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Hi, let's go. Let's go.

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Hi, Melvette. Hi, Zulema.

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We are finally back recording our podcast. We had something of a break.

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We are back in full effect. Just giving everyone a warning, full effect.

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We have a newbie that folks won't be able to see or hear, but I think we need to give credit.

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Carlos, our communications director, is our show manager. We have a show manager. It's like so official.

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I was going to say the same thing. We are official and we're on camera.

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Lucky, lucky you, Melvette.

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I'm loving the blush, like the pink blush that you're wearing. It's beautiful. Beautiful for spring.

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Yeah, you're wearing my favorite color. Green is the best.

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I set on another call today. I am dragging spring in with me everywhere. I'm just, I'm going to make spring happen.

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Because it's so cold in some parts of these United States.

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Yeah, yeah. Well, you're in Connecticut. I'm in California. But even here, sun has been very sparse.

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So I'm digging the color.

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All right. Thank you.

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I figure I bring it today. And yes, we now have a manager who's doing all the things, a production manager. How about that?

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Carlos Maldonado, a good partner in this work.

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Shout out to Carlos.

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Here we go. All right.

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So what are we up to today? What's on the agenda for conversation?

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I think there's a lot. We can't possibly catch up on everything over the past month or so.

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So I definitely want to talk about Civic Learning Week that was in March.

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And what is it you want to talk about? What are some of the things you want to talk about?

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Yeah, I have a couple of policies that are on my mind.

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So if we could talk about that and a little bit of what's happening in school districts for our parents that are like in that mode right now with their students and their school districts.

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I'd love to talk about that and anything else that's, you know, parent to parent.

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Yeah. And it's also Women's History Month and probably other things that are, you know, you know, being acknowledged this month.

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But I want to give a shout out to all the mamas out there leading every single day, not just in March or Women's History Month, but every single day leading.

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Shout out to you, Zulema.

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You too. And really like women making history now.

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Like, yes, we want to absolutely acknowledge like the pioneers that came before us.

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We have women doing amazing things now, right? And civil rights and social justice. And I think, you know, this is a good time always to reflect on and learn from fellow moms and activists that are women in this space.

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Yes, and women in government.

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I'm fortunate to see women in government like to walk the halls of my state legislature and see them and like shout them out. Like, I see you. See what you're doing.

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Yeah, yeah. Have you seen there's a movie about Shirley on Netflix. I haven't seen the movie and but I absolutely love her story. So that's that that's one on my list.

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I you have to admire like the first woman to run for president, right? I'm excited about that. And you know, I'm excited that she was a black woman, a woman of color.

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I'm also equally excited that Regina King is playing her in the movie.

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Another mama and her story as a mother is phenomenal because in in the timing that she was doing this movie and this movie is now out.

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You know, she's lost her son, her only son. And so the strength and the resilience that I think we're going to see in her playing Shirley Chisholm as well as as she continues to talk about the importance of this movie and the importance of this woman.

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I'm just so in awe. I'm so in awe of her. I'm so in awe of all of the mothers who despite things, right, are able to persevere and to lift up and to move the work forward.

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And still have joy. We had a conversation about joy earlier. Right. And joy can exist at the same time as despair and sadness and loss and grief. And so I have a lot of joy today.

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I'm so enjoying being here with you and getting ready to kind of get into the meat of some of these things that are happening in the world, in our communities.

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While we're in the media space, can I do a shout out for Origin also? I think since we're talking about like women that are making history, I really love, you know, we did the book club for CAST a couple of years ago, but Origin is really the story of the author's journey as she was writing that book.

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And again, like really shows her relationship with her mother and how her mother was also someone who inspired the work that she did and made her see racism and the caste system in this country in a different way.

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And, you know, I can't say enough about this film. So, you know, again, if we're honoring female actresses, female authors, female creators, Origins is another good one to put on your list.

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Yeah. And, right, Origins and read the book. So go out, get the book. Absolutely. I think it'll change your life. I talked to my brother, my older brother, and, you know, we're always talking about what we're watching, what we're reading.

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And, and he was like, Oh, have you seen Origins? I was like, of course I have. Have you read the book? He was like, No, there's a book.

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And I'm like, yeah, yes, there is. There's a book. Check it out. So, Isabel Wilkinson. Yeah. Thanks for that shout out for her. It's an amazing movie.

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Talking about women. What about, let's just get to policy. I, you know, I want to jump right into the good stuff.

