Hey guys, what's up? It's Isaac David and this is The Daily Disciple. I'm so glad you've joined me again for another review. You know, I love to do these things.  And I found one. One of the most interesting ones I've actually seen in quite a while. Somebody sat down. I think it's the company's Anchored North, the YouTube channel. They sat down a progressive Christian and a conservative Christian and they talked about, well, you can guess that, of course, they talked about LGBT issues. When I heard that, I was like, I'm not super interested. I've talked about this topic before, but the interesting thing was, as I watched this video, I realized that I actually got into a lot more fundamental stuff in terms of sexuality in general. What is healthy sexuality, biblical sexuality and also morality? What is, where can we actually find truth and right and wrong? And it got into some philosophical topics that I know you guys are going to be interested in. So stick around before we jump in. I just want to give a huge shout out to everyone on Patreon.  I couldn't do this. It's my goal to one day be able to do this full time and each person that joins on Patreon gets me that much closer to that goal. Thank you to the 40 of you who are on there right now. And if you want to join, if you feel prayerfully led to support me and my ministry in that way, head to the link in my bio. So the guy in the blue is supposed to be the conservative Christian. He holds the traditional values of, you know, authority of scripture, marriage between one man and one woman. Sexuality is supposed to be taking place in that context. The guy in the black apparently used to believe these things grew up in a Baptist church with kind of more conservative principles. But as he began to explore and really question these things, he began to move more progressive, get kicked out of the church that he was pastoring and start a new church with his wife that is self-proclaimed a progressive Christian church. So that's just to get you caught up as we're entering this space and you're watching this video so you know what's going on. Let's watch. If I understand you, is that the only way that you can conceive of there being some expressions of any behavior, right? In general, but sexual behavior and specific for you, the only way that you can conceive that there being differences between good and bad or better and worse is if there is an intelligent being that has thus declared it. So is it my understanding that you're understanding it exactly right? I didn't say it that clearly, but yes, if it's either it's pretty stark options as I understand. If there's a designer, then there's a good design. If this if this God figure is good as I believe the Bible says God is and so God is good, but if there's no designer, I don't know that there's really any hard and fast understanding of design for sex then and I don't know that we're really going to be able to account for good and bad. Whereas when we come to the actual world, when we're looking at child molestation or rape or sexual harassment or sexual abuse, right? Things that are prevalent in our world or even let's not talk about criminal activity. Even just, I don't know, a guy being kind of slimy towards women in the way he approaches them sexually, thinking of them as sexual objects. How do I call him to any form of repentance if there isn't a design and before that is a designer? You know, it's interesting in the videos that I've done on this topic and kind of the conversations and dialogues that have taken place between Christians and sometimes like skeptics and atheists, you know, from a skeptic and atheist perspective in terms of sexuality. It's like, well, we're just stardust that has evolved. So there is no ought. There is no real morality in terms of sexuality or design for sexuality. We kind of expect that. I expect that at least because, you know, as long as it feels good, do it in that kind of worldview. But when God enters the equation and he makes creation, it's kind of absurd to say God has no specific design for how sexuality was supposed to take place. But that's this guy's opinion. The guy in the black. This is his perspective is that God didn't really lay out any ought in terms of how we ought to conduct ourselves in the our sexuality. Like he just left that up to us in a way, which is kind of absurd to me. He's going to be appealing to all sorts of different moralities and philosophies down the road here. But just know that the one that he is not appealing to is the Bible, which is ultimately the one, the standard that we should be holding to God has given a design for healthy sexuality. The confines of one man, one woman in marriage. That is where sexual fulfillment takes place biblically. And and when we deny that standard, we're left with our own kind of like confused murmurings, you know, and ramblings. And I think that's a lot of what we're going to experience here. Yeah, I think that question makes sense and the conclusions are somewhat reasonable within our context, but most of human history has not been in our context. So most of humans have lived within a world where might have been that thought there was many gods or might have been no gods might have been an animistic world where it's just their spirits and all things. My point is is we've managed to and by we, I mean the collective species of humans have managed to make it this far by creating sets of norms and values and ideas of what does contribute to flourishing and what doesn't without sort of concrete ideas about a God. So so I don't know that I guess that's a long way of saying I don't think that the idea of God as a being out there who creates the laws that here is is not needed for humans to figure out what contributes towards well-being and what contributes towards destruction and chaos and sorrow and stuff. Wow. This is really interesting. I have never heard a self-proclaimed Christian argue this way. I've heard atheists argue this way. I've heard agnostics argue this way skeptics argue this way. I've never heard a Christian argue this type of morality because what he's appealing to here is some sort of cultural morality is saying God didn't lay it out in the Bible God didn't you know we didn't need some God to tell us even though he does believe God exists I guess but he they didn't need God to lay out right and wrong you know good and bad because over the course of time we figured out what leads to most human flourishing that is kind of the the highest moral is what what kind of you know contributes to human flourishing but that argument really breaks down because if we're looking at culture to define what is right and what is wrong then what is one culture to say to another culture their culture is is wrong that is doing something bad easy example of this and it's used all the time is we look at Nazi Germany right they were doing what they thought was best for human flourishing the flourishing that they thought was right to have one race become supreme over the rest because they thought that was what was best for humanity who are we to say that that was wrong right because it's just a culture gets to decide what's best for human flourishing but that is so not true it's such a weak and twisted argument because the average person that makes this argument they see that example and they're like okay well that was wrong why do we know that we know that because two things we God's law is written on our hearts and also we've been exposed to enough cultural Christianity and the standards and values that that is you know associated with and we internalize those things because we know those things are right right like you're like don't steal don't kill don't murder don't you know don't covet like we know innately those things are wrong and people steal those values and just attribute it to we're just figuring it out you see cultures will try to define what morality is but that doesn't mean that their definition is definitive only in the scriptures will be finding objective standard for right and wrong appealing to cultural morality will only leave you in a muddled mess of absurdity because it is continually changing and shifting especially with cancel culture things that were accepted five years ago six years ago are now seen as atrocities and to be punished that is not a objective standard when we look at the Bible we can say this is what's right this is what's wrong we're not blown to and fro by the ways of the culture even if I did submit to you or submit that there was a God out there who had some sort of right and wrong expectation for humanity which is not a premise I support but if I submit for the sake of this conversation that that is a thing how are we to know what that is know what God's will is that's correct how are we supposed to know what is right and what if this sense of right and wrong does exist at a cosmic divine level how in the world are we supposed to know which is what that is so wild like I don't want to not mean you like shame this guy for asking this question because I'm glad he's asking it right but just the mere fact that he's a self-proclaimed like Christian pastor and he's asking these very fundamental questions and he's actually making assertions that are exactly contrary to the Christian worldview in terms of him not believing that there is a God that has set has expectations of his creation like he somehow believes there's a God that is completely detached from his creation like he is created us with no expectations no morality no right and wrong and he separated himself from creation it's a sad sad worldview like that's not I don't know how he believes that anywhere near resembles a Christianity thing like that's wild to me how do we know very simply just one second the Bible the Bible and you're like well the Isaac how do you know you know what's what's in the how do you know if you're reading the Bible and it's like well we got to get to the point where we're understanding that when we read the Bible we ought not be inserting our own perspectives and self you know presuppositions into it you can read the Bible in a way that is you're reading it plainly and so that doesn't mean you're taking every single thing literally in the sense that you're taking analogies like they actually you know happen but no you're reading it plainly so you're able to interpret the Bible and people have been doing this forever right you're able to interpret the Bible in such a way where you can actually understand the truth a child can understand the gospel it's not that complicated yes there's definitely pieces in the Bible that are more complicated to understand but the bare bones the the bare gospel this shouldn't be something that we think is so high and mighty that we can never grasp or understand no a child can understand it and we go to God's word that he has given us revealed in the scriptures and you're like well Isaac hasn't it been corrupted and stuff like that well listen to me if God is so powerful that he created all of us and if God is so powerful that he raised Jesus from the dead if God raised himself from the dead like oh my goodness like right performed all these miracles then God is powerful enough to preserve his word to us so then we can know him and he has done that so we can know him God being a speaking communicating God communicating through his word giving us the Bible through human authorship spirit inspired producing Old and New Testament 66 books from 37 to 39 authors