 Good evening, and thank you very much and welcome for coming out tonight on this very somewhat a little bit warmer than usual, but still chilly January evening. This is our community conversation, we're called Community Conversation 2.0, this is an opportunity for us to come back after a few years of Thrive 2027 getting started and really sort of not only check in with you all about what has been happening with Thrive 2027, but also hear from you about some of the issues that are important to you. In terms of what, and for those of you who don't know, I do this every time, my name is Ronald Jarrett and I'm Director of Public Policy and Advocacy at United Way of Greater Portland, and so the purpose of this evening is really to, as I mentioned earlier, come together to have a conversation. We're going to do a number of interactive activities tonight, and so the program is going to go until about seven o'clock, and one of the things we're going to do is we're going to hear from Ann Dalton, who's going to be sharing with us, Ann Dalton is on our Thrive 2027 Council, and we'll be sharing with us her experiences on the Council and what it means to her, we're going to do a little exercise with the minty meter, and for those of you who don't know, I'm not going to spoil it, it's quite an experience, it's pretty fun. We're going to talk to, we're going to hear from Senator Millet about LD1760, and that is a really important, well I'm going to save it for her talk, but it's a really interesting bill that a lot of folks are supporting to advance, to expand access to quality childcare, and so this is quite a piece of legislation. And we're going to have an opportunity, as a matter of fact, can I see a show of hands, who brought their cell phone with them? Excellent, and of those folks with their hands up, who likes to send text messages? Great, so we're going to do a little activity in which you will be able to actually do a little bit of advocacy using your phone, and it takes 30 seconds, but I'm going to save that until we get into that later, and also we're going to do a little bit of a breakout session, which is one of the reasons why I try to encourage folks to sit up front and around these tables, because it'll be a chance in small groups to hear from each other, what are some of the issues in the community, as well as what do you think we, as a community, should be doing about some of these issues, among others. And then we're going to wrap up and have a little bit of a reception where folks can, if you haven't already, do a bit of networking, and also an opportunity to ask us questions, some of the folks around the room. So one of the things I want to share, and the mid-term meter is going to be next, is more than three years ago, folks came together in hopes of ensuring Cumberland County is a thriving community, and the goal-setting process was overseen by the Greater Portland Community-wide Goal-setting Council, and this was representing many different voices across the community, across the county, and a cornerstone of this process were 90 community conversations, where we had with over 1,500 people, and we received over 550 responses to an online survey, and basically those conversations, we asked three questions, what kind of community do you want, what's stopping us from having that community, and what would make a difference. Now, three additional volunteer groups assessed community needs and aspirations, and using local data, we were able to end input from the community conversations and surveys and strategies, and looking at strategies that worked in other communities like ours, we were able to create the councils and the cabinets were able to create three goals that really guide the work that we're doing here, the first goal being giving kids a strong start, the second one is empowering neighbors to thrive, not just survive, and the third one being help us all live longer and better. And so one of the things I want to do is I'm going to pull up the minty meter. If you have your phone with you, if you can go to minty.com, that's M-E-N-T-I.com, and you're going to use, you're going to put in the code 1-4-6-4-8-2. So the first question is, what inspire you to be here today? So what inspire you to be here today? Thank you. Education, opportunity, community seems to be the big one. Connection, child care access, and information. These are all a lot of the reasons why folks came together around for our 2027 in the beginning, and it's really great to see that this is why we're all here today. And I believe there's a second question. All right, we've got a lot of really interesting answers here. I love a lot. That's great. Community guided goals, awesome. So as we see, there's a lot of different things. Almost as many people as are in the room have different understanding of Thrive 2027. And to help folks understand this a little bit better, I dug up the video that was created in response to the initial launch of Thrive 2027. It's less than five minutes, and if we can queue that up. Testing, testing. Good morning, everybody. Be celebrating what we're about to celebrate. We need more clarity of the process elements of this to make sure it is inclusive of process as possible. I think we would all agree that greater employment is a great place to live and work. I think we would also agree that some people are not doing well. For example, today, 7,970 urban and county Thrive owners do not agree at great level. Today, more than a half of our neighbors don't have sufficient resources for housing and other necessities. And today, like