 Good morning. There you are. How are you doing? Great. It's nice to see you. Thank you for joining us. And we have. Most members of house education here with us. This is obviously a subject of interest to them as well. So. We've just spent the last few minutes. So we're going to have a little bit of context, but not a whole lot. And so the purpose of asking you and Brad to join us today is to look at the, I never know whether I should call it 30 million or 27 million, but that bucket of money. And. You know, guidance that, that Mark had presented to us, you know, and get your thoughts about how it is, how it will be distributed. Number one. And also whether, how, um, and, um, in what way it should affect the education payment that goes out to school districts. Um, and. You know, it's a little bit of a discussion on that subject. We haven't made any decisions. We've had actually fairly little discussion about it. Um, but we're all aware that we're looking at, um, that ending fiscal 20. Um, with a small deficit. Uh, you still look like a big one. Now it's looking smaller, which is good. And fiscal 21. Um, with a pretty challenging. Um, I don't know how you count the money, $166 million problem to solve. So. That's the, that's the framework. Um, so, uh, thank you and, uh, let you go ahead and, um, get started. Good morning, Dan, Secretary of Education. It's good to see you all. Um, yeah. It's just a start on the mechanics of the, uh, we call Esser, the elementary secondary school emergency relief fund, uh, that's, uh, you know, 30 million. The SCA or the agency can reserve up to 10%. So that's how we get down to the 27 million. Uh, agency applied for the funds, the application, our state level application was approved. Uh, we're in the process of, uh, creating an application for the LEAs to apply for those funds. Uh, we put that on hold, uh, this week. Uh, the US department of that issued some guidance, uh, to Friday's ago that, uh, caught everyone's attention at the national level. And we thought the guidance might be inconsistent with the intent of Congress. So we're working with other states to get clarity on that before we, um, turn on the application to LEAs, but we expect to make that decision this week and that, that guidance, just so you know, pertains to, um, the calculation of how we call equitable share of services or how, um, how we, uh, how we, um, how we, um, how we, um, how we, um, how we fund the funds under the title grants in particular, uh, are required to be shared with private schools. Um, the guidance that came up sort of at the last 11th hour from the US department of that seems to be a different interpretation of what we typically would do in terms of how we calculate that. So we're just trying to get some clarity on that. Most states thought it'd be prudent to wait till we get some clarity before we disseminate the dollars. Um, so we're just trying to figure out what the, what we would norm, what we would normally do and what the guidance. Yeah. So I think just in a, uh, simply, uh, typically under title grants, uh, districts are required to, uh, share services based on a calculation. That's determined based on the poverty levels of students in their districts. And this new methodology expands it out to be the broader number of students, not just the restrictive to the students in poverty, but basically would provide, uh, the opportunity for, and the requirement for a great, a greater sharing of, uh, these resources with private schools. And that's, that's a departure from the traditional methodology that's been used. Choose enough that I don't understand why, why that happens. Can you explain that? Why, why the, the policy requirements there or. Why the shift from poverty to all students, um, and the, um, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know why that holds in the more sharing with private schools. I think that's what he said. Um, yeah, I think the general idea is that, um, the, the amount that districts are required to do an equitable sharing basis. If you use poverty, it ends up being a much smaller amount than it would be if you use the larger population. So, um, And the council chief states school officers have interpreted to be a pretty consistent, um, approach from the U S department of education to consistent with the intent of Congress to put these funds out as quickly as possible to the states and to school districts and not really to interject any, uh, new policy approach. And, uh, this was flagged immediately as a, uh, sort of a policy change consistent with the secretary interest in voting, private school choice and so forth. So it's a departure for how the methodology has been used previously. So it's just, it was so inconsistent with what we've seen as a stream of consciousness as you will from the U.S. Department of Ed in terms of approaching cares and the COVID response that emerged pretty quickly to everyone as this is a policy change and something that has to be reconciled with what most people interpret to be the intent of Congress and CARES Act. So that's being reviewed right now. But our, we had a choice basically to slow down the application process. If we had created an application that used a methodology that was flawed, it