comer model, which was one of those that supported some of the greatest gains, which really personalizes instruction around a developmental framework for children that all the adults come to understand how children develop, and then work together to make sure that they're supporting children's learning and behavior in consistent coherent ways. New Jersey, of course, those reforms led to major improvements in achievement, major closing of the achievement gap there was a moment. This is the first decade you usually see these gains and achievement over that first decade of reforms there was a moment at the period of time where the average black and Hispanic student in New Jersey outscored the average student in California which was disinvesting in education at the same time. At the end of 2022, this majority minority state with 60% students of color, 40% percent of students low income was first in the country in eighth grade reading and eighth grade writing third tied for third in math, but first also in high school education tied with Iowa so major improvements that demonstrate that it's not who the students are but what the support system is that really makes a difference in the long run. And finally California I had flagged earlier, because of its very strong gains in very recent years, put in place something called the local control funding formula, which sharply increases spending. Not only based on low income students English learners foster care homeless student designations in a weighted formula, but when they're 55% or more of those students in a district, the amount of money that comes allocated for those needs is much greater. And you can see this very sharp increase in expenditure over the recent years, as the formula has come online. That came by the way into being at a time when California been cutting budgets for many many years is one of the lowest spending states in the nation one of the lowest achieving states in the nation. No money on the table right away but as the new money was able to come in with some other reforms. It was then allocated in these new ways. And we see that from a recent study by Rucker Johnson. You can see the improved reading and math achievement, which is really especially tied to the amount of money that's coming through that concentration grant formula. And we also see increases in the high school graduation rate, especially for children from low income families during this period of time as well. One of the other things we see in California as resources have been coming in on the basis of this formula is during the pandemic like everyone else there was some drop in achievement that is the students who were tested in 2022 were at a lower level of achievement than those in 2019 on the state tests, unlike other states on the national assessment of educational progress California did not fall backwards in eighth grade reading and fell backwards less in math than others on average. What we found in looking at the data is that between 2021 and 2022 the rate of improvement in achievement for the students who were tested in those two years was much stronger much steeper than it had been in the pre pandemic years. So students are learning at a faster rate at an accelerated rate. We want to understand what's causing that the same thing was true for English learners you can see this sharper increase in 2021 to 2022 for those learners. And we think about the possible underpinnings for that which include in addition to the formula that I described the fact that there was a huge investment in computer devices and productivity to try to close the digital divide. There were investments in community schools with the reverend services, mental health supports, almost all districts getting access to expanded learning time funding for summer school, and nine out of 10 districts did offer summer school in the last several years, and after that learning recovery funding for tutoring and other forms of intensive accelerated learning, and then investments in teacher recruitment to solve shortages, development and retention. So when we put that all together let's see if we can make this slide move. We're aiming for a new anatomy of equity, in which we really get in place the supports for children, food housing, academic as well as social supports, equitable school resources tied to people needs well prepared and well supported moving towards this 21st century curriculum and assessment system that hopefully at the end of the day will produce the innovative and effective schools that we need for whole child education. And with that I'm going to introduce my colleague Dan Thatcher, who is a senior fellow at the National Conference of State Legislatures, and he is going to introduce our wonderful panel. Dan. Thank you so much, Dr. Darling Hammond, I appreciate the informative thorough representation presentation. I do have some news today that one of our panelists unfortunately had a medical emergency will not be able to join us today. That is representative will Davis. And he's a great guy has long been involved in the education finance reforms in Illinois and has a great amount of information to share. So our hearts go out to him and his family. But for now I'd like to introduce our moderator Renee Lohuda Renee is a program officer at the Kellogg Foundation she works in the area of early childhood education and education systems. Renee's works supports efforts nationwide that focus on effective teaching practices and systems level improvement through attention to equitable allocation of education resources. Renee's work in the foundation is informed by her 15 years of experience in Chicago public schools serving as an elementary school principal and assistant principal a professional development leader, and a middle school science teacher. She's an amazing middle school