that's God's will right but it strikes me as a pretty tenuous setup at best because as we've already acknowledged humans have been certain that they've gotten God right by using the Bible in certain ways only to discover that they were incredibly wrong so how can we know that we have the Bible right this time on this issue this is so interesting here notice how he keeps pushing at this idea how do we know if we get it right how do we actually know because this is the cracks the issue right if we if we're interpreting the Bible wrong in terms of sexuality then that opens up the door for all you know LGBT issues which is this guy's for so he's like okay well how do we know if we're not getting it wrong how do we know if we're not interpreting the Bible incorrectly as Christians have done in the past how do we know and this is so interesting because it plays back into his you know initial philosophies that he was tying to in terms of his understanding of truth the nature of truth what is right and wrong because we've already seen that this guy has nothing grounding his understanding of truth or objective truth he doesn't believe God has set a standard for morality or anything like that he's just kind of floating in the way of a worldview where there's a God that's created him and that's pretty much yet there hasn't laid out any standards of truth morality no way of actually knowing or being certain of anything so how how is he asking if we can know what the Bible says if he doesn't even believe in absolute truth because ultimately truth in order for truth to be true that needs a standard something we're appealing to to know it's right or wrong and God is a standard when people abandon that standard they're left to their own opinions and it's a sad absurd worldview to hold when you think about an issue like slavery for example you recognize that the the Christians who supported slavery from the Bible were wrong right they they had a wrong interpretation so here again we keep having this matter of a standard of right and wrong cutting into the conversation in other words we're not free to interpret the Bible however we see fit as I understand it we have to we have to understand it rightly so if you understand we know when we've got it rightly is my question when we understand the Bible as it intends to be understood when we're not saying you know when Paul is speaking to the Galatians about salvation he's actually saying pink elephants should dance on Mount Mariah in spring time in other words we all have to take authors literally don't we we say we don't like literal interpretation or these sorts of things but if we don't take somebody literally as if there's a right way to interpret them in a wrong way to interpret them we're in nonsense land even now you and I are using truth we're using categories of truth I'm taking your words as if you mean what you say and you're taking my words as if I mean what I say in the same way we have to take the Bible as if it's meaning a certain principle in reality someone else can come along and say no it doesn't mean that there has to be some kind of standard by which we say I'm hearing you rightly and I'm hearing you wrongly it's almost like this guy believes you can't have certainty about anything like he like in the whole world like he seems very averse to any any kind of claim that you can know something absolutely and I've seen types like this before and I think this is a big kind of popular philosophy to hold in your life or mentality in your life it's like well this is what I believe right now but I could I can't be certain of anything right and it's almost seen as humble in a way right it's almost seen as like oh well that person's just really humble and they're open they're open-minded person but honestly it's actually kind of prideful do you know why because when you're saying I can't know anything for certain I can't know that for certain I can't know that that for certain whose opinion are you holding in most high regard you're holding your own opinion in most high regard you're like well I believe this right now but if I determine it's not true anymore then I will decide if a new thing is correct and a new thing is right instead of turning to who we should turn to and God in believing got what you have said God is true and I can have certainty in that because I trust you over what I think over my own opinion that's like you true humility to be prideful is to say you know what God I believe you now but you know if something's changed I might change my opinion on it that is all the ultimate sign of pride two things come to mind one is Jesus is teaching that you will know people by their love in this by how they love one another bad tree doesn't give good fruit good tree doesn't give bad fruit so we can look at the fruit we can look at actually what's being manifested in the world we can look at all the fruits of the spirit is there peace patience kindness gentleness like are these things being manifest here if they're being manifest here I think that's a that's about as close as a compass that we can get that okay I think we're in the ballpark here because trying to know exactly what is right and what is wrong I don't know that or I do know that we don't have any way to like have certainty on that we just don't but we can get close if we use what's what is what's the fruit that's being made here is a good fruit it's good fruit and we're I think we're in the ballpark here did you hear what he said because trying to know exactly what is right and what is wrong I don't know that or I do know that we don't have any way to like have certainty on that we just don't he said he knows that you can't have certainty bro what and all of a sudden he is just I'm sorry I'm getting amped up about this but this is wild to me he's just disclosed his standard of truth after this whole video at the very final clip here he's finally disclosed what his standard of truth and love and what the standard of sexuality should be or anything really it's this idea of love right his own definition of love and if it bears good fruit according to who him right because it's not up to God he's already rejected God's standard but now he's pulling in this new standard that he's able to manipulate to fit his own ends because look when we're applying his when he's applying his standard he looks to see look in terms of sexuality can you know fornicating people be loving can that be a loving situation in his opinion I'm sure it's yeah absolutely that can be a loving a situation there so that's good you know checkmark for that what about polygamy can that be a loving situation can that be loving sexuality in his opinion sure yeah why not because that's that's love according to what he believes right and he's just cherry picked this thing from the Bible that he's manipulating and then you bring it to homosexuality it's like in homosexuality be loving yeah to people from the same gender loving each other that's seems nice okay the problem is is that this is just all this guy's opinion like all of it like there's no string of truth or foundation for any of it it's just this guy woke up one day and decided to call himself a Christian but yet denies everything that Christianity stands for or any of the foundation for how we understand what Christianity is I want to bring back to that one statement he said he was like weak I am I know we can't be certain I know we can't be certain and that kind of summarizes a lot of the arrogance that people have when they're making these arguments they're saying no you can't know this how do you know that you're saying is right like that's bigoted we you know it's not how do you know that God didn't stand for that you can't there's no way and they're so certain about it and so they try to downplay the the thought that you can be certain at all while having complete certainty that you're wrong but it's the only play that they have at this point when you deny God when you deny truth when you deny his ways you know you're kind of put in a place where you're suppressing all this truth and then your counter is to be so certain that you can't know anything especially about sexuality about truth about morality because if you can if you can be certain about something then that leads us right back to the scriptures and a lot of people don't like what's in the scriptures because the scriptures tell us a couple things it tells us that we're all broken people every single one of us not just people that struggle with same-sex attraction not just people in the LGBT community everybody me included for sure that's why we need Jesus because Jesus came to this earth fully God and fully man to live a sinless life a life that we could not live to die on the cross a death we deserve to die for our sins against God he took our place he rose again on the third day defeating sin death and the devil and what we are called to do is repent which means turn from our sin and trust in Jesus Jesus said that he's the way the truth and the life through Jesus we can know truth we can have absolute certainty in knowing that what he has declared is true that is a freeing thing that is not bondage my friends that is freedom when we can understand God has given us objective truth of what sexuality is healthy sexuality biblical sexuality truth morality all of it guys and that is something to be thankful for that something to praise God for and that is something that we can absolutely rest in well what can I say this video really got pretty amped up but I really appreciate you guys watching if you want more content like this subscribe to the channel because I'm putting out new videos all the time I'm also very active on tiktok at it's Isaac David also Instagram same handle as well you can follow me on there and yeah anyway thanks for watching and I will see you next time God bless