would create more problems later on. So we just, we slowed down the application by a matter of days, but I can give you a more detailed response as a follow-up if you'd like. But I think to the point in this conversation, just so you know where we're at with disseminating the ESSSR funds that's been slightly delayed by, I'd say by a week until we get some clarity on that. We hope by the end of this week to have that clarity, I had bi-weekly calls with the council of two state school officers and this will be a topic on our Tuesday call today. Scott, you had a question. Did you change your mind? So, so I'll go back and ask my question again. This money under sort of the normal method would go to private schools, but by changing the basis for the distribution from poverty to all students, private schools will get more money. Is that what I'm understanding? Yeah, essentially districts when they receive the funds under title one are required to do an engagement conversation with the private schools in their region and the extent to which they provide assurance that they will share those funds on a basis on an equitable basis with the private schools in their area based on a conversation with them, previously was determined consistently with title one. The interpretation was based on a standard that restricted that pot of money to the number of students in poverty because title one itself is essentially focused on students in poverty. This new standard essentially opens that up to a much broader sharing possibility. So it's really, it's a requirement that falls to the LEAs, the local districts and we want to be very clear in our application process because they're the ones that have to sign onto that assurance at that level. So we want to ensure we have a clear understanding of the interpretation of the law and the new guidance seems to be somewhat a departure from previous guidance. Robin. Thank you. Just to be clear, this is a requirement or this is an option? It's in the assurances. So the SCA has signed, you know, we had to assign assurances that the funds essentially would be used in the accordance with the law. The LEAs, the school districts also have to sign the same assurances. But what happened was the US Department of Education put out guys and explain on what particular item of assurance means. And actually on Monday, they put out further embellish, frequently asked questions about this issue as well. So it's in the assurances. Okay. So does that mean it's a requirement that we have to share with all schools, all populations, not just with people in popular? School districts have a requirement to ensure when they sign off and receiving these funds that they distribute those funds in a manner consistent with the law. Okay. Thank you. So it sounds from what you're saying that you're trying to get the money out quickly. Is that correct? That's been the intent all along for Congress and for the States. We've had some discussion, not much, about whether the money should be distributed in fiscal 20 or 21. If it gets distributed in 20, it's basically on top of whatever the districts have already received from us. So that money can't then be used to offset some of the costs in fiscal 21. Is that your understanding as well? Yeah, we understand our obligation to get the funds out as soon as possible. We've looked, I guess, more practically on the issue of to what extent we could implement. I'll call it a clawback for lack of a better term. And now, and we think it's problematic to do that now. We think it could be implemented after July one for fiscal year 21, but I think it's due to the timing at the end of the fiscal year, we're very challenging to implement that now. But we do, it's our understanding, we do have a requirement to get the funds out immediately. Right. So when you say it could be implemented for 21, it can't be implemented for this pot of money. That's correct. Emily. Thinking realistically as about as quickly as possible. And I heard you say you need to develop an application process with the school districts. What is the timeline for that application process? We have that more or less, we have that ready to go. We have a electronic grant dissemination process that we've been working on setting up that. It's not, that isn't the hold up right now. It's just we need to get clarity on this guidance and how it applies to the calculation so we can include that in the online application. So can we go through that timeline? Well, it hinges, I would say, assuming we get some clarity. And I think this week we internally have set a goal to working with our partners, states to understand how this federal guidance should be applied to that methodology. Assuming we get that this week, then I would expect the application to go live next week. And then when would responses be due? It doesn't, there's no deadline per se in that regard. The LEAs would be able to start applying and filling that out, but we'd help them. There's no deadline in that regard in terms of the application. But we would essentially have the application live next week, I would expect. And then after the application goes live, how soon do you foresee disseminating the funds based on the applications that are coming