teachers as well as her work in business and as a lawyer. And now I'd like to introduce representatives Sharon to Mico Santos representative Santos was elected to the Washington State House of Representatives in 1998 representative Santos chairs the House Education Committee on which she has served for 25 years. She serves on the finance committee and consumer protection and business committee and serves appointments to the Washington State Education opportunity gap accountability and oversight committee, the legislative oral history committee, and the public stadium authority and advisory committee graduate of Evergreen State College and of Northeastern University representative Santos has worked in the banking industry on staff to local public elected officials and in senior management positions for nonprofit programs. She represents the most diverse legislative district in the state, and is the longest serving member of color to serve in the Washington State Legislature. And both representative Davis and representative Santos are fellows in the education finance fellowship, which is a joint program run by NCSL and LPI Learning Policy Institute. The finance fellows program brings together legislators and legislators staff nearly two dozen states to build that are knowledge of school finance research and policy and to share policy strategies to address school funding inequities opportunity gaps, and other pressing issues in their states. And with that, I will turn it over to Renee. I should also mention to that I will try to answer some questions and provide some insight where I have some knowledge and insight into as well these different topics. Thank you. Thanks so much Dan for the lovely introduction and also for pitching in with your deep insights as well and I see Dr. Darlene Hammond also on screen, who I believe will also be available to lend her insights during some of our panel discussion here as well. And welcome again representative Santos thank you so much for being with us today it's really wonderful to have you here, given your extensive experience as a legislator working toward making sure resources are invested both equitably and efficiently to support student learning in your state so really a pleasure to have you here and really looking forward to doing a bit of a deep dive into kind of the state of play in your state of Washington as we start our conversation here today. I'm hoping, if you would that you could start us off today by offering a sense of what the educational context is, kind of in this moment in Washington, when it comes to the state of funding and resources available for schools. And if you could tell us a bit about how your state has really taken steps to invest educational resources more equitably and efficiently in ways that really support the whole child. So I'd love to turn it over to you. Thank you so much for me, and thank you Dan, thank you, Dr. Darling Hammond for inviting me to participate with all of you. I always jump at every opportunity to work with both NCSL and LPI. Both organizations helping to really inform deeply the work that we do in the state of Washington in a variety of ways. I have a very important question about sort of what is the fight financial or funding context here in the state of Washington. And I think it's best if I start with a little bit of a look back to where we've been in the state and I won't go too far back I'll go as far back as I did myself, because that is when the state was sued for lack of adequate funding for public education in our state. In the years for that lawsuit, at first to come forward, the Supreme Court did rule that the state was not adequately meeting our constitutional obligation and most of our states have some sort of constitutional requirement to fund education. I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to understand what is the nature of your state's unique constitutional duty and obligation in the state of Washington what the Supreme Court deemed is that are because the Constitution lays education and Apple constitution of education in our state as a paramount duty, the Supreme Court ruled that above all other considerations, our state has the duty to fully fund an amply fund at education. The next thing in this lawsuit that I think just bears mentioning because it might be one of those unique elements of our particular suit is the court upon making this ruling retained jurisdiction over the process of moving towards full funding, which took about well from 2012 to 2018, about six years to have the courts finally deemed that the legislature had fully funded education. That meant we put in a huge amount of state funds, primarily in the, in the teacher compensation box, because again as the court ruled, you cannot have adequate education without a qualified teacher teaching that class so they clearly made that connection. And that did put us in a little bit of a strange box later on, when the federal government then passed some new rounds of funding during cares where they also put rules and restrictions around both equitable and I'm going to ask you to help me out there are two conditions one was equitable funding and the other was the ongoing maintenance of funding, because we had put so much new money into education, it actually disproportionately changed the percentage of state funds that went to say for example, education. So, those are interesting little elements. It looks like Dr. Darling Hammond wanted to jump in and say something. Oh, okay. Okay, so, so where we are in terms of fully funding and I will use quotation marks because, as an individual lawmaker, I might take a little bit of exception to the courts deeming us fully funding because we did not solve the special education funding. We did not touch that in our theory solution. We also did not touch the issue of