local funeral attendees may be at risk for COVID-19. Usbergman sentenced for double homicide. Sheboygan City Facilities now closed to the public. These and other local stories are coming up on this edition of Community News Review. This is Community News Review. Service WSES-TV News content provided by WHBL. I'm Maddie Fister and this is Community News Review for Thursday, March 19th, 2020. The Sheboygan County Division of Public Health is advising those who attended funerals according to Sucon Funeral Homes on March 5th or March 7th to monitor themselves for symptoms of COVID-19 illness until March 21st. Starleen Grossman, Health Officer for the Sheboygan County Division of Public Health said in a release on Wednesday that at least one attendee to the services has tested positive for the COVID-19 virus. She stressed that the risk of exposure was low, but a proactive response is being taken by notifying the community in an attempt to control the spread of the virus as best as it can be. Grossman said that at this time, testing for COVID-19 is limited and routine testing won't be done on those who have no symptoms. If symptoms do occur, you are encouraged to contact the Division of Public Health to see if you qualify for testing. The city of Sheboygan has closed city facilities to the public. That, according to city administrator Darryl Hofflin, is a short-term policy to help mitigate the possible spread of the COVID-19 virus in hopes of avoiding more serious emergency. Exceptions are election-related activities and public appointments with city staff. The status of the closure will be evaluated on a weekly basis or until conditions allow for reopening.  The city of Sheboygan, village of Kolar Municipal Court has canceled all appearances and pre-child conferences until May. Mead Public Library has closed and city public park buildings, including restrooms, are closed for the next 60 days. If you have rented park facilities, you will receive a refund check in the mail and payments to the city should be via mail or online for now. The next regularly scheduled Come and Council meeting is set for Wednesday, April 8th, and the public is being asked to consider viewing the meeting on WSCS and committee meetings are being reviewed by their chairs for possible cancellation. One department that will remain open is the city clerk's office in city hall in order to accommodate in-person absentee voting that will continue Friday, April 3rd. An additional information is available on the city's website at Sheboyganwi.gov. A 44-year-old Usberg man will spend 25 years behind bars and another 10 years on extended supervision for the killings of two men. Judge Rebecca Pursek imposed that sentence on Sergio Oka after he was found guilty in a jury trial on two counts of first-degree intentional homicide for the shooting of his cousin, 42-year-old Louis Garcia, and Garcia's best friend, 43-year-old Fernando Laura on July 30th, 2017. Oka received 12 and a half years imprisonment for five-year supervision for each count to be served consecutively and the incident was reportedly the accumulation of an argument over a debt of about $200 owed to Oka by Garcia. The closing of schools for COVID-19 has parents scrambling to find daycare for their children and new restrictions and regulations will make that job even harder. Governor Tony Evers has directed the Department of Health Services Secretary designate Andrea Palm to restrict the size of all childcare settings and new regulations now in place require no more than 10 staff present at a time and no more than 50 children present at once. The restrictions will remain in effect for the duration of the public health emergency caused by the ongoing coronavirus epidemic. Providers are being asked to prioritize families of healthcare and essential services providers using good faith to determine who those families are and those using care who can keep their children at home are being asked to do so. Align Energy is temporarily suspending disconnections for its customers during the ongoing public health emergency. In addition, the utility is also working with partners and organizations to find a way to weave late fees in Wisconsin for those suffering financial hardship. The temporary suspensions were enacted to alleviate customer concerns about continued access to utility services according to company chairman, President and CEO, John Larson. He said the company has also donated $100,000 to help nonprofits and assist with rising community needs. For those already behind in payments, Align is encouraging them to set up payment plans based on their ability to pay. Absentee ballots for April 7th spring election are a good way to vote while avoiding potential exposure to the coronavirus. But there has been some confusion about getting them. Public Information Officer for the Wisconsin Elections Commission, Reed Magney, says they have received reports of false claims that Wednesday was the last day to request an absentee ballot and that it's not correct. 11.59 p.m. on Wednesday was, however, the deadline to register a voter in order to receive that absentee ballot. That applies to postmark mail requests as well as online registration. Starting Thursday, the 19th voters can still register to vote in their municipal clerk's office until the Friday before the election. And at that polling place on election day, the official deadline to request an absentee ballot is April 2nd. And registered voters who want to vote absentee should request a ballot as soon as possible through myvote.wi.gov. Voters can also make an absentee ballot request in writing directly to the county clerk's office either by regular mail, email, or fax. And finally, even though UW Green Bay students have been told to return home and stay there for now, plans have been implemented to keep students on track to complete this semester and for graduation to take place on time. Beginning next week, classes at all UW Green Bay campuses, including Sheboygan, will be taught via alternative delivery methods. Those students who do not have access to computers and the internet will be able to return to campus after spring break. Plans now are to finish the spring semester using alternative class delivery. Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs, Michael Alexander said in a news release that students are encouraged to continue their academic path and stay on course this semester. We cannot stress this enough, he's added, even though education will look different, it is continuing and that is a good thing. The decisions to continue education in alternative modes will not affect students' ability to graduate or progress in their academics. Students will get credit for completing coursework and degrees can be conferred if all academic requirements are met regardless of whether or not an on-campus ceremony is held. Decisions on May 2020 commencement ceremonies will be made after full impact of COVID-19 is known. And that is our report for today. Join me again on Tuesday for more local news and information on Community News Review. News content for this program provided by WHBL in cooperation, WSCS-TV.


So, there's a new exotic in the world of Destiny. It's a new text mechanicer scout and it's called Deadman's Tale. Today I will guide you into how to get your hands on this thing and it's relatively straight forward. Has it gone guys? My name's DPJ and if you enjoyed this video, leaving a like really helps out and if you like what you see and want to see more, be sure to subscribe. Okay, so this questline starts with the arms deal a strike upon the EDZ. This week's nightfall. Now access the strike through either the nightfall or after the EDZ director, it doesn't really matter. Once you are in the strike though, the route from the start follow where I go.  Take out the toads and continue. You eventually come to an enemy called Grote Loyal to some random, whoever that is, who cares. It's as simple as taking him out. Once you are done here, you need to grab the intercepted distress signal and from here guys, head to Savala within the tower. Once you get to Savala, you will then start the voice on the other side, Exotic Quest, which will unlock a mission for you on the Tangled Shore. The mission is quite straightforward with slight puzzle phases, but mostly it's about triggering a buff to get through certain force fields. The buff is called some kind of augur gore link or whatever. You get the buff by shooting these paws, it then gives you a timer of around 15 seconds and allows you to run through these force fields. And it's more or less about accessing certain doors while you're accessing certain levers. Getting these buffs then running through those force fields. So what I will do is leave you to watch the footage in what routes to take. The footage will be slightly caught in terms of removing parts not needed, but the path will be all there for you to follow. And once we get to other parts which need more explaining, I will come back to you, so I'll catch you guys in a quick second. Okay, so once you get to this room right here, activate this lever. The walls will then start closing in. Here you need to take out the enemies and then shoot the vents in the floor looking for those power cells. I believe there's three or four in total. Now I don't think they are at random, but if they are, you would just need to learn which vents they are. You'll get this done in the end and if you die it doesn't really matter, you respawn literally right outside this room. So once all four have been taken out, the walls will pause and start closing in. You then need to find this vent within the floor and again follow what I do on screen now and I'll catch you guys back at the bus. So once you finally get to the bus, it's quite straightforward. You first need to take out the adds and do enough damage to the bus until he teleports down below. Now below the floor is basically too hot for you to stand on and it basically burns you alive. So you first need to activate three switches. There's one either end of the room and the third one is in this room where the floor is again too hot for you to stand on so you have to quickly access the lever. Once you've done that, the floor below becomes cool enough for you to go down and lay down that damage on the bus. And it's basically rotations with these health bars. Once a bar is done, you need to head back up, take out the adds and repeat the process of activating the machine. But a little bit of a warning though, the footage you can see on screen now is me doing this with my pal model of Crysis, credit to him for helping me out. At the time we didn't know the actual mechanics of this thing and here's me using a sword. It's a little more difficult to do this as the floor next to the bus sees a set of blades so you burn out pretty quick. So other means of damage here besides swords would probably be better. But once you've done with the rotations with the bus, see it's more or less over. Simply follow the route I take on screen now to this extra room which you need to go to and trigger something. From here guys, it's as simple as heading back to Sovala and grabbing the exotic scout and it is as simple as that. So guys, if you enjoyed the video leaving a like really helps me out. If you're new around here and want to see more Destiny on my behalf be sure to subscribe and hopefully people I will see you on that next one.


Appalachian Wireless now has new forward pay prices where you can pay up front and get the data and features you desire. Five gigabytes of data just $39.99, unlimited just $79.99, better service, bigger savings. That's today's Appalachian Wireless. With our local struggling economy, many residents of this region find themselves in financial hardships. As a result, they often seek the assistance of the government to simply provide a roof over their heads and even food on their table. On the downside of that, studies have shown this often becomes a generational problem where children who are raised through government assistance often become adults who rely on government assistance. A young lady here at Highland Elementary recognizes this issue and is doing something about it. I kind of want to educate children that there are different ways to receive money and to live your life. To better help her fellow classmates, Emily first made anonymous polls and surveys to give out. Thirty-five point nine percent of children at my school say that they are on welfare and receive government assistance and a lot of them say that they think their circumstances at home will negatively affect their future. Although Emily's project is complex, her overall goal is pretty simple. I want to encourage children on welfare that they don't have to follow their parents' footsteps and they can break the boundaries. I just want to plant the seed and let it grow. For more information about Emily's project, go to breakingtheboundaries.org. Tomorrow we'll speak with some of Emily's fellow community problem solvers here at Highland Elementary about their project helping foster children. Reporting from Johnson County, I'm Shawn Allen for EKB News.