in? Yeah, I'd have to, the mechanics of that aren't overly clear to me. That's pretty far down in the process of how the funds arrive here and so forth, but I would think the commitments would be available and districts would be able to draw down the funds pretty quickly. Okay, and I'm just asking, because I'm sorry I didn't say this at the beginning, I'm thinking about how close we are to July 1st and whether, you know, best intentions aside, we might wind up after July, whether we want to or not. Yeah, I don't think that's necessarily likely, but you know, I think really the, it's been a very expedited process other than the fact of this guidance hiccup. But I would expect, you know, my initial prediction was the districts would have their funding commitments by the middle of May, like by the end of next week. So we're maybe a week off on that due to this guidance delay, but I still think we're on track for this month. Said Emily, yeah, Scott. Yeah, I just want to add here that there's a further complicating factor on these title dollars, because most title dollars are received prior to, they're known before the budget process and these budget votes, and they filter their way in a variety of different ways to the publics and the independents. Some independents don't take title dollars, but that works itself out in the budgeting. This is a little different because these dollars are becoming available for FY21, when FY21 has already been voted on. So I guess we'll have to see what comes out of the Department of Education, but this is pretty unusual. Yeah, I would say typically districts are able to project what their title funds are. The title funds are basically allocations based on census data. So when they're presenting their budgets to the voters, they usually, this varies, districts are required to present a budget that includes all of their education spending, including costs that they might have attributed or tagged to grant funds that are coming into the title grants. So there is a prediction usually in districts when they present their budget materials to the voters of how what their allocations will be, but there's in the last several years, the last eight years or so, there's been challenges to doing that as the federal government due to political reasons has delayed those allocations or what have you. But it's not necessarily atypical that districts don't have their grants in hand after much after town meeting date. So this isn't that unusual in that regard. Of course, this is a totally unanticipated funding stream. And I just say the linkage when we start talking about how these grants or how these funds can be used, they're allocated to the school district based on the same methodology that we use for title one, but they don't have to be spent in accordance with title one. There's approximately 12 different ways they can spend the funds. It's fairly flexible. And as long as essentially the districts are using their funds consistent with an established federal education program, they have great latitude in determining how they use those funds. And similarly, the agency, the SEA is prohibited from really restricting how LEAs use those funds. That's in the guidance as well. Scott, you also? Kate. Thank you, Mr. Secretary. I am looking at a number 11 on the allowable uses which has to do with implementing summer learning and supplemental afterschool programs, which indicates that clearly we should be able to use some in FY 21. But my question, it has to do with how does this relate to IDA funds, special ed funds for students that will be required to be receiving compensatory education for lack of meeting progress on their goals? Yeah, it's a complex question. So Representative Webb refers to this concept of compensatory services in special education. Those are services that have been deemed to be necessary or required. A district is required to provide those services usually as a result of going through a due process proceeding where the parent contends the student has fallen behind and therefore essentially through the hearing processes, the district is ordered to provide compensatory services to the student to get them back on track. Our understanding of that, and this is still special ed, guidance is evolving relative to COVID-19, is that compensatory requirement really won't be even contemplated to a certain extent until we sort of declare we're heading back to normal, if you will, for the regular ed environment. And part of the contention that's underway now is this summer going to be a return to normal or not. And our expectation is that it's not necessarily that the fall will not necessarily be, the emergency is not over. So we'll still be in some sort of modified form of continuity of learning for some time, though it's certainly our expectation that we'll return to in-person instruction. So we're using the term compensatory education might not be applicable yet, but we certainly wanna use the summer to prepare students for successful entry into that fall, even though the fall won't necessarily be the new normal or will be the new normal, won't be the old normal. So we know districts will have costs related to students falling behind, all students, including our special