in the rest of America, our citizens with major mental illnesses are dying anywhere from 13 to 32 years younger than the rest of the gentle population. You know, greater poor living in Cumberland County are great places to live, but given these statistics, it's clear that we can do better, and we must do better, and we can. But only if we work together towards a shared vision and engagement voices into the work of a set-up shared culture. If we put people at the center of all of our combined or individual and collective efforts and engage two voices, we can make one way of change in our community. Together, we can make greater problems known as the place where everyone thrives. And that's why we're all here today, to announce 10-year community life goals for greater poor living. One, is that every child has quality learning experiences beginning at birth, and this is an absolutely critical goal because we all know that our kids are going to be leading our community tomorrow and we need them healthy, educated, and resilient. It's going to take all of us to ensure that even our youngest kids in Greater Portland have a strong start so that they can agree proficiently by the end of third grade because that is the mark when kids stop learning to read and switch over to reading to learn, which makes this an absolutely critical edge mark for life-long success. The goal, too, is that individuals and families have the education, employment opportunities, and resources to achieve financial stability because we know that when people have the education and employment opportunities to become financially stable, they can pay their rent on time, they can put food on the table. They're also better able to save for emergencies, buy a house, pay for college, and save for retirement. And this is why we need to all work together to ensure that more individuals and families in Greater Portland are financially secure and provide them with the educational and employment opportunities that they need. And finally, goal three is that children and adults will have the resources and opportunities they need to achieve optimal healthy lives. Today, too many lives are cut short in barriers to health such as untreated mental illness, substance abuse disorders, and domestic violence, and that's why we need to work to ensure that everyone in Greater Portland and Temple County has the opportunities to lead healthy lives and all that we can to reduce preventable early deaths. Just this morning, in 47, community-wide adults can get there. 10 years, the year 2027, you know, it might seem a long way, but the reason is that it will be here before we know it, which is why we need to begin acting today in order to impact Greater Portland tomorrow. Every single person to play, there will be and for every organization, whether that's a company or whether that's a service club or whether that's a book group, we really want everybody to feel that they have a way that they can contribute. We need everyone who cares about this community to get involved and stay at home. We need people, we need businesses, we need systems, we need organizations. We need everyone, but if we can do this and we believe we can, we will in fact thrive in 2027. We are absolutely excited to be part of this initiative and leading this initiative today. And, you know, we said today that we're all in. And today, the people, members of the community who came out today, showed us that they're all in. And we know that that momentum is just going to build and build and build. And together we're going to make an amazing community over the next 10 years. It's something really exciting and we're all very proud that we were here today in Congress for this beautiful day to celebrate that. You know, I've been with United Way of Greater Portland for about two years and have been a resident of Portland, Maine for, wow, almost four. And, you know, I haven't watched this video in quite some time, but after having been here for a while and doing this work, it is really inspiring to see the fact that so many different people from all over the region came together and to focus on three key goals that we know are actually going to move the needle and make life better for all of us. Some of us may not be some of the folks who are the beneficiaries, or rather the recipients of some of the support that whether our volunteer time, our community investments or advocacy helps to support. But we all benefit from this work and I think that's something that we should acknowledge because it's really important that the power of compassion, of empathy, and also of creating reachable goals and creating reachable programs and policies and efforts to affect this are so important and so needed. And so I just want to thank, first of all, Ann Dalton for being a part of this event. Ann is a senior leader with the Association of Junior Leagues International, and previously she was with Girls Club of New York. She was executive director there. She was Henry Street Solomon's director of Youth Employment Services and senior planner with the Vera Institute of Justice. Ann holds a BA in English from Cornell University and an MSW from Hunter College and is a graduate of the Carver Policy Governance Academy and the Institute for Civic Leadership's leadership intensive. She is a sustaining member of the Junior League of Portland and secretary of the Board of Portland Public Library. She's a board member of the United Way of Greater Portland and a member of Thrive 2027 Council. And I just want to introduce, thank you very much Ann for being