So glad you're here. It's another episode of the non-profit show and really glad to be having this conversation with our guest, Liz Pearson, Economic Incentives Advisory Group. And she's here to share with you about the employment retention credit, or we are going to refer to it also as ERC for non-profits. So before we jump into this very sexy conversation, Liz, I wanna make sure our viewers and listeners know who we are or we can remind them who we are. Julia Patrick, great to see you. Julie is the CEO of the American Non-profit Academy and I'm Jarrett Ransom, her trusty sidekick and personal non-profit nerd, but I can be yours too. CEO of the Raven Group and nerd out over these conversations. It feels like 24 seven, but anyway, really glad to have these conversations thanks to the support of our presenting sponsors. So a huge shout out of gratitude goes to our friends over at Blumerang, American Non-profit Academy, fundraising academy at National University, non-profit thought leader, your part-time controller, staffing boutique, as well as non-profit nerd. These companies are here for your mission. I really like to remind everyone that their mission is actually your mission. So they're here to help you elevate and do more good in and around and throughout your community. They've also helped us to produce over 700 episodes on which you can find them on Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Vimeo, YouTube, as well as podcasts. So for those of you that are podcast listeners, you can queue us up there as well and you will get the automatic updates if you subscribe to that. So again, today's conversation, we have heard this a lot, I feel over the last three, four-ish years, but there's been a lot of changes. And so we've brought on Liz Pearson to nerd out with us at such a great level that's gonna really help you better educate and inform. So Liz, you're joining us from Economic Incentives Advisory Group. I want to formally welcome you and also ask that you share a little bit about what is this group and what are like kind of, you provide a lot of different services, what are those? All right, well, thank you, nice to see everyone. Yes, we have a long complicated name but it's exactly what we do. Economic incentives and we are advisors. So it's government tax incentives and other business incentives that are offered to both for-profit and nonprofit businesses. And there are so many of them out there that often go unclaimed and we help businesses as large as SpaceX take advantage of them down to, I have some two-person nonprofits that I'm helping out. So we want to help businesses of all sizes take advantage of what's being offered. Wow, it's so interesting because if you think about where we started with COVID, I always thought of government engagement on these things as being limited to the tech sector, agriculture, education, science. Never ever knowing that any of this was going on and then how it just exploded during COVID and especially for a nonprofit, as Jared was mentioning in the green room, this kept so many of our organizations in the game. I mean, just flat out in the game. And so it's- Is that their doors open? Yeah, I mean, it has really changed my perception on how some of these things work and what it looks like. So let's start off and have you even just explained to us what the federal ERC credit is. Absolutely. All right, so the employee retention credit was actually introduced at the same time as the PPP loans as part of the COVID relief program. But initially when it came out, businesses had to choose between the PPP loans and the employee retention credit. And those PPP loans, people could get them quickly. They were just trying to get the money out the door to businesses. And then after the fact, they had to go back and the loans had to be forgiven, obviously. So then there were changes to the CARES Act, which allowed businesses to take advantage of both programs. So that's why all of a sudden there was this kind of flood of information and encouraging people to take advantage of this credit. So that's a little bit of how the two programs came to be. So I think the name is a little bit deceiving and employee retention credit, that was the goal. So the PPP loans were very specific about what the money could be used for. And then you go through the forgiveness process. So this employee retention credit, really it's a payroll tax credit, we like to say, plus an additional amount. So it's not specifically just the amount that you pay in your payroll taxes because it's offering up to $26,000 per employee. It's clearly more than anybody paid in their payroll taxes. One of the great things about this is that the money that is received can be used however your business would like to use it. It's unencumbered, which is really nice. It's not like a grant that's for something specific can be used within your business. You don't have to report back to the IRS and tell them, we used it on this and we used it on that and whatnot. And there's no time period in which the money has to be spent. Oh, interesting. Now I'm curious and I wanna ask some of those questions that maybe our viewers and listeners are saying like, I might be too embarrassed to ask this. Has the ERC been around like for ages or did this come up literally for the CARES Act for the COVID-19 pandemic? It is specifically part of the CARES Act. So the program actually ran, it started when COVID started. So the program is looked at when we're writing these calculations on a quarterly basis. So Q234 of 2020 and then it ran Q123 of 2021. So initially it went through Q4 of 2021 and then that was rescinded. That was one of the changes. So now the program technically ended the end of September of 2021. So the IRS has given what they're calling a three year look back that businesses can go back and claim the credit. So we are in that look back period. Interesting. And there's so many changes to this. Fascinating. And there's recently some of the confusion has been on the deadline of when businesses can take advantage of this. So I'll take a real quick minute to clarify that. So initially the understanding is that they said three years. So that meant the first quarter that could have been claimed, was Q2 of 2020. So therefore, that quarter should end at the end of Q2 of 2023. But that's not the case. What's happening is the first deadline when this program, for this program is August 15th of 2024. At that point, after that point you can no longer claim all three quarters of 2020. So that's when the credit for 2020 ends. And then you have a whole other year till, did I say August? I'm in April. April. April. Yeah, April. Sorry, April. Okay. April 15th, tax day. And then you have a whole other year to April 15th of 2025 to claim all of 2021. So as much as we want to encourage people to really get on this because this is a long process for dealing with the IRS to get it in, that we really do still have some runway with people to help them claim credit. That is so fascinating. Cause I have been feeling like, all of that relief funding is gone. It's been spoken for or the window has closed. But yeah, my mind is blown by this Liz. And I know you have helped so many organizations for profit and not for profit, right? For your company? Right. And it really is something where, what we were coming up against at first is it just sounded too good to be true. So people kind of, they didn't want to talk to us cause they're like, and now we're sort of like, oh, there's so much noise. Like you said, I don't even want to talk about it. But I mean, businesses really should look at it. And I think the most important thing is it's important to look at it to get the money. It's also important to look at to know, hey, I'm not leaving the money behind because of our businesses that I speak to that I say, you know, you actually don't qualify and they say, okay, no problem. I'm glad to know I didn't just leave $500,000 on the table for my business. Right. Liz, talk to us about how this might be different if you are a nonprofit. Because again, with our viewers, I mean, we are the nonprofit show. Are there things that are gonna be different for us in this sector for the 501C3s? I would say yes and no, technically, not at all. Everybody, you know, whether you're for-profit or nonprofit, you can qualify for the business. Now, what I found working with nonprofits is there are two ways to qualify for this program. And the first way and the most obvious way is a decrease in gross receipts. But a lot of nonprofits actually didn't experience that.  And if they don't see that decrease in gross receipts, they just say, you know, you won't qualify for the program. So that's, you know, I think that's where our level of expertise and our years of experience come into play that there is a second way to qualify, which is changes to your business operations and every nonprofit experiences changes to business operations. And you really, you know, meet the expertise to understand these changes of business operations that have to be specifically lined up with a COVID mandate. And we have to marry those two things in order for the IRS to say, okay, that was a good argument. We are willing to put this through. Right, wow, that is fascinating. Talk to us a little bit about this in connection to the PPP funding. I mean, early in the days of the nonprofit show, we literally would have episodes where we were live and we were watching the votes in Congress come in and reporting on it. And it was such a challenging time and challenging concept. And when we had COVID, we had the actual things that were realities to our lives, but then we had these conceptual issues and we were trying to use your word, marry the two. Talk to us about how this PPP funding factors in. Sure, yep. It's really important for businesses to understand that just cause that, you know, they took one, they certainly can take the other and how they interact. So both programs could be used toward payroll. So what ends up happening, and this is a little technical, but it's the best way to explain it is when we're looking, we look at each quarter. So once we've been able to qualify your business for a quarter, we say, did you use any PPP funding to cover any of your payroll in that quarter? And so to give you an example, if an employee had $15,000 worth of payroll, but 10,000 of it was covered by PPP loans, then we just, we subtract out that 10,000 and we run our calculation for that quarter only based on the $5,000 worth of payroll. So basically it just gets subtracted out and then we can keep going. Wow. So it's really a simple calculation on our end. So when we are gathering information, it's really important for us, we ask, how much did you receive? How much was used for payroll? What were the dates that you used it and was it forgiven? So I'm really curious, Liz, what is the process for our viewers and listeners that are saying, okay, I heard we still have time for this. And if this is something that perhaps we've procrastinated on or as I mentioned earlier, there's so much noise out there, like how do we know what to listen to and who to listen from? Like what is the process for this? And I know you specialize in this and I'd love for you to share that process. Sure, I'm gonna answer that question in two parts. So one being, how do you kind of pick a provider? How do you decide? So just to give you a little bit of background about our company. So we've been in business for over 23 years specifically doing tax credits and incentives. So we have many years of experience knowing how to process these through the IRS. And so what I like to say is that it was important that we were here before the ERC and equally important that we're gonna be here after the ERC because the IRS has a five year period of look back that they can come back and audit. And if they do that, we will be here to support that audit at no additional fees. So we're gonna be around for that. That's it. I think that's one of the most important thing is longevity in this field. We are not a branch of a larger company. This is just what we do. We're kind of a very specialized firm. We do, we consult with a former IRS attorney on anything that we have questions about some of these harder cases that we're trying to put through cyber security is very important because we're asking about some, your 941 payroll tax forms you're sending to us, insurance, so things like that are very important. So when, if