needs students. And that's the hard when we start thinking about this sort of clawback moment, if you will. We think we have the opportunity to do something in 21 relative to allocating CARES Act funds to districts and considering the impact on the ed fund and so forth and so on. And where it's more challenging is when we start thinking about what are the cost implications of the COVID-19 emergency, we can sort of do, and Brad can walk you through that a little bit of, how much districts have spent today and there's ups and downs in district budgets across the board, but what we can't really quantify now are these student support costs that are really, if you think about the wake of this emergency and when it's impact is fully measured after it is over, those costs are gonna be significant both in compensatory services and other social emotional supports for students. And that's the thing that's really hard to quantify at this point. So when we start thinking about, I keep using the word clawback, the use of the ESSER funds, which are once again the 27 million, the ESSER funds have a timeline, I believe school districts can use those funds through September of 21. So they have a greater trajectory on those funds and we do under the CRF funds. So CRF funds, the big pot of money that's available at the state level, I believe, that's through December of 20. So when we start thinking about a sort of the clawback approach where if we were to essentially short districts, their ESSER allocation, but then seek to hold them harmless through CRF funding because CRF could be applied to school district expenses. One of the challenges with that is gonna be around the time of that. So because the CRF funds more or less, I believe expire in December of 20 where ESSER funds expire in 21. So we have to ensure particularly on the issue of student supports that we don't have our arms around too well yet that that'll emerge I think towards more towards the tail end of the crisis, specifically that's something that's very much on our radar as we've been contemplating some of these challenging financial dynamics. I mean, one of the other problems is that the CRF money is much more restricted in terms of how it can be used and the ESSER, is that what you call it? This other pot of money was 27 million has a lot more flexibility in it. So I'm concerned about the push to get the money out more as quickly as possible because if there is any ability to claw it back and keep the districts whole, the fact that we put it out in fiscal 20 is gonna shut off those options. So I don't know, not sure exactly where that thinking is leading me other than as you talk. And as we talk about, and I'd love to hear from Brad a little bit more about what's happening in the schools, I don't wanna get too far out into the education committee's world, but as I listened to you, what I've got flashing in red in front of me is $166 million and that's the money we've gotta come up with in 21. And that is not gonna be solved on the backs of property taxpayers, I don't believe, but I don't think it can be. And there have got to be, we have got to leave ourselves as much room as possible to solve that problem with federal money and pushing this money out quickly may foreclose that option with a fairly substantial piece of federal money. Yeah, I'm not sure. I mean, the districts are allowed to carry these funds forward beyond the end of the fiscal year. So they once again have through 21. So when I've seen managed other title funds of a similar nature, I mean, those balances carry forward in not essentially their local general funds, but in discreet funds, they use fund-based accounting. So I'm not sure to what extent issuing the funds now as intended and possibly required by the law would restrict our options because I think the funds are still gonna be there. And I guess the question would be to what extent does that impact their funding decision, their spending decisions now, which could manifest itself in the form of unanticipated surpluses, which once again still could create the flexibility we're looking for in the next fiscal year. But it's hard to say at this point with, and Brad can give you a sense of this, districts have been impacted very differently today relative to COVID-19. So it's not like all districts are experiencing the same effects, but then we know to representative Webb's point, there's gonna be a bunch of activity in the summer that is unanticipated, both in terms of feeding students and summer programming and so forth and planning programming just to prepare for the fall. So, you know, I'll end my comments so I see Mark's coming in. Emily had a question. So do you wanna, Emily, you wanna do Mark first? Do you wanna jump in? If I could, that would be great. It's just a clarification. Yeah, you go ahead. You said that districts are permitted to roll over the funds. Is it possible for us to require them to roll over the funds? Yeah, I don't know if I'm confusing with the semantics or not. I don't think it's necessarily requires us to tell them how to handle the money. I think the, how they handle the money is a function of what the law requires. And I think it's set up in a manner that they will be carrying these funds