here and sharing with us your story. Thank you, Ronald, but most importantly thank all of you for hanging in there and really being interested in where we're going with Thrive 2027. I've been asked to sort of reflect on three different aspects. Partly, you know, why do I support Thrive? I have to confess I was in at the very beginning on the Goals Council. What am I the proudest about in terms of what we've accomplished so far and then bringing it down a little bit to more specifically what we're going to talk about later tonight. How does Goal 2, which I am the co-chair of, that's the financial stability goal, how does that goal connect with the issue of ACES? Why do I support Thrive? Thrive is fundamentally to me, it's about how we show up together as a community. It's about inviting all who are interested to participate regardless of which sector you come from. It affirms that if we harness our efforts together and set specific goals, we all benefit. For Thrive today, that's about everyone having a good start in school, the ability to enjoy financial stability and the opportunity for us all to be healthier. But the facts are that not everyone in Cumberland County actually enjoys those benefits today. And as a result, all of us who live here are negatively affected. What Thrive offers is a community-built and data-driven way of tackling these persistent challenges. It's about doing things differently that I think notably sets Thrive 2027 apart. I think I'm proudest to go all the way back to the beginning and being incredibly heartened by the interest in the... across Cumberland County when we did the first set of community conversations that Ronald referenced earlier that led very significantly and very directly to the identification of those goals. Today, there are over 270 businesses, nonprofits, and government groups that have endorsed those goals, and of that number, over 140 have agreed to work together to achieve one or more of the outcomes. It's the willingness to come together and work differently to achieve the goals that I think is perhaps the most inspiring about our work. So what about goal two and ACEs? I think we all tend to think of ACEs as something that happens only to children. And yet without appropriate interventions and support, a child experiencing ACEs will grow to be an adult who still suffers from those adverse circumstances. That in turn means a greater likelihood that that adult will have difficulty in successfully obtaining employment and being financially stable. So goal two sees ACEs both from the perspective of supporting efforts at early detection and prevention that are primarily being addressed more specifically in goals one and goal three, as well as from the perspective of how an adult who experienced ACEs as a child needs to be supported to achieve financial stability. So that's why I'm involved with Thrive 2027, and thank you again for being here tonight. Thank you, Ann. And so one of the things that we wanted to do next, we have one more little minty meter exercise. Once again, we have a number of different answers here. Brain development is definitely an interesting one around, especially with regards to adverse childhood experiences and some of the solutions around that. And we'll be able to talk a bit about some of the A policy that we're looking to do around this. So moving past those actual implementation is definitely an important subject, an important question. Data is definitely a key part of this. We can talk more about that. And concrete strategies and implementation. Thank you. One of the things that we are looking at is, well, as Ann mentioned, we realize that adverse childhood experiences or ACEs is connected to so many of the challenges that we're trying to impact. And one solution for decreasing the instances of adverse childhood experiences is for a child to be in a high quality, safe, and affordable early care and education program. So recognizing this need and the need for meaningful workforce development, one of our legislators, including Senator Rebecca Millett, have co-sponsored LD1760. This is an act to support children's health, healthy development, and school readiness. And so I just want to first of all say thank you, Senator Millett, for being here tonight. And, you know, Senator Rebecca Millett is the State Senator for Maine's 29th District, and this includes South Portland, Cape Elizabeth, and parts of Scarborough. Now, she currently is Senate Chair of the Education and Cultural Affairs Committee and is serving her fourth and final term in the legislature. From 2004 to 2010, Senator Millett served on the Cape Elizabeth School Board and grew up in Portland and attended area public schools. She earned her BA and BS from American University in Washington, D.C. and her MBA in finance from the University of Chicago. And so I'd like to introduce you all to Senator Rebecca Millett. Hi, everyone. Oh, yeah, so I have been on the Education Committee my full time in the state legislature. For my very first two years, I was actually the Senate Chair, which was an interesting experience because I'd never been in the legislature before. And in the next four years, I was in the minority, but I was the minority lead on the committee and now I'm back to being Senate Chair. So there's a certain amount of... What am I trying to say? It's a benesity to that. We spend a lot of time in the Education Committee talking about why aren't all of our kids able to be successful. And it's been very interesting to see the progress of the discussion from my first year to where we are