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All of this is good. Yeah. So tell me about Civic Week. You were in DC for that. I know you were super excited leading up to that. And I couldn't wait to see what came out of it.

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Okay. So, you know, National Civic Learning Week was, I believe, March 12th through the 16th or something like that. Right. And it was in the middle of the March. Next year is going to be March 10th through 14th.

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What was so amazing about that week is number one, there are not a lot of civics events, like 100% civics focused events in our country.

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And so when you have organizations like iCivics, which was the host, really centering civics as something important and as something that we should be interested in as a people in these United States.

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It's exciting, right. And the fact that I get to do this work every day. It's my jam. It's like my Oscars. It's like my Grammys. So I was excited to go down to Washington, DC.

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The event was hosted at Washington, Georgia Washington University. It was a full day event, like from 8 a.m. to 830 p.m. All the things.

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I think probably one of the most exciting things that happened on that day was I got to see two female justices on a panel posted by Eric Liu, who's our guy over, you know, Citizens University.

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What is it? What's his organization? I think so. Yeah. And he hosts civic seminars.

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Yes. Any other civic. Yes, civic sermons. And so he moderated a panel with Justice Amy Coney Barrett and Justice Sotomayor.

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And it was phenomenal. And I was so impressed because we most people know they have very differing opinions on how they show up.

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But it was beautiful to see that even with them acknowledging the differences that there was so much they came together on and they talked about how they work together and how they had to stand together sometimes as women.

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On the Supreme Court, sometimes in opposition to what the men were saying. So I thought it was so interesting. Such a great conversation. I met a lot of great people there who are very civics minded civics forward.

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And I'm looking forward to next year. That's exciting. You better invite me. I'd be really cool.

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Were there any conversation or did you see other parents? I'm really curious to see for fellow parents, you know, are there spaces like this for us?

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I mean, you are a parent and you are also in government. We both work for a national nonprofit. But I'm just curious for like fellow parents who are listening. Are there opportunities like this for them in a space like that?

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I would say yes. I mean, I don't think that this event was geared toward any particular group of people. Certainly there are people from the education space because it was from I civics, which is more focused on the K through 12 population and providing resources to schools.

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However, I can't say that I ran into people who were there in the role of parents. I did run into educators like I ran into some teachers, administrators. I also ran into people in government. But the event was free.

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And so I came from Connecticut. So of course I, you know, I paid for my hotel and travel and things like that. But if there was a parent in that D.C. area or Virginia that, you know, District, Maryland, Virginia area, DMV, they could win.

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So I just had to register. So I think it was accessible. I think people don't know about it. And so I'm sharing the good news about the Civic Learning Week.

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I also had the opportunity to talk to my own secretary of state here in Connecticut and her office and her director of community engagement. And we tried to figure out like how can we make this a thing in Connecticut and how can we continue to uplift civics as something that's important for not just students, but for adults.

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And so she was able to do some finagling and work her magic on her end. And she actually got the governor to declare that week like National Civic Learning Week in Connecticut. He did a whole proclamation. So that was great.

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I also love that she is very generous. I mean, she could have done the citation herself as secretary of state. But I think that it really meant a lot coming from the leader of our of our state to declare that week National Civic Learning Week. So that's exciting. I think there's still work to be done there.

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I love that you shared this event that you're attending somewhere else with like a leader in your state. You know, I recently had the opportunity to attend another county. So I'm in San Diego County. I attended LA County's event and it was a county supervisor who hosted a school to prison pipeline event.

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And what I found out is that they host monthly social justice conversations, completely sponsored by that supervisor's county office. And the whole time I'm like, how do I get this in my county? And so I attended, took pictures, took notes, made contacts, came back and right away started like contacting my supervisors.

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Who wants to do this? Right. And we have a new supervisor at the county who is a black woman who does a lot of social justice work. So she's the first one I reached out like, how do we get this done? Right. And I'm still waiting. But I think this is what you do.

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When you learn about really great practices in other places as parents, we could bring that back to our communities and say, how do we replicate this? Because it's not accessible for all of us to go to LA County or for everyone to travel to DC.

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Right. So how do we get these, some of these really great things closer to us? So other people have access to the experience. Yeah. It also shined a light on the lack of resources that some of our leaders do not have.

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So as I was having this conversation, my first thought was like, you have to go to this conference. Like I'm letting you know about it. Like you should be there. And they, they kindly told me like they don't have a budget for civic education. So our secretary of state does not have a budget for civic education, but they are charged with doing a lot of that work.