you're speaking to trying to choose a provider those are some of the questions that you wanna ask. So the second question is the process. The process is just this. We have a conversation about it. It's usually a pretty quick one. Depending on how much information you want from me, I ask you a few questions about your business. I'll say, did you have a decrease in revenue? Do you think you did? And if they say, no, probably not. We think they had an increase. Then we talk about some of their changes to business operations. So I can give people some ideas of, yeah, why don't you put that down, put that down. So we then send them what we call pre-qualification form and it's really just three pages. It asks general information about your business, PPP loans, gross receipts, number of employees. And then we ask about your changes to business operations. So we say, again, it depends. That's gonna take you a couple of hours, sometimes a little bit longer depending on how much you're getting into your business operation changes. And obviously our service agreement. Once I received those two documents, we send them to our processing department and those are the real experts. So the head of our processing department really looks through there and she ranges a phone call usually within five days with our clients. And she says, okay, so I really think that this is where I'm gonna be able to qualify you. You said these two things and now I need you to send me some sort of documentation. So she drills down and really tries to get the backup because she knows, okay, if I can get this backup from you, this is where some more money is gonna come in. So once we go all the way through that process and she gets all the information she needs, it takes them about five weeks to run the calculation. She asks for the 941 payroll forms at that time and they go and they calculate each individual employee, whether it's five employees or 300 employees. They come back to you and say, this is the amount that we expect you can get. We do sign off as the preparer of the 941 X payroll forms and they're submitted and then it's time to wait. Time to wait. How long is that wait? How long? That's the question, right? So on some of the smaller ones, it's about four months. Some of the bigger ones, it's gonna take longer than that but our goal up front is to provide good information because if your claim's gonna be, we're saying over a million dollars, the IRS could take a close look at it and we're prepared for that. So that can take six months maybe longer. It's important to know that these come in paper checks. This isn't just gonna be a credit put towards payroll taxes. You gotta look out for a check coming in the mail and the checks can come, different checks for different quarters and whatnot. So that's a little bit of a process. Are so many moving pieces. Honestly, for me, Liz, it's like, I would absolutely hand this over to an expert to say, hey, this is your jam. This is what you focus on. I can only imagine so many organizations right now are thinking, hey, there's still time in this window especially from what you've said because I still hear Julia, there are organizations that say we have enough money to take us till August or we have enough money for 12 more months. And really looking at the recovery of the impact. So this is so very important. Gosh, I just, yeah, there's so much to share. You know, Liz, I love that you walked us through the process because that really put a framework to this whole thing. Let's talk about the talent. Who would you be normally working with? An outside payroll company, obviously the internal bookkeeper, CFO, like who are the voices and the talents that you're working with? Great, I love that. The CFO is often the perfect person. I think the nonprofit has to decide we wanna pursue this. And so often, you know, it really is kind of your, you know, maybe the executive director that makes the decision of, yes, we wanna move forward with this. Because I feel like sometimes it gets lost in translation when someone's trying to explain it, you know, up above and they're like, oh, that doesn't really make sense. So if we can get to that person to explain it, then they can say yay, you know, yay or nay, this isn't something we wanna pursue. So typically it's that person and then we'll say, well, wait, I want my CFO or I want my accountant or I want somebody else on the call to listen because they are the people that are actually gonna provide the information. So we really need the decision maker and we, you know, and if that's the CFO or whoever, that's great to move forward with this. I am, I'll just mention this to you. I'm going to speak to a board of directors next week for it's actually a preschool that we've gotten so much money for them that's potentially coming their way that their board of directors said, I need to hear about this. I need more details. This doesn't feel right. It feels like it's too much, which is really interesting. And too good to be true. And that is actually, I'm so glad you mentioned board of directors because, you know, with 1.8 million nonprofits registered in the US, they are all governed by a board of directors. And let's say on average, there's seven, you know, board members. Many have a lot more than that. I can only imagine there's so many board of directors, you know, serving their communities, listening to your conversation saying, hey, did my organization take advantage of that? And if not, should we? Right. Or yes, should we? Or well, well, we won't qualify this way.  So again, it's a pressure-free conversation. I'm certainly never, you know, nobody's going to push anybody to take advantage of this. But just having all the information, I think is the most important part of the whole thing. That's definitely. Is grabbing information. So this has been amazing. We don't have that much time left with you. And I have so many questions. And I'm sure after the show, I'll have even more questions because I'll be thinking about this all day. But you're talking about a group of outside providers and talent. Your company to other companies around the country, talk to us a little bit about that. I mean, there's a contract. How are you recompensed for this? Is it, do companies take a percentage? Do you get paid after you receive the money? And how does this work? Super, super important question. It's a, we say we work on a success-free basis. We do take a percentage of the amount that you're going to receive. The IRS specifically put out a notice that says, there are people gouging, you know, customers. I mean, and particularly nonprofits, the money needs to go back to the nonprofit. So depending on the size, we take anywhere from 10% up to 18%. 18% is if you've got two to five people, a really tiny one. Typically we're in the 10 to 15 range.  So that's a super important question. Again, when you're asking your provider, what is your percentage? So the only time that we invoice is when you've gone through the process and that check's been deposited into your bank account. At that point, we will invoice you. If for some reason we start down the path and you speak to our processing department and she said, I can't back this up. I'm sorry, we can't help you. No money is exchanged. Wow.  Well, time and money. Yeah, time and money. We have a question that came in and again, we don't have too much time, but somebody writes in, how does a nonprofit apply for the Employment Credit Act when they use a PEO for HR functions, including payroll? We do not have Form 941 and other documentation. Yes, so we are actually working with a PEO right now and all of their clients. So in that case, I, you know, we would have a one-on-one conversation and we would be able to get that information from the PEO. So they would be able to provide. They would still be eligible. Yeah. Interesting. I love hearing that. Yeah, because I've heard from many organizations that either use a PEO, so that was a really good question to ask, are looking to move to a PEO and what that might need, you know, for this credit. And so great question to the person that was so astute to ask that live and thank you, Liz, for answering that, that they're still eligible. Yes. Great. Absolutely. And then you've like created a Firestorm of questions. One more, we'll get to one more. Somebody writes in, do you have a schedule on the deadlines that you could share with us or where somebody might be able to get that? Because one of the things that I heard you say in the very beginning is that this has been very flexible and there have been a lot of changes. How would we best educate ourselves to these deadlines? I think simply, okay? So here's the simplest terms I'm gonna answer that question. To claim the credit for 2020, the deadline is April of 2024. After that time, you can no longer do it. April 20. The deadline for 2021 is April of 2025. Okay. Those are the two deadlines right there. Two deadlines. That's a good question. Very good question. As we know, time goes quickly. So this is one of those things that we wanna, you know, kind of drag our feet on. This has been a great conversation, Liz. You've stirred up so many thoughts and opportunities for so many of us in the nonprofit sector. And so I'm so, so delighted that you came on to kind of help share with us this process and what it looks like, what it costs and how we can seek to engage in it because our nonprofit sector still had to keep working, still had to keep providing services and to a large extent even more during this time. And so it's been really, really interesting. Liz Pearson, Economic Incentives Advisory Group, check out their website, eiagincent.com. It is very comprehensive, talks a lot about the different opportunities that are out there. And I was fascinated by your website because I had no idea that this ecosystem existed for us in the nonprofit and of course in the for-profits. So yeah, Economic Incentives Advisory Group, really an interesting conversation today. Again, I'm Julia Patrick, CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy, been joined by the nonprofit nerd herself.  Garrett Ransom, CEO of the Raven Group. And again, without the support of all of our amazing sponsors, we wouldn't have people like Liz on here today. Everyone from Blumerang, American Nonprofit Academy, your part-time controller, nonprofit thought leader, Fundraising Academy at National University, Staffing Boutique, and of course, nonprofit nerd. They're the folks that are with us day in and day out. And so we wanna make sure that we express our gratitude to them. Okay, wow, Jared, another day where my mind has been blown. What about you? I know, I just feel like there's so many organizations that as you mentioned, Liz, potentially $500,000 more or less that fluctuates, they could be leaving money on the table. So this is pressure-free. Why not engage in a conversation? I'm always learning in these conversations. And as I told you, Julia, those days that I'm not able to make the show, I really miss it. So I'm glad I was here for this one. Yeah, it's just fascinating, Liz. And I think it also opens up the mind of our nonprofits of how we serve our communities and what it looks like. And it's not always just the same old, same old. We need to be using flexible thinking. We need to be thinking about how the ecosystem of our different governments work and how we support them so that we can ultimately achieve our mission, vision and value. So it's- Can I make one quick comment? Yeah, absolutely. I always like to leave with this thought of the amount of time, effort, manpower it takes to raise say $500,000, even $100,000 versus the time and effort it takes to take advantage of this. It's unbelievable. I get emails constantly like, will you send $100? Will you send $100? And I'm thinking, why don't I send you $100,000? So that is a great comment. You're so right. And with, again, all of these organizations and Julia, I know that we are still feeling the pressure from many of our guests that have come on over the years, these last four years, because we started in March of 2020 saying, we just don't know if we're gonna make it. Right. Oh my God, yeah, yeah.  So this has been amazing. I've loved this conversation. Thank you so much, Liz. Thank you, Jared. It's been a lot of fun. As we like to end every episode, we want to remind everyone, ourselves, our guests, our sponsors to stay well so you can do well. We'll see you back here tomorrow.