pupil transportation. So those are outstanding issues that, and in the role of special education following the big pandemic. We are grappling with a crisis in funding special education in Washington state right now. But I think the bottom line is and I'll wrap up with this is we, we formerly had been funding K 12 education at greater than 50%. We were funding for the McCleary funding, and now both with the size of our investments. We are actually sort of the, the amount of money, proportionately that is going to K 12 education is actually now less than 50%. And part of that has to do with the influx of federal dollars. And this really strange sort of place today in trying to move forward with how are we going to sustain public education when we have all of these new challenges that are related to the pandemic, and to recovering from the pandemic that have to do with increasing shortages in our educator workforce, and that have to do with long standing pre pandemic dysfunction in the way that we actually fund. Thank you. Thank you so much for for starting us off with with some of that context and we're going to talk about I think the federal funding in a moment in a bit more detail. And I think we'll be the nod towards deep investment in teacher workforce right as a big component of the work that that has been done, and also would love to turn it over to Dr. Donnie Hammond for a moment I think you wanted to jump in on a piece, a piece there so you please and then Dan would love to offer you an opportunity there to round out. Yeah, I was really just nodding in response to the representatives comments but I will say that the point that she raises around special education is one that I think all of us, many of us are really needing to think about because it's not only the amount of money going into special education. And of course the federal government for years has not met its commitment to the 40% that it promised to put in and then states have been trying to make up all of the difference. But the other thing is that we've got to figure out how to spend that money and productive ways for children. And there's a huge teacher shortage across the country and special education. And certainly we're experiencing it in California you may not, may or may not have as much of that experience in Washington but it's pretty generalizable and getting highly, highly skilled and expert teachers in that area is what kids most need. You know they most need, you know, teachers who really this is very complicated, often medical as well psychological as well as educational knowledge that we need to be supporting children well. So if we end up often with underprepared teachers, then that leads to, you know, ask parents asking for a variety of other services, including a one on one aid and so on which can sometimes be absolutely necessary, but sometimes if we had special teaching structure in a more productive ways, kids would be making better progress along the way. And so we have a major school funding and school design challenge and I just want to reinforce your intention to get back to that, and say that we will happily join with you in problem solving because it's a it's a very important issue across the country. Thank you. I'll add that just by way of a little anecdote while Washington was going through that litigation the same court levied $135,000 fine per day that each day that the legislature was out of compliance that fine was levied on the on the legislature. That's just a little anecdote. More importantly, I will say that before the pandemic one of the most frequent questions we fielded at NCSL and by the way we filled questions from state legislators and legislative staff all over the country. And we are bipartisan, nonpartisan really, and try to provide us objective information as we can so when we fill these questions, we were really giving a good landscape of the two legislators of the research field and what other states are doing. So, the question that we did receive in terms of education finance it was what it was that in the funding form is they could do to direct resources to low income students students need resources more. And part of this came about because of changes in the free and reduced price lunch law the federal law, and the transferring over to the community eligibility provision. And that changed the way that states identified districts for additional resources, but I why bring this up is that earlier in Dr. Darling Hammond presentation talking about the need to direct resources is critical to to where they're needed most. This really was one of the biggest questions that we received from state legislators is, how do we in our funding formula what is the mechanism to get these funds to where they're needed. Really got amplified during the pandemic as as needs grew and and trying to hone that that part of the funding formula so typically. That is the part of the funding formula that will identify in a way awaits to a student or two district with concentrations of poverty. So we're waiting waited funding to those students districts. The other part of that though that we're getting into now is back to this question of how the money is spent and the importance of that. We're getting hearing from legislators or advocate where we're adding additional resources for for these districts and for these students but we don't know that it's being spent on them, or how it's being spent on them. And that gets into this, this difficulty and funding formulas between accountability on one end and fungibility of funds in the districts on the other end so that we want districts to be able to use these additional resources in a way that they believe and they know will work well. And also some accountability for legislators know that these additional resources are actually being spent wisely and