Welcome to Montpelier Civic Forum. This is yet another in a series leading up to Town Hall and basically explaining to you why you should go to vote on Town Hall even though we have no contested races. And tonight we're going to talk about the schools and it's going to be a good conversation. I'm going to speak with Andrew Stein who's running for a term of how long? Three years. So we've got Andrew for three years unless there's a massive writing campaign. That's right. And Andrew, you've been on the board for how long? I haven't seen you, which means you were appointed. Since September. In September, what made you want to get on the board? So when Peter Sterling was considering resigning, he and some other community members approached me. And it's an exciting time for Montpelier Rocksbury schools, right? As of July 1, we became a new school district. We have a new superintendent. We have a new elementary school principal. We're going to have a new high school principal. We have a newer business manager. And so we have a brand new district with an administration that's in flux. And my background is in public administration, public policy, public finance, public budgeting.  So I... And then past college experience. So I... Post college. I studied international policy and economics and then I had a Fulbright Fellowship, lived in China for a couple of years. I'm a former Freeman Foundation scholar and Middlebury College Sustainable Study Abroad grant holder. So I've done a bunch of independent research, primarily looking at how market-based incentives and economic policy can help influence environmental policy. So looking at the intersection of economic and environmental policy. And then I was a journalist. One of my then-girlfriend, now-wife and I moved back from China in late 2010. We moved to Vermont, which is where she's from. And where I grew up as a child, visiting in the summer times and winter times on vacation with my family. I grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Both of us went to public schools. So we placed very high value on public education. And we moved back to Vermont and I worked as a journalist for the Addison County Independent, which I loved. I'm so excited about moving to Vermont. Is the Addison County Independent still in existence? Oh yeah, it's doing great. It just brought home a bunch of awards at the New England Newspaper Association. And it's a wonderful twice-weekly publication that supports a very engaged community. I had the great fortune of covering the five-town region, which centers around Bristol, Lincoln, Starksboro, New Haven, and Monkton. And I also covered environmental and energy issues there. And after I was there for about a year and a half, there was a nascent digital publication at the time called vtdigger.org. And at that time, the Addison County Independent and VT Digger were sharing articles. And a number of the articles that VT Digger was running from the Addison County Independent were ones that I had worked on. And- Now how long ago would that be? That would have been summer of 2012. And that is when I shifted over summer, early fall of 2012. And I shifted over to work for vtdigger.org. So you were on State Street? At that time, we were on Main Street. We were above one more time. And then we moved to State Street. And then I subsequently, I left and I took a position as what was previously- And you were the first staff people. I was the second ever full-time staff writer. The first was a gentleman named Alan Panabaker. And then, and obviously, Ann Galloway, the impetus behind all of this was truly the first full-time member. And she's just done such amazing job with it. Yes, and the vision that she set out years ago when I interviewed for that job has really come to fruition now. And it's wonderful to see I'm a regular reader. And I greatly value the work that her and her team do. They have a really, really talented group over there. So you had a side glance at that point into the legislative process dealing with education? So at that point, I really focused on healthcare and energy issues and public finance issues. So capital public. So public finance and not do education in this state. Right, yes. So there's certainly some education there. And when I was at the county publication, there was lots of education. And that was, those were some of the assignments that I enjoyed the most. But my wife is a public educator. So around the time that I went to work for vtdigger.org, my wife was shifting from higher education. She had been a visiting lecturer of Chinese at Middlebury College to public education because she had such a wonderful public education in Vermont. She graduated from CVU, went to Williston Central School and that was where her heart was. And she is a prolific language learner and educator. She's a polyglot. She speaks numerous foreign languages. And so she certified, if I'm not mistaken, I believe she certified in Spanish to teach Spanish, Chinese and ESL. And she could probably be certified to teach French as well. And she's passionate. We're always talking about public education issues at home. And so I did leave vtdigger, though, to get back to your original question. I left vtdigger and went to work for Doug Hoffer when he was elected in his first term. And he, Doug Hoffer being the state auditor. The state auditor, that's right. And he hired me into a position that was then called the Special Investigator, is now called the Government Research Analyst. And that was a great opportunity to examine a broad range of issues from consumer access to healthcare information to the state's competitive bidding practices to the return on investment that the state gets from leasing out its iconic mountain sides to ski resorts to executive compensation at the designated agencies to... Did you do economic development in terms of its return? So we did a little bit of that, but that recent report that you're talking about was actually produced by my successor, a young gentleman named Kristoff, who recently left to take a position in Rhode Island with the Office of Management and Budget there. After, so I bounced around a little bit, after the state auditor's office, I went over to the tax department and the agency of administration, first under the Shumlin administration then under the Scott administration, working on, I was a research economist. So when there are policy changes that affect revenue sources, I would estimate the impacts on Vermonters as well as on the state budget. And so one of my most proud accomplishments in that role occurred last year when the Republican Congress and President Trump pushed through the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that really scrambled Vermont's tax code, personal income tax code. And what that was going to lead to was a $42 million increase on families in aggregate tax payments, because the way that we adjusted for household, the way that we adjusted, the way that we taxed household income based on household size, was based on the federal code. Was based on the federal code, exactly. So this is the idea that we tax an individual income earner earning $80,000 a year differently than we do a family of five earning $80,000 a year, because that family of five earning $80,000 a year doesn't have as much money to go around to support those folks. And so our tax code accounts for that. We have a very progressive personal income tax code in the state of Vermont. Now