over beyond the fiscal year. So I think, I guess what I was trying to understand the logic was if the money is given out prior to June 30, that somehow districts will spend all that money now between now and June 30 and therefore won't have those funds beyond June 30. And that would be a problem. I don't see districts spending all their, this money prior to June 30. I think that the issue is that the way our law is structured that we, our education payment is based on the budget that they vote and it doesn't bridge fiscal years once we're done with fiscal 20 or done. And then when we, then we have to pick up fiscal 21. So if there's no bridge in terms of that money, that money is, it's, so I don't know, Mark wants to jump in and he'll help me out. Yeah, so I'm not looking at the actual guidance. I'm looking at my summary of it, but unless I read it wrong, the guidelines provide that funds can be awarded within one year of receipt. So if the funds can be awarded within one year of receipt, I don't see why they can't be delayed until after June 30th before the awards get made, in which case you could use then use that, use it as an offsetting revenue in FY 21, which would really help this problem that we're facing right now. I don't see anything in the language that requires any rush to get these monies out the door before June 30th, but I can go back and check the regulations again, but that's what I'm reading right now. So. Yeah, I'll have to go and check that in. Well, I know there was the 30 day requirement for the federal government to issue the applications to us. And they did meet that deadline. I thought there was a similar requirement for us, but I can verify that as well. I think that there's a 30 day application period, and then the applications have to be acted on within 30 days. But in terms of reallocation from the agency of education to the individual SUs, I think you have up to a whole year to sit on that money before you allocate it. And I just want to point out that this is a pretty weighty decision. So I want to be really careful how we make it Okay, Brad wants to jump in, but Kate, you had a question first. You're, you need to unmute. It can be answered. It can be answered later because it's a little bit off this topic. Okay, Brad, go ahead. I was just gonna say, I agree with what Mark said that there is nothing in the federal legislation that says we need to get that out the door immediately. We do have up to the districts have up to September 21 to obligate the money. And Secretary of France is correcting that there was a big push from the federal government to get the money out as quickly as possible to us in 30 days, and there are 30 day limits there, but in terms of us getting money out to them now, I don't believe there is. I guess I would like to formally ask the agency to slow down until we have a really clear idea of what impact this is gonna have, particularly on the problems that we've gotten 21. Yeah, no, certainly. I mean, I appreciate the opportunity to brainstorm this with you. We wanted to definitely coordinate it. Yeah, thank you. Kate. What do you see looking forward as the greatest areas of requests that you will see coming from the districts and what do you see as highest and best use of these funds? More of an Ed question and committee question. Jason means. Yeah, I think, you know, you can certainly what we're seeing as a strategic planning exercise being promoted by the council to state school officers is, you know, based on patterns indeed that we're seeing in districts and that strategic planning framework has four domains. And I think it's fair to say, you know, those sort of encapsulate a lot of the activities districts would be seeking reimbursement for. One of them being continuity of learning. So just the provisioning of teaching online and the related student supports to do instruction online, remote learning, if you will. The area of conditions for learning, which is speaks to the in-person instruction in the learning environment. So you think of things like disinfection supplies, provisioning and meals, thermometers, masks, PPE, that kind of level. We have the issue of sort of governance and policy work. Probably this, I would say not as big a container as those other two, but districts will have needs around legal support and developing policies and procedures to enact the requirements, whether that be interpreting contracts and so forth. But I think, you know, those major areas, particularly student support areas, I think are the ones that are the ones that we really don't have a good handle on now. And I think those are the ones that we'll see or merge, you know, certainly as this trajectory with responding to the virus stabilizes more or less as we're managing it better, you know, I'm having a lot of conversations with the mental health folks and so forth. So I think we'll see a lot of that sort of infrastructure need emerge as probably the more costly items relative to supporting our response to the crisis. Let's see if others have questions, anyone? So if we... Bill Talbot has... I'm sorry, Robin, didn't see you. Bill Talbot is raising his hand. He is, Bill, go ahead. Hi, Janet, I'm not sure. Can I ask a question of Dan and