effectively on students they're meant for. And those are just two of the big trends that we're seeing in in terms of education finance funding that we're seeing in terms of the funding formulas at the state's level. Yeah, I appreciate kind of those both sides of that coin, and also would add into issues have been trending to about transparency of reporting, right just about getting access to data right around what is actually, you know, occurring representative like turn it back to you kind of around this issue of of kind of getting the right funding right to the right students and the right places. And so when we, you know, historically have thought about educational resources and state budgets and I think still currently, right, a lot of that funding seems to often be siloed, right, and siloed in ways that are inefficient and difficult to access for families they may look like paper right in a spreadsheet version it's very, very clear kind of where the money is coming from and what purposes it's to use for, for, but you know students and their families have needs that are interconnected. And so getting access to those streams of funding gets a little bit less clear in real life, especially since, you know, that siloed nature of the funding can really impact students opportunities to learn if you can get it right. Um, can you tell us a little bit about how Washington is working to break down some of those funding silos to better serve young people. And then, you know, that's kind of the mechanics piece I think, and then simultaneously kind of how the state might be working to more intentionally increase collaboration right among stakeholders. So across agencies kind of internal stakeholders in the state, and then interest groups and stakeholders who are in schools attending them, you know, running schools, so that needs of the whole child and families are met. Right. Well, thank you for that question and I do, I think I will start by pinning myself to one of the things Dan just talked about, which is that balance between both the local control aspect, recognizing that we have a philosophical belief system that those who are closest to the problem or closest to the service that's being delivered should be the ones who are deciding the what's of the services being delivered. And to what extent, as well as then the tension it has with accountability and I wanted to just give one little example of a innovation that we developed in our budget last year and I think it still remains to be seen if it was effective but in our funding for formula, which is the prototypical school funding formula, and of course it goes out on an allocation basis so our funding formula may say that for every 500 students elementary school building we expect to have 28 certificate and staff and a number of classifieds, etc, etc, etc. Whether or not the district spends it that way is totally a district decision, but with the pandemic, really highlighting the need for more school counselors more health professionals like school nurses which are very very short supply. More mental health counselors in particular in our school buildings, short of trying to get and mandate a sing a mental health counselor in every building. So what we ended up was putting a new addition into the budget that we called sort of the mental health social emotional learning box, and we added a little percentage there, but we also required that that little box could only be spent on those professions. Part of the challenge there is that it is a swipe at local control, but it is also trying to get more money and get greater accountability so the reports that you referenced Renee are very important and but the question becomes, what is the data that the legislature needs, and what is it coming from. So one of the examples that I think Dan also raised was on the new federal CEP program, which we are, we made an effort to go 100% in the state with scaled way back. We have covered probably about two thirds of the students 1.1 million students in the state of Washington, we are after this legislative session, going to be covering about two thirds and so I'm feeling very very good about that, but here's the challenge. We've built so many of our special programs designed to aid students who are struggling to aid students who are poor on the free and reduced lunch status and when we don't collect that information anymore. The other systems fall apart and so we're having a systems breakdown by moving towards what one would argue I would certainly argue is a very good public policy, which is universal meals provided by our schools. So the other ways in which we've tried in Washington State I'm going to talk about a statutory group we created called the educational opportunity gap oversight and accountability committee, which is too long to say so we just call it the EOG OAC. And I think Jen's going to drop a little link into the chat box about our latest report. 2019, I think it was. We, maybe it was earlier than that, we put together omnibus legislation to cover many of the aspects that we heard from students of color and their families were barriers to their children's education. And from everything from lack of a diverse workforce to inadequate cultural competency training to disproportionate discipline and on and on and on. And I think there's two things that I think are germane to this conversation. One is on data. In Washington State, we require all schools, K12 public schools to report disaggregated data in very small we have an end count of 10 by ethnicity as deemed in the federal census, and we included several so for example in Washington State we have several federally recognized tribes. So we include each of those tribes and we're asking for data so that we can start pinpointing. Again, what strategies are working what what strategies are