now. And last session in particular, countless bills came before us trying to get at early childhood experiences and social-emotional learning. There's a much greater understanding that what schools are experiencing is actually a continuation from the child's earliest life experiences. So this bill is a recognition that every child's experience is unique. Every opportunity, every barrier is pretty much unique to each child. And there is no one magic approach in helping that child thrive. There's a bunch of these in the back which explain kind of the overarching approach that this bill has. And it's basically for... There we go. Four different areas. Families. If a child's family life is unstable and healthy, it's no surprise then really that they're going to come to school with some serious setbacks. And we're recognizing that childcare providers, early education providers are a really great way to meet them where they are and try to get in early and quickly to improve their situation. This is all modeled against the Educare model. How many people know about Educare? So a good amount. Educare is a model that's been implemented across the country and very much reflects this approach. It's very expensive. And there's one Educare... actual Educare facility in the state of Maine in Waterville. And while it has this amazingly beautiful, fantastic setup for childcare for children, it's also a training facility as well. And they bring in lots of providers and agencies to come in and see what they're doing in hopes of spreading some of these best practices. But we're in recognition that we don't have the money to build an Educare in every community across the state of Maine. So a number of... I'm losing track of time, maybe four years ago, with the help of Mieleg, which is the Maine Early Learning Investment Group, which is a group of businesses, partnered with Educare Maine to try kind of a hub-and-spoke system, which is to say, you're not going to build an Educare in Skowhegan, but we are going to provide technical assistance to Skowhegan in hopes that we can help better support the childcare providers and agencies in that community. And it's worked really well. So this bill is to try to take that model and now create 10... 10... pilot programs around the state. So we've had one, it worked really well, and now we want to scale it up to 10. So you're working... So these facilities work with the families. If there is an unemployment issue, if there's a transportation issue, if there's a mental health issue, they have the ability to put those families in contact with whatever necessary resources that they may need. It's working with the early educators and saying, we recognize that your job is really tough. We have been hearing a lot about expulsions of young children from childcare centers because they are coming in with some serious behavioral challenges. And our childcare providers are not necessarily trained in how to deal with those kind of presentations of behavioral issues. So this model would provide that assistance as well to the early educators. And then of course, obviously, the children in this environment really thrive because their parents are hopefully healthier and sometimes the parents come into these with job issues and the centers can help them with that as well. We had a young, gosh, it's a sign of my age now. I can't believe I'm saying that. A woman who was in her, probably in her 30s, who did not have a job and was struggling to make ends meet. So poverty is one of the leading aces. I think we all know that. And so they worked with her to get training to become an early childcare provider herself. Which is really fantastic. And you could just see how proud she was of the journey that she had taken. And you know for sure that that is going to then reflect back into her family life in their house. So that's what the bill is. And our hope is, is that we are going to find the money in this round of budgetary discussions. It helps when the Senate president is the lead co-sponsor and have the opportunity to see the education model in person and interact with the children and the providers. And he's drinking the same Kool-Aid that I drank about six years ago. Everything falls from this. All of our workforce development issues. Our opioid epidemic issues. You name it. It comes from how these kids experience life in those first incredibly important developmental years. And the good news is after at least four years of the U.S. military retired military coming in our law enforcement officers coming in our business leaders coming in and talking to the legislature over and over again about why this is not a partisan issue. This is a main issue. It's not a partisan issue anymore. We now have a children's caucus that I co-founded with then Republican Representative Matt Pouliott. Now my co-chair is Solin Millett. He is a longstanding Republican leader within the State House. So that's really great news. But the real this costs money. Everything costs money. And so it's about making this a priority above all the other really important priorities. But in terms of the return on investment this is one of our favorite ways of getting our more conservative colleagues. It's one of the best that you can have. I think it's like between 6% and 12% or something like that So I think I'm going to wrap up there and I'm happy to answer any questions that folks may have about this project. There will be a public hearing in February. It hasn't been quite set yet but I really hope that folks will consider supporting this bill. Lending your voice