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And so it made me think about ways that I can be an advocate, that I can help in raising awareness that, you know, we need money and our state aligned with this, this whole idea around civic education being important.

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So let's put some money behind it and let's ensure that our secretary of state has a budget to do her job. So I was, I was totally clueless.

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And also thought about maybe I have to write a grant for us to go next time. But we'll see. We'll see. Yeah. Yeah. So it helps us tap into like, as we look at these opportunities, like resources that are missing and shining a light on how can we, how can we continue to be advocates for not just ourselves, but for other people, especially those who are leaders in government.

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Yeah. And I think what you just named is not unheard of right where departments, agencies are tasked to do something and there's rarely ever good funds. Family engagement, I think, is one of those things in a lot of school districts where, you know, they receive funds for family engagement, but it's not a lot of funds.

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Our school only receives a thousand dollars a year for family engagement, which basically is just two events a year. And, and the PTA can supplement the rest of that. And that's very common for a lot of schools.

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A thousand dollars is not, it's just nothing. Right. So I think, you know, if we want to see some of these practices that are implemented, we also have to ask for the budgets to support that.

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You know, I think one of the other things that I've been hearing is even with that thousand dollars, there are schools that don't know how to, what to do with it, like how to implement family engagement.

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So those are things that, again, as parents, we need a name. What do we do with this budget? Can we stretch this as we are asking for more funds as well?

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Good stuff. So what are some of the policies? What are the things that you're following? What's new and different? What's happening?

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Yeah, I think one of the things that I've been following for the last few months, even though it's not a new bill that's been discussed, is the COSA Act. So it's the Kids Online Safety Act.

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And there's been a lot of conversation. You know, they tried to pass this. It is a federal bill that they tried to pass. And it really is, the goal is to keep kids safe online, specifically in social media platforms like, you know, TikTok and Instagram.

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And it would really implement stronger safety protections for kids under a certain age. And it is gaining a lot more support. The concern continues to be censorship.

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Right. So who determines what is safe to expose students to? Right. So potentially LGBTQIA subject matter would be something that would be censored.

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Or conversations around gun control could be something that could be censored. So I think it's important for us as parents to really be informed about both sides.

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There's a lot more discussion around. You would want to reach out to your senators, your U.S. senators, to say, like, I support this language, but maybe, you know, I have concerns here or go ahead and pass it or please oppose it.

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But this is something that could impact, you know, our kids who are using social media and again, future generations.

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My concern as a parent is definitely the censorship piece. So I'm doing my homework and reading a little bit more about it.

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The word is that it's a there's bipartisan support. But again, it's really looking at the details. Why, you know, why are our legislators supporting this? What are parents that are opposing this and organizations that are opposing?

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What are they concerned about? And do I have those same concerns? How do I voice them?

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Yeah, it's interesting. I know one of my senators, Senator Blumenthal, is is behind some of this work. And so I heard a lot of this from you. I went and did some research and started looking into it.

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I don't have young children anymore, but certainly I think it's it's an important thing to look at when we're starting to think about, you know, are the laws that are being implemented kind of taking away some of the rights of the people like is this censorship?

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Is this the same as book banning and things like that? So I think it's an important conversation and definitely parents should be watching what's happening, especially what's going on with TikTok.

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Oh, my goodness.

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What is happening? I mean, like, it sounded like a good thing as I listened to my cable news networks. And I'm like, that's right. We shouldn't allow foreign entities to, you know, steal our information and have, you know, ownership of the data.

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You know, I'm all about that. And then and then I see all these people on social media. This is a terrible thing. They're taking away our TikTok and they just want all the information. I'm like, what's happening? I'm so confused.

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So what is happening with this whole TikTok situation?

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Yeah, I think it's something to take seriously, especially when we want to increase civic engagement and especially when we want to increase youth voice and younger parents, their voices in civic matters.

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It's no secret that TikTok is a space for the news, right? This is how a lot of young people are consuming news. It's where they're shopping. It's just such a big space.

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And so for the government to take away this space, though there may be a legitimate reason, without really thinking of where will this community of millions of people go? Right.

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Right. And so I think, you know, one of the conversations that I heard, I believe it was last week, was from Katie Porter here in California. And I loved her points around this because she she did vote against this ban and not because she doesn't believe that, you know, there's a legitimate reason for, you know, closing TikTok or having it owned by an American company.