not what students are in trouble what students are not. So that's one thing when we talk about data is we need to have more specific data. The other thing is we adopted the Washington integrated student support protocol and this was really much more not to our local partners around the local control. So we've said that the learning assistance program which is our additional funding for struggling students, of course driven out by poverty, ie free and reduced lunch. And certainly that was supposed to have been the most or at least restricted funding, but over year, the years of course it became more restrictive, especially during the known child left behind when we started saying oh no it has to go to fourth funding no it has to go to, you know, these types of assessments. We said, we're going back to no restrictions your decision, as long as you use the Washington integrated student support protocol, which starts with an assessment of student and moves them to an assessment of resources in the community who can you bring in to your school that can deliver on some of those services that your students need, and then going through of course the public budgeting process at the school and finally, collecting data to ensure that the decisions that you have made locally with those dollars are actually moving the needle for the students that are delivering those dollars to your district. I know that was a lot. Sorry. I'd love to add on if that's okay. Please, please. A lot of great issues that you've brought up you know one of them is around, you know how do we allow local communities to spend money in ways that are productive for them, and still have accountability. Question to answer with that I think California is doing some very similar things. One is that the local control funding formula eliminated a lot of small categorical programs and folded them into that money and said, you decide how to spend it it was accompanied by local control accountability plans that local districts put in place to say, we've taken a look at our students, we've taken a look at our progress on the eight state priorities which include, you know, do we have a rich curriculum what kind of data do we have around college and career and etc, etc, attendance and so on, and then made a plan with the community to spend money to meet those needs, and that gets re up to every three years. So it's an alternative to the, you know, micromanagement from the state capital saying you must spend this amount here and that amount there, which of course also means that districts have to hire a lot of people sort of wearing green eye shades to collect the money rather than hiring, you know, teachers and others who are working directly with students. So that helps with some of it and in fact the first report that was done on by one of our economists on the local control funding formula was called money and freedom, and it was looking at how the freedom and the money allowed effects that were being found. But there's more on the siloing as well you mentioned, you're taking a needs assessment of students and community and so on. We're doing some of that in the community school initiative where that's the first thing you have to start to do. So because there's so much money coming at schools right now from the federal government from state governments for this, that service for tutoring for mentoring for mental health. If you don't have somebody at the school level, integrating that and actually organizing it to meet the needs of children, families and schools cannot take advantage of all these little different pieces of siloed money. So I also think we can help at the, at the ground level by, you know, creating ways that schools and districts can, you know, use tools like community schools to integrate, but we have a responsibility at the state level. I think there's a responsibility at the federal level to start to de silo the way in which we, you know, manage money to put in place, children's cabinets and other strategies where we're cooperating and collaborating across agencies, because it's really very difficult for folks particularly in little tiny school districts to manage all of the complexity of these funding streams so I just really appreciated your, your point on that. And the chat for anyone who's interested, you and Dan both mentioned also the difficulty of knowing what the socioeconomic status of a school is to direct money to it when the free and reduced price lunch data are no longer eligible so we had a little publication on that that I put in the chat in case it's helpful to folks who are trying to sort out other ways to develop indicators. All of those examples and just this content issue that's arising around basically design challenges that are arising in solvable right due to good policy changes that you know are are occurring. I really, really appreciate that in this concept to I'm hearing right around trade offs right that are involved right you're unlocking access but like you know the trade some of the trade off is like there is a person, for example personnel cost right in the coordination that's you know in to be able to do that. Representative Santos quick question for you before we kind of move into the kind of federal coded relief fund space, because some questions around that. I think you mentioned, you know, early learning is also an area of interest in Washington. Can you speak a little bit about kind of any kind of breaking down of silos there, in terms of funding or just other ways that you all are looking at in Washington that's an area that often comes up. As people are thinking about, you know, making that more accessible to families in the way that they use kind of both early early childhood ed and then kind of traditional K 12 which is increasingly becoming pre K 12 learning. Right. Well, thank