Hi, Eileen. This is a problem that's similar to the one that you were talking about where you're having a hard time coming up with the values for D bar and the standard deviation of D and Going through it the long way manually and using all the formulas That you need to solve for these things is doable, but it takes time and I'm what I'm making a suggestion to you that I would go for getting as many points as I can accurately in a short amount of time and Not satisfying for perfection. The reason I'm saying that is that Stat crunch does not give you the standard deviation of the D values Directly and you can calculate it using the data compute Function But essentially what you're doing you're just doing those long equations Using stat crunch and candidly you can do those long equations faster and excel than you can in stat crunch So I'll be looking at that. I want to get as many of these answers right in the shortest period of time as I have Your final exam and your quizzes are timed and so I would make that trade-off But let me show you The first thing you have to do of course is identify the claim and the null and the alternative the claim is That the scores improve the second time they took the test Okay When we're doing a paired sample or really any two sample tests, we're always subtracting the two means and we are Looking to to say for the null that there is no difference in the the means and The alternative is either that there is a difference or That mean one is greater than mean two or that mean two is greater than the mean one in this case Because we're saying the second test they got better scores that would mean that mean two is Greater than mean one which would mean the mean difference in use of d would be less than or equal to zero and the Null has to be the complement of that would be greater than equal to zero So the claim is that the scores improve the second time First thing you need to do is get the critical value and I want to just go ahead and click on the little icon there Open up that data and stat crunch So we've got our data But for right now we're just going to go and get the calculator We're using the t distribution. We always use the t for paired samples We need our degrees of freedom And we've got 14 pairs So the degrees of freedom would be the number of pairs minus one would be 13 our alpha is 0.01 because we've got a a left tail test remember our Alternative the operator is a less than symbol points to the left. That means it's a lower tail one tail test So we put the entire alpha in there of 0.01. I think that's 0.01. Yes and I click on compute and we get a critical t value of minus 2.650 Which is what they get and our Rejection region is that red area there anything um, any any t statistic standardized t statistics is greater than Excuse me less than minus 2.65 is in the rejection region and we would reject the null hypothesis So i'm going to close that for right now And what I want to suggest to you that would save so much time Is that instead of going through these these long calculations we need to get the test statistic and the D bar and we can get that using the stat t stats paired sample Paired sample unfortunately, and I told you always comes up with raw data We click on it Our first data is the first test Second test we can ignore the where and group by We can go ahead and save the differences Just in case we have time. I'll show you something We're going to do the hypothesis test Remember that when we're doing the hypothesis test, it doesn't matter if we use just the equal because if we're We're Significant for the equal then either the greater than side is also equal or if we're doing a A uh upper tail test the less than side is always significant What we do need to do is to get our alternative Correct and our mu sub d the difference Is less than zero because we're saying mu Two is greater than mu is one so we click on compute And we get this data And we get a couple of things there We get a value that's labeled the mean And that is the mean of the differences d bar So just remember that this mean of the differences is your d bar 39.786 and if we look over here in my stat lab minus 39.786 I'm not sure I said minus there But that mean that the hypothesis test gives us Is our d bar We also get our standardized test statistic minus 3.182 And there in our Uh question is the standardized test statistic correct minus 3.182 So we've gotten a lot right very quickly We don't have the standardized. I'm excuse me the standard deviation of the differences But um I would recommend pressing ahead we've got a p value That is a lot less than 0.01 So that tells us to reject the null hypothesis If we go down here in The problem It asks us to Determine do we reject or fail to reject The standardized test statistic minus 3.182 Falls below it's less than the critical area Critical value of minus 2.650 therefore it's in the critical Excuse me the rejection zone and that tells us also to reject the null hypothesis Then we've got to interpret it Choose the correct answer And the correct answer is at the 1 percent significance level 0.01 There is enough evidence that the critical reading scores improved the second time they took the test Now why is that we're rejecting the null The null Said that there Was no difference or in this case That the second Scores were not better than the first scores The claim is that the second scores are better So we go down here at the 1 percent significance level There is enough evidence that the scores improved the second time The reason this one is wrong Because it just says there's evidence the critic reading scores got worse second time which we prove the opposite And you can see those others So that's how you can solve everything except the standard deviation And but you can get the majority of the answers and get a pretty doggone good score in a much faster time I'll show you how to get the standardized Standard deviation in a shorter video


This paper proposes a new deep learning algorithm for short-term load forecasting, SCLF. The algorithm outperformed other AI algorithms commonly used in load forecasting, achieving a mean absolute percentage error, MAPE, of 9.77% in cumulative variation of root mean square error, CVR MSI, of 11.66%. This shows that the proposed algorithm has excellent forecasting accuracy. This article was authored by Ping Huankua and Chu Jihuang.