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But because she was really concerned about the process, you know, she felt like, and I think a lot of people feel like the American people were not consulted, and especially the community that is on TikTok.

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What can we do if this is the concern, then what is the transition? Or, you know, again, this is this is democracy and we should be hearing from people that are impacted by these decisions.

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And that is not what happened. And so I think, you know, whatever way you feel about the TikTok issue, I think it's the process that that should concern us. Right.

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It impacts hundreds of millions of Americans who are on TikTok. And it's a big space to just yank away. It'll leave a big void, specifically in like civic engagement.

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Yeah. And it's, you know, it's it's the crime again. And I'm saying quite crime with air quotes of, you know, making decisions for people without consulting people. Right. Because you know best or you think you know what's best.

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Also, it creates a vacuum of sorts. Right. Like, where will these people go? And sometimes it could be something worse. It could be an option that's not so good. And that could cause a different type of harm.

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So I think you're right. No, the people weren't consulted. We the people were not consulted. But I thought some of the commentary and the narratives that I saw on Instagram, I'm an Instagram person, was very interesting. Right.

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And I wasn't going to boycott. I wasn't going to do anything, but I was definitely following and actually checking in with my my own young adults to see how they were processing through TikTok and the idea of losing it.

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And they were not happy. So more to come on it, I guess, as we keep watching what happens. Yeah, definitely. And I think if this is a concern for you again, reaching out to our legislators and making suggestions,

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making suggestion of local town halls or even national town halls on this subject. I think for me, I mean, it's not a space where I consume the news, but it is a wellness space for me.

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It is a part of my like sibling love language to share like videos and what's happening and it's like a humor space. Not that Instagram can't be that or that there aren't other things but you know for a lot of people, this is a part of a daily routine.

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I think we just need to have more conversations to inform the decision.

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Absolutely.

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One of the other things that I had wanted to bring up for fellow parents is really where districts are now in the budgeting process I think I had talked about this in our first podcast, just something to be alerted it's going to happen around the spring.

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And many parents might remember that in 2020, a lot of our school districts received a lot of money from the federal government as pandemic supports right some of that was definitely like masking and smaller class sizes because of the safety issue but with that

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we became counselors and additional tutoring services a lot of technology.

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Those dollars are going away in September of 2024, and it is leaving for a lot of our districts, millions of dollars in budget deficit.

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And so, the way those school districts consulted parents at the start, they should have and many did district should be consulting us now and that is the process that's the legal process that's been dictated to schools listen to your parents, teachers, students around

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what to do what are the priorities, now that you don't have these dollars, how will we rearrange what we do have. And so just sort of wanting parents to know if you haven't heard of this process.

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And to know your your school principal like when when do these conversations start how do I share some districts do surveys I just completed our district survey last night, and I gave everything in every you like everything I could think of around this, and just

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a life hack around some of these surveys. I did my text to voice feature in my phone just to transcribe. So in the end my responses are like long essays, but it, I got it all out of like a very natural like if someone's interviewing me on these questions,

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I answered out loud. That's a great project. That's a great project.

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Yes, you know I love using dictate and bird. Yeah, that works really well for me, but I love using that when you're doing a survey I didn't think about that. That's pretty cool.

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I'm wondering also, now that you mentioned this, I think a concern for me for my community for students who are in elementary and middle school and high school. You know what's going to happen to the mental health supports, like, how are those going to

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be funded and I think that's like a big one for me, as I look at how, you know, some legislatures provided additional funding because they had the extra money so wasn't dependent upon the school system to come up with those monies, but legislatures

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were like this is important. Mental health is important for all of us here right now. As we were looking at the pandemic and coming out of the pandemic and seeing the, you know, some of the things that happened, and how families, not just the students

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but how their families were processing through and trying to get back to some sense of being normal whatever normal is, or accepting a new normal. And so, some legislatures made really good decisions right giving, you know, state dollars to help fund

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mental health professionals and counseling and schools. So now what happens, right and what kind of space will we have if we don't have those supports in our schools for elementary for middle school for high school students so I think this is important and I think if

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I would say to parents if they haven't heard from their school districts at this point I mean it is spring. Some of our schools in the south and also probably in the west, you know, are start going to start to get out of school soon.

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You should be reaching out to your principal your superintendent, or even your local school board and like hey like what are you doing about this and how can my voice be heard.

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Yeah, now's that time. Absolutely. I think the question that you asked is all it's the only question we need to ask if mental health, for example, is the concern is what will happen.