Brad? Yeah. Bill, it's good to see you. Hey, Mr. Secretary, how are you? So... You've got to meet the strangest people here, don't you? I know, this is amazing. It's really strange, too. This is a timing issue with that money we were just discussing. Janet mentioned earlier about the possibility of using some or all of it as an offsetting revenue in FY21. If that were to happen, when do you need to have that information for the tax rate setting? I think really if we were gonna go that route right now, I think what we would just simply need to say is this is how much you're going to get. We already know the percentages, because I've calculated those in the background. And all I need is that final figure to do the allocations and then just let people know. And you would just do it? I think we can be done anytime. And you would just do it when you put the information together for the tax department, just add it in? Well, I would hit no. I mean, it would still depend on what the district report to us because we don't, I don't think we would be in... I would hesitate just add it in to what the report to us is an additional revenue. I think they would, we would need to say, this is what you've got, because remember this goes to the SUs. Right, that's right with the district. And so I don't know how they're gonna divv it out between the districts. So that's the question is, and when do the districts have to let you know? Well, well, theoretically, June one, because that's when budgets are due, but we always give them a little bit of that. But, you know, so we've got basically three, four weeks, we can do it. Okay, so, so then, okay, so all right. Okay, thank you. So I think what you two were talking about was what I was asking about, but maybe not. But my, my simpler question was, if we decided we wanted to claw the money back in fiscal 21, what's the process for doing that? How does that happen? And can, is that something the agency can do? Is that what you were asking, Bill? Yes. In a way that I- I think we can, we can do it. I think we've discussed, but, you know. We've done it in the past. So it can, it can be done, and yes. Okay. I was just worried about the timing of it all. I'm worried about the timing. I don't know if this is the path we wanna go down, but I don't wanna shut a door so that we can't at this stage. Mark, come on in. I'm wondering from Brad, is there any reason why the legislature couldn't dictate how the supervisory unions allocate these funds to their members? Yeah, I don't know. The guidance, you know, it talks about the, through the SEA anyway, having limited ability to direct how LEAs, in the LEA in this case, being the supervisory and how they do that. But I think that that might get into sort of a gray area of how the allocations are determined. I don't know, Brad, what do you think? I think it may. I hesitate to say that they could. I think it'd be, you know, it really says the LEAs get to determine how that money's used. And again, as they said to Bill, and you just mentioned Mark, our LEAs in this case are our supervisory unions. In a lot of cases, that's a single district thing, Burlington, Springfield, et cetera. But they're still SUs out there with multiple school districts. And we will be given to the SU, and I don't know how they will be allocated out of the school districts. But if they're just agents of the state, why can't we tell them that you've received X amount from the federal government for this program? It's going to be allocated to the districts on the same basis as we allocate them. I think the answer to that, Mark, is because the CARES Act tells us how we're going to allocate that money out based on the Title I allocations. And then it clearly says that it's up to the LEAs how to spend the money and that we don't have any say in it. Okay. Yeah, what I'd say, back to the idea of being gray, you know, most states aren't configured, you know, with multiple districts as part of LEAs. So in most states, not outside of Northern New England, all LEAs are districts, you know, a single district. And, and, and... Sorry. I was just gonna... Go ahead. You go. When we, when we, I guess we didn't do it, never mind. I was thinking about the error money and how we distributed that, but that went actually into the education fund. So bypassed this whole process. The clawback we did was on the teacher health care a couple of years ago. That's where we really did it. And I was just, I was just gonna go back to your, to your question, Janet. The way where I saw Mark and Bill and Dan was kind of, kind of two pronged is, is that there's your idea of letting them have the money and then clawing it back. There's the second idea, which I don't know if Bill mentioned or I mentioned or somebody did, where you give it to them as a revenue and it reduces their education costs that they are gonna draw down from the fund. So you kind of end up with the same result more unless not quite close. Yeah. And the latter one may make more sense. Yeah. Questions? If we did wanna say something about this, you know, the property tax bill would be a place where we could do it. I'm just not sure that we're really clear about what it is that we wanna do at this point. Anyone else? Were there other