Okay, so we're here with Senator Jose Rodriguez and he's been listening to all of this research about English language learners and what school funding has been taking place over the last three years and what difference that seems to make. So what's your reaction to this and what's important about this? Well let me say first of all I want to congratulate Iira for sponsoring this conference. I think it's very, very important for the future of education in this state especially for our Latino students and I think what we heard from the research is confirmation that Texas is not doing right by our English language learners. We're not adequately funding the programs, we're not providing even the adequate base funding we just heard for the English language learners students which of course applies across the board. And so I think this data will be very useful in this current session, certainly will be useful for me in terms of the work of the Senate Education Committee that I'm now serving to propose better funding and better additional base funding as well as more emphasis on the bilingual and dual language programs that are necessary to ensure that our Latino students mainly the English language learners students can excel in school. And as we also heard confirmation of what we have been hearing for quite some time from our former state demographer Steve Murdoch that Texas needs to do better in investing in education for the Latino students who are projected to be the future labor force of this state. That's why it's important. That's why it's extremely important. I think if Texas wants to compete, if it wants to stay ahead in the 21st century economy then Texas and indeed the whole nation need to do a lot more for our English language learners and our students and the programs that they have to go through the teacher preparation more teachers that are certified that are that are qualified to teach our students so that we can have a labor force that is going to be trained and educated to meet the needs of the state. And we're here with Dr. Julian Vasquez-Helik who was one of the panelists earlier this morning on this conversation and by the way did tweet out that link to your blog post so that people can people can find it. Tell me tell me what what you've learned here today. Sure. I think one of the most this is a very important issue for the state of Texas and the Americans in general one fifth almost one fifth of all students in the state of Texas are what are called English language learners. So that's a key piece nearly millions of kids across the United States fall into this category of students who are learning the English language. So that's I think the important context of the conversation. The second thing is that the question is are we properly funding schools to benefit these kids these students because we know that English language learners are considered a special population in Texas they have an additional weight to the poor people monies that are allotted to schools and the question is is that weight enough unfortunately Texas has a sort of sordid history when it comes to school finance they've been in court five times over the last couple of decades in terms of funding students they have a the legislature has a constitutional obligation to provide an adequate education and the courts have said five times or four times that they aren't doing so and English language learners are when you disaggregate the group are the group that underperforms across the board in terms of student outcomes dropout rates grade retention rates test scores and so are we providing schools with the resources necessary to adequately serve it and so this conference get provided the opportunity a to look at the data to look at the school finance data b what are some of the best practices educators talked about them we talked about empirically based best practices for English language learners so what should come from this I think that folks would will be interested to know the data about school finance so that the legislature will act we clearly there's higher ways for the various special education categories some districts are spending 10 20% more on educating ELLs beyond what the state is allotting to them because this is a population that needs high quality teachers these resources needs community liaisons with the community there's a variety of things that we need to provide these students for them to be successful and money does matter especially for English language learners and ultimately what is the importance of making sure that English language learners are helped in when their students well we're a nation of immigrants 100 years ago it was the Germans it was the Italians and and now the waves of immigration are coming from Latin America Central America Mexico and other places this is our future this is the we're talking here about the vibrance of our democracy a decade from now two decades from now so we must provide these children an opportunity an equal opportunity to live out their American dream obviously there's there's a great deal of interest but there is some concern about where we are as it relates to providing quality programs especially for secondary level students based on the comments I've heard there's clearly an understanding that we are not going to be certainly in the areas of teacher preparation curriculum materials providing support to help districts both identified but also retain teachers and clearly that if we don't do a more effective job that they're going to be serious economic consequences and that's that that gets to the other part of it why this is important I mean what's the the global sort of significance of this clearly based on on the data that we cited today too many of our EL students are not achieving at levels required by the state to meet state graduation requirements many of them don't get through our high schools they're going to drop out we don't base just on on extensive research has been done on the impact of level of education on not only earning but there are related studies that suggests that people that are better educated have better health situations they can people the better educated higher levels of taxes that they pay out so benefits in multiple areas the downside is that you don't have an educated workforce as a business person and you have to invest resources just retrain your workers and bottom line is if you don't invest up front then there are the negative costs associated in terms of income transfer programs health you know care benefit needs and also just job training implications that will be required so it has some far-reaching very far-reaching implications far reaching you know we have to get beyond a notion that well if we don't do well it's just this one individual the problem will be gone next year or a couple years no it's it's an issue that our failures stay with us and what people are talking about the tables right now are what what what are the next steps they're all the next steps given what the research has said about not only the characteristics of schools that are successful what are the kinds of changes that we need to start making schools in terms of how we identify the students the kinds of instructional programs we provide for them how we support our teachers how we make sure that we don't use data around test you know assessment is important we understand that there's concerns about too much testing at the same time if we don't have some measure then how do we know how they're gonna talk about well what is next not only in Texas but Texas look upon in other parts of the country for new ways of addressing these kinds of issues and we hope to provide some of those answers right all right well also we have a robust online audience and I've been telling them and I had please repeat to them that their ideas about these things are welcome yes of course you know while we are you know physically around these tables we understand that there is a vast amount of expertise out in the field those of you that are joining us online we would not only welcome you with really seriously asked when you share your insights with perspective your expertise so you can share them as we put the proceedings together so even beyond today beyond today there will be a non-point non-point both conversation thank you so much thank you today I've learned that the importance of making resources and funding equitable for English language learners and the importance of that why because we need to make sure that they're getting equitable services instructionally and academically in the classroom you're going to be taking some of this back to you yes I will be taking this because you're ahead of services yes right why is all of this important it's important because I think it's important that for everyone to understand that our English language learners are students first most but also because it's important to look at their linguistic needs and academic needs individually and then determine how to plan for them appropriately so that they're able to get the services they need and Highland Hill has one of the highest percentages if I recall correctly in the San Antonio area of people who are English language learners I don't know where the high is but we have quite a few we have about 2,500 students in our district and so what happens if what happens if we don't address this issue right now I think it's important for our students if we don't address the issue I don't think the students will get the support and services that they need and then there'll be a huge gap you know well it's already a gap but even the gap will just continue to grow and the students are will not be able to just have the same opportunities that everyone else has and that is a cost to the rest of society as well yes and so that also will have a huge impact actually because because we're such a large population of our ELLs it will have a bigger impact on what our future is and our future of our kids so there's a pretty good audience online out there watching us right now and many of them it sounds like our educators and people who are pretty passionate about this as well feel free to let them know that you're interested in hearing what they have to say. Well I appreciate you taking time to listen to even just in today's segment but also just to continue to support students and continue to fight for students and of course reach out to me in any way that I can help support as well. Linda, you're with our Lady of the Lake University and you've been partnering with IDRA on this. Yes I'm a tenured faculty member here at our Lady of the Lake. I'm the coordinator of bilingual education and so our Lady of the Lake was one of the first bilingual education work was the first bilingual education program that was certifying teachers in the state and so we're going we had a 40th anniversary a couple years ago and a lot of people from IDRA were here I know Albert Cortez and I've been a lot of the other all graduates of our Lady of the Lake and so a lot of the leaders in bilingual education have come out of this program. It's very exciting when you talk about bilingual education although it's very difficult to train teachers in bilingual education because of the lack of resources not only at the K-12 level but also at the university level and so here at our Lady of the Lake recently what we did was we even took like linguistic classes that were offered only to bilingual educators and now we're offering them to all students but as I sat through the day and listening to the gentleman from the civil rights office speaking he was talking about the training that we do in terms of ESL students and I thought to myself we're offering these courses but we only offer them for bilingual educators so we're sure that the bilingual educators are receiving training and learning strategies and English language learners but then I thought to myself not all mainstream teachers are doing that so I think that coming away from this meeting today I'm going to go back up with the education faculty and start talking about that although we have pieces of it in there we have actual classes in the bilingual education program that focus specifically all semester on working on cognitive academic language learning strategies and that's important for people who are teaching all sorts of subjects yes all subject areas because of the amount and the increasing number of ELL in our communities especially here in San Antonio and so there is a very high likelihood that they're gonna they're gonna come in contact with kids who are ELL so they need to at least have a bit of a hand up yes and we are looking to train more bilingual teachers I mean we have a lot of spaces available from districts to call all the time stating that we're not training enough bilingual educators and so every student that has come out of our Lady of the Lake in our program to receive jobs right out of the gate as soon as they take their tests we have a 98% pass rate for our tests 76% of our teachers after five years are still in the classroom teaching and so we're doing a really good job we just don't have enough of them at the national level for the National Association of Bilingual Education coming up in March the Bessel Organization which is our bilingual educator student organization is going to be discussing along with UTSA the pipeline and how we are not training enough teachers in bilingual education at ESL education that they're not coming into the field and so without them coming into the field we have more alternative certification teachers in the classrooms which aren't always trained at the highest levels and we also have a lot of permanent subs in classrooms because we just aren't producing enough teachers so so say you could talk to a kid in high school who's getting ready to come to you know get getting ready to think about college and careers and stuff like that what do you say to the kid that says they really should focus on not just being a teacher but being a bilingual teacher what do