you for that and to try and be as succinct as possible. Another problem that was clearly made even more highlighted during the pandemic is our shortage of high quality early learning facilities childcare centers and how much we depended on them during the pandemic. And, and we continue to as people are trying to go back to work. Our school districts and I really do believe our local school districts often are we call the states, you know, the, the, the experiments of democracy. But our local school districts are really where innovation is driven from necessity. And they school districts partnered with many of their early learning providers whether they are the federal program, or we have a state based early childhood education assistance program e cap. And with our private childcare providers to say, we know that early childhood education is necessary. We know there's not enough capacity in our community. Is there a way that we can partner together. Well there happened to be a small loophole in one of our statutes that allowed a program to blossom that has actually early adopters have provided this invaluable service in their communities by working very closely and cooperatively with the local early childhood providers, often braiding K $12 with federal dollars with state e cap dollars, and also including private providers as that program has grown. It's starting to be more of a threat to the early learning community in so far that it's become a program, all of its own, taking many four year olds out of the e cap system which if you've ever operated a nonprofit or a for profit small business for early learners, you need those four year olds to keep the business in tap so right now we are trying to develop legislation that keeps an equilibrium between private providers, and our schools, especially where we have local care deserts. And it's been a very difficult piece of legislation to, to, you know, wind through through the system. But one of the things that we recognize is on our road in Washington to universal early learning, and where e cap becomes an entitlement program in our state by 2026. We have to be able to protect the providers in that space, and ensure that the providers of our key 12 system are working nicely as they're starting to create new programs where they haven't existed before, but it is very exciting because we're seeing a partnership flourish between our traditional K 12 systems and our early learning providers, little bit of a, maybe a shotgun marriage in some cases, but it started off very very organically and so we're hoping we can see it replicate throughout the state. Thank you. Thank you for that more detailed look into into that piece of the the deciloing. You know we're close to nearing you know the end of our time and I'm hoping you could kind of round out the conversation with some thoughts about how the federal covert relief funds right have allowed, you know your state of Washington to meet right of the whole child, and maybe one or two challenges biggest challenges that those that funding stream has has posed. And then I think really on the back end, ask, do you have if you could offer one piece of advice to other state leaders who are looking to assist both, you know efficiently but also equitably in whole child work, education support, learning supports, you know what should they keep in mind. Well, thank you Renee that's an excellent question. I think it's important from my standpoint to recognize that COVID, while very huge challenge really made us as policy leaders and our partners on the practitioners on the ground, really rethink about how do we do score. I mean we are so stuck in this 19th century model of delivering educational services. And we saw how poorly we all fared during COVID with this model and so one of the things we changed the way we looked at how do we do school. And whereas all of our previous policies are about how do we get the child to school to receive the services. We started seeing with covert assistance, the need and the ability to bring school to the child, whether that meant bringing packets, whether that meant bringing Wi Fi, whether that meant sending out social workers. The last, the other thing I would say is one of the problems that we had in the COVID funds is that almost every legislature Dan can correct me I think is the funding source for the state budgets and funding from the Congress bypasses the legislature and went to the governor's and it went to this SCAs. That makes it very difficult for state legislators to get an understanding of how are these funds going to be deployed, having to push ourselves into the room of whether decisions. And so my piece of advice to other policy makers is one, get to know your, your documents your organic documents to work with NCSL and LPI and three be persistent. Stage advice. Thank you representative Santas, Dr. Darlene, Linda Havin and Dan Thatcher. Let's give a round of applause virtually to our amazing panelists. Thank you all so much. And I think that note to end on we really do need to rethink the way we do school. And I think we'll all walk away from this conversation reflecting on what that means for ourselves in our context and our state policies. I want to thank our co-sponsors, the School Superintendents Association, the National Conference of State Governors, and the Sold Alliance. This is the fifth in our six part webinar series so I encourage you to register for number six, which is May 24th. We'll focus on how states can redesign curriculum instruction assessment and accountability for whole child design. And if before you leave you wouldn't mind filling out a survey that will pop up in the chat for you we're always trying to get better at what we do through these virtual learning opportunities. Thank you so much for attending. And we hope to see you in May.