things that you wanted to let us know about this pot of money? What about the four and a half million in you? So I've actually two questions. The three million, the 10% that you're allowed to retain, can you tell us what your plan is about that and also talk about the four and a half million? Yeah, we haven't say we inside the agency and the administration haven't developed a firm plan yet for the three million. We are, I think, acknowledging that student supports, as I mentioned earlier, will emerge as a priority. So we're thinking it would be prudent to reserve the maximum at the state level and probably reallocate those funds out in some sort of grant process to address the areas of student support that emerges the most critical statewide. I think if that sort of logic plays out, that would reserve about two thirds of the 10% for that. We're also allowed, I should mention, to reserve half a 1% of the 10% for administrative costs so we intend to do that as well. And then we had a couple projects relative to the emergency response, immediately basically a help desk to stand up our ability to handle communications from the field and also to provision a system for continuity learning and teaching online. So those two would probably be together somewhere around 700,000, but I think the bulk of it, we try to figure out how to address the social, emotional needs of students from state level activities. The 4.4 million in the governor's education emergency relief fund, that grant application was submitted and approved recently. So the application's been approved and there has been no, there's basically three ways that money can be used. The governor's basically said he wants to work closely with the legislature and figuring out how to use those funds. But the four, I would say the three ways those funds can be used, one is to address the needs of some LEAs have been most critically affected by COVID-19. That's one of the permissible uses. The second permissible use is institutes of higher education that it might have been adversely affected by COVID-19. And the third bucket is more general. It could include social, emotional, sports for students. It could be LEAs, it could be other organizations that have been involved from an educational perspective with the COVID-19 relief. So there's fairly flexible approach there with the 4.4 million that the governor's expressed an interest in working closely with you on determining how those funds get spent. But the application's been approved. So that was accomplished last week. I asked this question before you joined us, but is that a grant that needs to go through the Joint Fiscal Committee grant? I believe so. I believe so. I had a role in getting the application process because it went through the US Department of Education. But the finance office could answer that more directly. That one sounds to me more like it is. The 30 million, because it goes directly to schools, I'm not sure that that is one. We would be involved with. Let's see, other questions? Anyone has anything else you wanted to share with us? I think we're working closely. I mean, Brad and our team, whatever we can do to help. And we appreciate the opportunity to brainstorm through this with you. Definitely, there's no easy solutions with it. And speaking of brainstorming, I haven't sort of issued an invitation to do this yet, but I'm thinking on Thursday of inviting you and Commissioner Greshan and Commissioner Bolio to join the committee to sort of have a discussion about really fiscal 21, sort of how we resolve that. So I hope your schedule is open. It'd be about the same time, 10 o'clock on the phone. Well, I'll make it open. That's great. I think it would be very good to do that. Sarita has a question. Hi, Secretary. I'm wondering if part of that money, the four million when you talk about higher institutions, could that possibly use to help fund the bridge funding that they are possibly talking about to problem solve the issue with our state colleges? Yeah, I don't know. My reading of the guidance indicates that it wouldn't prohibit you from spending it in that manner. I think it's pretty flexible. It's something I think you'd have to, you know, decide how you want to prioritize the use of those funds. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Just one last thought on my part. And that has to do with the delays that we have to act 173 our bill designed just for students who need additional support. If there's some way we can find using the COVID money to address some of the broader training, teacher training that we wanted in that bill that I think could be justified as a COVID related expense, given the number of students who are going to be falling behind. Yeah, and that's exactly where we're going in terms of when we think about student supports that emerge from COVID. I think there's an opportunity to align that with the broader goals of providing student supports that are really the essential design element of Act 173. Great. Thank you very much. Thank you for joining us. Hope we get to see you Thursday. I haven't actually set that up yet, but I'm working on it. Sounds good. Thank you. Great. And Brad, thank you too. You're welcome to, welcome to stay if you want.