you tell them so what's in it for them what's in it for them the joy of teaching because we know we're not here to make the big bucks as part of our Lady of the Lake and being from the Sisters of Providence we call teaching a colleague we're like it's not really so much profession as it is a colleague because we don't want teachers in the classroom who don't want to be there who are not happy or who don't understand going above and beyond to work with ESL learners or to work with children who come from a second language we have so many new immigrants into the community especially from Catholic Charities how they've been bringing a lot of children over so we have schools that we have adjunct professors teaching at principals and they have kids from 60 60 different language communities in their classes and yet we're not training the teachers fast enough to work with them so when we talk about bilingual education we're not only talking Spanish English anymore although that is huge for South Texas we're starting to train for all languages and so when I prepare teachers here they'll ask me why are we studying Hungarian or why are we studying Devon here why are we studying Tagalog and I say because you never know who you're going to get in your bilingual class and it's not enough to know phonemic awareness and morphology and orthography for the English and Spanish language only you have to understand it and be able to research and find this material in other languages and so that's been a huge push as well that we're working on but yes anyone who would like to become bilingual educator I say come to our Lady of the Lake and come to our program and look at it and see we've got small numbers in our classroom I teach maybe 12 to 15 per class sometimes there are as low as 10 kids in the classroom but we're very hands-on and we're training leaders you know we're out at national conferences we're at state conferences my students are presenting I try to kind of stand back and just build leaders and let them do the work I think it's been a very educated educational experience particularly I think that it has been where you bring people who are on the ground teaching students that are English learners and people from colleges and universities research community policy makers and so forth so that that exchange and finding out where people are coming from has been very informative now right next right next to you is another college of education at UTSA and you are also dealing with the pipeline of people who are bilingual educators yeah right next door yeah this is this is a broader importance oh yeah so not only do you have the bilingual pipeline but you also have the schools to prison pipeline since college department of criminal justice is in our college and we've seen a significant increase of kids going to detention starts with the tension and so forth and all of a sudden they have people being expelled from school and so forth and all of a sudden you have the the the kind of the road into the juvenile justice system and so forth so that's a major part and particularly because you have students who are poor for example from this economically disadvantaged backgrounds students who are English learners and so forth are the ones that are more likely to get into trouble with the criminal justice system so those are the ramifications of doing nothing right exactly yeah and what is what is the upside of doing something oh the upside is I think that but a small investment in terms of the education of kids and improving the academic preparation of kids who don't speak English fluently and so forth getting them ahead and so forth getting them to finish school getting them to go to community colleges to four-year institutions have careers and so forth that they become taxpayers and so forth they contribute back to the community and these are individuals who are more likely to be civically engaged and so forth and participate in the larger society compared to kids who all of a sudden are are marginalized and kept from from these kinds of opportunities yeah exactly and events like this I mean what what IDRA has pulled together today tell me tell me about what yeah well Idra has always been a major leader not only here in San Antonio but nationally in terms of the work that they do and pulling the research in and that intersection I think between the academics and the practitioners is very important and the policymakers so they bring all these three together and you can see it here in this event today and there is a robust audience online oh yeah I got to Rhode Island to to the Rio Grande Valley I got an email from somebody from Alabama and we're asking them to contribute their ideas as well because it's so important yeah I learned a lot there are people all around us all around me in my place of work at IDRA and schools and communities with parent groups and if we listen a little bit we learn a lot today of course we're talking about English language learners which are almost one out of five students in the state of Texas these are students that are learning English and that unfortunately are not being well served by schools in Texas and so we are taking a look at what needs to be done to assure that they're prepared for college right now for example only one out of ten English language learners is prepared to go to college that's outrageous when we know that college is needed almost 70% of the new jobs so we're taking a look at that taking a look at how we make sure the teachers are well prepared to teach students who are learning another language and need to be able to keep learning in their own language while they learn English so that's what we are up to parents tell us importantly that they want their kids to learn English they want their kids to succeed they want their kids to maintain their own language so that they can keep their familial connections and they want them to succeed and do well so the people who are gathered in the room today that includes students and teachers and school administrators superintendents university people all are gathered to find solutions to what are persistent problems we know that among other things we need to make sure of two things very importantly one is that we put our money where our mouth is that there is more money that is needed to assure that English language learners have high quality education it is unfair and not right that they are relegated to the poorest schools secondly we also know that we have to make sure that teachers know how to educate students who are learning another language so teacher training is one other thing that we've been talking about today and that is crucial and then also making sure that we're putting something in place that measures that we're improving that's right that's right but with some caveats that's right so we need to know how we're doing you know if if you or I want to lose weight we need to know how much we weigh have we lost anything and are our efforts producing results I think in much the same way we rely on certain measures to know if what we're doing for children is producing the result that we want which is learning and preparation but we don't want to do is to hurt students by testing them and then saying well you know what you didn't pass that test so now we're gonna have to hold you behind there's plenty of evidence that says that high stakes testing which means making big decisions for children on the basis of a test score is just plain wrong and so that is not what we need but what we do need is to be able to do sample testing just like we do with the water in a river to know that it's you know high quality we test a few drops and we say oh yeah this is working this is what we need in the state of Texas and the people who are here are taking a look at that senator José Rodriguez who is here has also committed to working to increase the amount of dollars that are available to English language learner and students in schools or high quality teaching for good curriculum we heard that materials are just not available in the school so that's another important thing and so I think together we can get this done and and what is what is it I think at stake is the future certainly of the students who are being relegated to second-class citizenship but perhaps from the perspective of all of us what is at stake is our common and survival our common ground education is the key in terms of economic prosperity IDRA just did a paper together with UTSA and the San Antonio Hispanic Chamber and we found out that education is the key economic strategy so that all of us have good neighborhoods have neighborhoods in which we can raise our families and in which our kids can thrive have good jobs so that is what is at stake and I have to tell you that during you know Saturday night's gala by the Hispanic Chamber they talked about that white paper wonder how important that is yes yes and I think really that the San Antonio Hispanic Chamber among all of the chambers in Texas is really taking a lead role to get this message across they've been working with city council and with superintendents locally to make sure that local school districts get on board and say you know we are going to prepare every student to go on to college they may not all go to college they may not all want to go college but they will have a choice instead of being ill-prepared and therefore unable to have that choice and that's also because it's not just academic it's not just an issue for teachers that's exactly right that's exactly right for the workforce entrepreneurship you know it's it's about all of us living a good and decent and common life in which all of us are productive and contribute our best yeah I have to I have to share one story with you when I was when I was named business editor of the Express News I went and immediately Tom Frost said senior said he wanted to speak with me and he said okay so what is it what is the business story and I said education that's the story that's right that's exactly right it is the business story and and I think more and more of the business community is finding that out and I find the business community really willing to do their share to to make sure that all of these issues are addressed and we address educational ones and for others no reason why we can't by the way we have everything that it takes we have the knowledge we have the commitment we have the entrepreneurship that would be required to create the solutions that and I think it's time Maldives been involved in this issue for a long time and you've been involved in this issue for a long time right yeah absolutely I mean I think it's 35 40 years and counting that all that has been involved in this battle me a little bit less than that what what's new for you here today I mean what's new is is to realize exactly how few successful secondary programs there are for English learners because you hear a lot of rhetoric about oh well you know this school here is doing excellent for English learners they have a great superintendent they have a great plan but yet when you dig into the data and you realize wait there are so few successful schools and that's just you know using the limited definition of success based on you know standardized testing and those results but I think it's a real challenge you know for still politically as far as we've come we still have so much further to go especially for secondary and so yes we heard earlier today about political solutions or you know the political process and you're also involved in a couple of still involved right in a couple of lawsuits about this yeah whether it's a whether it's a lawsuit about the funding for English learners or it's a lawsuit about the lack of educational opportunities in the classroom for English learners you know Texas has far better policy on paper for English learners than many other states but when it comes to funding policy that is so divorced from the actual resources those students need to succeed and when it comes to monitoring and implementing the programmatic policies that we have on paper that's practically non-existent and it's essentially set up so that the state can do the least amount of monitoring and intervention to support school districts that are already strapped for resources what are the consequences well I mean if you're talking about the individual student it means that student never reaches his or her full potential and that's just the wrong thing that we should be doing for any child in Texas if you're talking about for the family then it's of course it's going to be lack of support if you're talking about the community then you have people who aren't going to be staying in certain communities you have state and national economic consequences whether it's dealing with pay whether it's dealing with professions filling certain professions as we move to a more advanced technological world or if you're looking at health and housing and criminal justice system I mean all of these are going to be impacted if we fail to educate students and fail to deliver the educational opportunities they need to succeed so where do we have to go from here I mean what's like what are the next steps you're talking next steps at your table yeah absolutely and I think you know the real real real progress that we need now is one to ensure that you know certain policies are changed so that we can build a better bigger and better pipeline of qualified teachers for English learner students I think that we need to look at our policies regarding testing and what that testing is and how we're diverting so much of the resources to testing companies as opposed to you know the students who actually needed in the classroom it just has to be a comprehensive solution that has a marriage between education policy and the research that shows what can work absolutely that's what is really been missing largely over the years since the great battles won in the early 1980s but now here we are you know in a new era and we need to push and progress the movement thank you