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Will those budgets be touched in any way or how will we make up for the deficit and still provide quality mental health support. You know, I think a larger strategy for us as parents to ask for could be you know these town halls or forums that bring together schools

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whether it's county or city, and of course state representatives and state legislators, so that together they can pull a strategy, because it can't be all left to school districts to support students and it can't be all left to like county budgets or state budgets

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and so is there a way to braid funding in our local communities to support our students. There are very few legislators that I've heard say they don't care about youth mental health.

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And so let's, let's bring them to the conversation right and I don't think we have to wait for them to host those spaces if you have a couple of good friends in your community and family that are willing to like put in the work host the space yourself

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and again like thinking of, of Shirley Chisholm's quote right if they don't give you a seat at the table bring a folding chair, and we've talked a lot about that quote and many parents are also saying like, you set the table, don't wait for them to invite you to the

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table like we could set it ourselves and invite others. And so as parents all we need is a few of us to host these spaces. And this is the time mental health is a big conversation nationally. So I think if we, if we do have this fear, their strategies

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for us to make sure that our students are well supported.

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So, keeping in this conversation around the table. There's, you know, there's the bringing your folding chair there's the setting the table there's the building of the table and some of that work that you and I have done in partnership with others at the National

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Parent Leadership Institute and different PLT communities is where there, there was not a table that had room for us, or a table that people weren't thinking about we built it right and the parents were at the table inviting in other voices and also the

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experts at the table saying, here's a problem, and here's a solution. And so now, go do something about it so I want parents to be encouraged that you don't always have to wait for it to happen or wait to be invited like you can go and do the thing

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yourself and partner with other people.

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But you don't need permission to stand up for what is right.

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That is so right and even when you're invited and you've had this experience I've had this experience, even when you're invited to those spaces. It doesn't mean that we feel any sort of belonging in those spaces right and I think that's the thing about like let's just do this

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ourselves because we're that we're the checkbox, when they bring us in sometimes into these spaces and so you could be invited but let's let's talk about real spaces where we belong or our voices actually heard and valued, and let's create

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those spaces instead. Yes, cheers to creating spaces to all the parents out there doing it.

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It's pretty amazing.

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Yeah. Yeah. So what's next for for you as we look ahead. Anything that you're looking forward to either in like policy work or in your life as family. What's coming up.

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I'm looking forward to the spring actually being here because with, with all the new life that the spring brings it also exits us out of things like the school year and also our legislative session here in Connecticut I know some sessions will continue

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into the summer around in other states, but I believe that the work that we're trying to do is happening very quickly. And we're just really trying to ensure that that families know what's going on and they have their pulse on it.

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I'm also excited for the work that is happening around the country, as it relates to voting and primaries, and really seeing people engaged in this conversation and ensuring that their voices are heard whether they're choosing to, you know, side with one

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particular party or promote one particular candidate, or say, I'm uncommitted. I respect it all right I'm just like just go there, just go do something right show up. So I'm excited about that.

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What about you.

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I think the spring and summer months for us at the National Parent Leadership Institute bring a lot of opportunity to bring stories to like national conferences right so there are different places.

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There's summer and spring where we're working with graduates of PLT I to share stories where we're working with young leaders in different communities to teach teachers and like education leaders, how to best engage youth voices have best engaged parent voices.

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We have national training every summer. And I think it's just just as I look ahead I know that there's like really good camaraderie that comes from these spaces I always look forward to that, because we are a virtual team.

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It's great to be in person, when we can and to do like this really good work.

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I think locally, especially here in California I am looking forward to some like better weather ahead. All the like spring flings and it's kind of nice having so I'm the auntie of a two year old and it's nice having a young one again so like the Easter

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hunt again and like you know it's like the fun little kids stuff that helps you enjoy like the season in different way I love my 13 year old but he's not doing that stuff anymore so it's kind of like nice to like relive it through like another

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year. We are not hunting eggs. Thank you very much. So it's good to have a young one, and you're going to be together this summer doing conferences and presenting together so that's exciting and looking forward to that as well.

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Yeah, yes, that's how to keep everyone posted we'll let you know where we're going to be.

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And we want to hear where you will be I think we don't hear enough from folks like where you presenting at what are you looking forward to what is concerning you around policy.

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So we definitely want to hear that too and invite conversation around it.

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Stay in touch.

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All right, well, we'll talk again soon. Yes, until next time.

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Thank you so much for joining us and we'll see you next time.