to it the more the better. While indeed it's great to have the President of the Senate and the Federal Legislature and we have a Governor who has lots of competing interests in well so the more unified we are with our voices then we can bring everybody to that same place of support the better chances we have getting this passed. Any questions? We have a few minutes for questions. No? So part of the Living United Child Care Advertising Committee so we're very excited to hear about this bill. I'm also in the last month I've been in an event where I heard that community colleges talk about lack of support and additional funding for community college education. I've been at community meetings for the part of public schools talking about drastic changes that don't even come close to covering the budget. I'm curious and this is an uneducated question are there other bills that are also education focused as a legislature considering that this is competing with or collectively how has education as a whole been viewed in the last week? Yeah we've spent a lot of money on education in the state of Maine. It's a huge chunk of our budget. Statutorily the state of Maine is required to fund 55% of the total cost of public education and we have not met that goal since that referendum was passed for its second or third time I can't remember. But we are getting closer and closer so for 1% increase it's like a 40 or 50 million dollar investment. But when you do that then more money flows into the overall education system we have a very complicated methodology so Portland often does not get as much as others because of property rates and how it can it can raise more funds with its mill rate than a place like Rumford. So in terms of it, it's still relatively speaking it gets a lot of money maybe you know 8 million 10 million 12 million whatever but as a percentage of the overall budget it's very small whereas Rumford probably gets less than what Portland does but it's a bigger chunk of its budget. Everybody hates the funding formula and so for me that's a sign that it's working because it's it's designed to send money to where the economy is not as strong and they can't raise their own funds because we rely very heavily on property tax. But there's that constant conversation about funding the state funding total public education. And we're making headway. There's funding requirements for our career and education centers. That's in the mix. There's funding requests for supporting social emotional learning coaches. There's funding requests for increasing the rate of reimbursement for our early childcare providers. The list goes on and on. The community colleges system, the university main system they didn't get everything they wanted but they got an increase and are any they're all worthy. But you know we had three rounds of tax cuts in a row between the legislatures and we basically eliminated around 240 million dollars of state revenue in a biennium. 240 million dollars. It has a real impact on what our capacity is. And that's that's one of the elephants in the room. It's when we it's really great to have goals. It's really great to bring everybody together and agree that this is important. But at some point we have to say we can't fund all this. So who are we going to say no to? Or are we going to start talking about tax reform? I hope that answered your question. Thanks. In line with the other question to add on, what are the three main priorities for the children's caucus? I understand that first for me that was one of them, but the other priorities? Well actually we have not this session we have not gotten to the point of deciding what our priorities are. We did that last session and I apologize. My brain is mushed today. I cannot remember what the actually the social emotional coaches got funded last year. And that was one of our priorities. But yeah, we are actually in the process. We have a couple more informational presentations from the administration and some outside groups and then we're going to start doing the heavy lifting of deciding what our priorities are. Does that mean that they're going to get funded? But it helps when you have the Republican lead for the appropriations and financials affair committee as your co-chair. So as you saw there is a bill that's picking up quite a bit of momentum in supporting expansion of early care and education as well as supporting workforce development. All the things that we know are going to positively impact the efforts that we're making to overcome quite a few of these challenges. So one of the things that we Senator Millet mentioned about having all of our voices together and I want to see a show of hands who here has ever written a letter to your legislator or made a phone call. Okay. So a good number of folks here. So one of the things that we are doing is making it very easy for folks to get up to speed on some of the bills that are happening that Thrive 2027 is supporting but also make it easy for folks to actually advocate. And so for the last time if you can pull out your cell phone and if you can text the word ME child, or main child, ME second word child to the number 52886 you should receive a prompt. This will allow you to write a personalized letter with some talking points and prompts to your specific legislator. See some folks already doing it, that's awesome. And what we've seen is that they actually get these emails and they actually read them and most likely you will get a response. Yes, awesome. So yes, so advocating as you can see can be very easy and straightforward.