 We're privileged to be joined this morning by US Secretary of Education, Dr. Miguel Cardona, who is announcing an ambitious plan to enhance equity and education nationwide as part of the nation's coronavirus pandemic response effort. So, Mr. Secretary, it is an honor to have you on this morning. This is an ambitious plan that looks to invite the American public to have feedback on substantial changes to help students in under-resourced communities and school districts. What elements do you consider to be the most important for families to know about? Sure, first of all, glad to be with you. Thank you for the opportunity. It has to be ambitious. For far too long, students, especially students of color, have not been able to access quality education the way other students have. So, we have to be ambitious to close gaps, to close opportunity gaps that exist, make sure that all students can succeed. And what I want parents to know is that you are your child's first and most influential teacher, and we are a supportive cast that the expectation is that there's stakeholder engagement to talk about how these funds are gonna be used and how the plans that should have equity as a backbone of it are influenced by your input as well. It's gonna take all of us to come together in ways that we haven't in the past to make sure we redesign education to provide better outcomes than had been provided before. It wasn't the pandemic that created gaps. It made them worse. They were there before. So it's time to build back better. This is intimately focused on K through 12, but in a company's guidance that you guys released last month on how federal funding and program could be used to support college access. Can you talk a little bit about that element of the plan? Absolutely. You know, we know of that access to college and even payment of college and loan debt affects some groups of students more than others. So what we are trying to do here is provide access that addresses the inequities that were there before. It makes sure that there are funds available to support that, in particular HBCUs, MSIs, TCCUs, get more support to make sure that they can help the students that they serve successfully get to and finish college. We know those institutions have done so much to help our professionals throughout the country. So it's really important that we back them and we back their mission and support ultimately our students who deserve an opportunity. I'm glad you brought up HBCUs. You led me right into my next question. If HBCUs are located in the areas that this report would designate as resource vulnerable for education and almost all these schools and MSIs are key resources in teacher training, student mentoring, community engagement, other areas that promote student success, are there any expectations that you personally have for districts to partner with schools like HBCUs or MSIs to make some of these recommendations and these funding programs more impactful for families and students? You know, when we talk about stakeholder engagement, having an HBCU in your community is a plus. They can serve as thought partners. They can serve as partner institutions on some of those shared goals. We know we need to diversify our professional teaching ranks. We know we need to engage with our families and our communities better. Why not utilize the expertise and the student body and the faculty at the HBCUs to help build capacity in districts when we talk about trauma-informed leadership, trauma-informed instruction, addressing gaps systemically. HBCUs can be great partners to districts and I encourage districts to make sure they take advantage of that great resource in their community. You guys, and then the final question, you've made so many investments in HBCUs in just a short period of time in this administration. What are some of the things that you're looking for in terms of the public's engagement, in terms of what you expect their partnership to look like? You referenced that earlier, but what are some of the things that families, community members, mentors, activists, advocates can do to support the department's efforts? Well, number one, we have to support HBCUs because HBCUs provide so much. 50% of the black dentists across the country come from HBCUs. 80% of the judges come from HBCUs. So we need to back them. They're a tremendous resource in our country. And again, just that advocacy that hold us accountable as educators to make sure that we're building back better, that we're not going back to a system that looked like it was before or else we're going to get the same results. So talk about how those partnerships at board meetings, at state board meetings, be a part of the solution. Educators, we're going to come together. K-12, higher education, we have the same goals to support our community, support our students, support our families. We have to be intentional about our collaboration and lead with a sense of urgency like we've never had before.