were you around there for two different ones. One, the effect of internet taxation, the ability of states to force internet taxation, were you around for the modeling of that? So remote sellers, is that what you're talking about? So all of the internet sellers selling into the state of Vermont. Right, exactly. Yeah, so this past, I was around for that, and this past summer the Supreme Court overturned a previous decision that they had made. The US Supreme Court or state? The US Supreme Court overturned a previous decision that they had made that the previous decision said states can't, they cannot tax, they cannot compel remote sellers to remit sales tax for goods sold into their state if they don't have some kind of physical presence in that state, essentially, that's the skinny. And they went back on that considering how the economy has evolved over time this past summer. And on June 21st, actually, they changed them. So now the state of Vermont is able, as well as many other states, are able to collect sales tax. And that benefits our schools because now the sales tax in the state of Vermont goes 100% to the education fund. The impact of Act 46 of the mergers, were you involved in estimating that? No, I wasn't, I wasn't involved.  Yeah, and that would have been more, I don't know the extent to which the tax department was involved with that because I wasn't involved with that particular issue. The agency of education, I imagine, was quite involved with that. Another thing, though, that was fun to work on was working with Treasurer Beth Pierce on her Clean Water Report, looking at ways to fund clean water initiatives. Has the Department of Taxation your part of the Department of Taxation? Not anymore, so now, I know, I know.  It's like we should possibly put your resume on the screen if anyone's interested. So as of December 19th, I, well, there was a transition period, another Montpelier resident and a mentor and friend of mine, Susan Mezner, who was a long time economist with the tax department, and then was deputy state auditor for, auditor Hoffer for the first three terms, decided to retire from full-time state employment at the end of December, and I have since moved into that role as deputy state auditor. So you're back at the auditor's office? I'm back at the auditor's office. I was gonna ask whether with Beth Pierce, you had had any role whatsoever in estimating our liabilities for pensions? I have not had a role in that, no. Because that's a big major project of her office? That is a major role of her office, yeah. That's a big project. Why don't you step forward? You're one of three people on that board who holds a unique distinction. Would you tell our viewers what that distinction is that you hold on the Montpelier-Roxbury board? We spoke about this beforehand. I do not have children. Is that the distinction? Absolutely. Tina and Lisa also don't have kids. Now, we might have kids in the future. We're discussing that, we're not certain. So for me, I never saw running for school board as something that you do because you had kids per se. Both my wife and I are major supporters of our public school system. And as somebody with a background in economics, there's a lot of empirical evidence that shows that investing in public K-12 and really pre-K to 12 education is one of the best investments that we can make in our society. And at this, going back to, I think the question that you asked initially about why I decided to run. Absolutely. I wasn't sitting at home thinking that it was one of my life's goals to run for school board. But I realized when Peter and other community members approached me about the position as he was planning to resign, was that I had a skill set that could really benefit the community. They appealed to my- And what is that skill set? A background in public administration, public finance, budgeting, public policy, and a shared value and commitment to see our schools prosper and to invest in our schools in a way that produces the best outcomes for our kids. It's important to consider affordability in all of that and return on investment. What is affordability in your view? So that's a very good question. There's a lot of different ways of defining affordability. It depends on, there's no perfect answer to that question. That's a very difficult question. The affordability, so there's the affordability for taxpayers, right? Can taxpayers afford this? Fortunately, we do have, in this state, we do have an income sensitized progressive- What is an income sensitized progressive tax? Right, so our property taxes have several tiers based on your income. And so not everybody pays based on their property. And many pay based on their income. Most for monitors do not pay property taxes based, do not pay education taxes based on their property. They pay it based on their income to some degree. Now, through court rulings of the past that still hold, we have pooled our education funds so that those who are close to, in the N.E.K., to Canada, or those who are very South, are not, who have no real property to speak of, relatively speaking, no property value, so that their school districts are dirt poor. Is that the bottom line of what you're saying? Is that we pool our resources together and in order to shield those of us who have a lot of property or those of us who have very little, there's a complete mechanism for balancing that out. So, well, there's two things going on here. There's the education fund, which has evolved quite a bit over time. Act 60, I believe, is what established it in the late 90s and there was Act 68.  And so the way that education is funded has shifted considerably over time. It's essentially based on per-people spending in schools. And it comes out of a central education fund in theory, in practice, money shifts between districts, is my understanding of how it really works. In terms of, so what is it? Sorry, what is the exact question that you wanted to answer? What I think I'm saying, you see, I don't even know what I'm saying. What I think I'm saying is, we're talking about affordability. Does that in your mind include city school taxes? So that you have the city tax, you have the school tax, the combined tax. In our particular case, our school tax is sitting square in the middle, pretty much. Our city tax is at the very top, near the very top, so that the collective tax is pretty high. Which is- Our municipal taxes are fairly high compared to other similar sized municipalities around the state. Absolutely. Which has, as well as our housing values, are pretty high. So if we're looking for young couples like you and your wife- Have to add housing. Housing is critical. We absolutely have to add housing in the city. We essentially have a 0% effective vacancy rate with regard to our rental and our real estate markets. And if we want to be able to afford a high quality of life and we want to have a more diverse community, which I'm hearing from a lot of community members that that is something- What does that mean? I think a lot of community members would like to have some more cultural diversity here. Again, what does that mean? It means having people from other countries, from other backgrounds, from other ethnicities, other religious backgrounds. There's certainly a feeling that I've heard from Montpelier residents. Some ideas that have been floated is, wouldn't it be great to have a refugee resettlement program in Montpelier similar to Winooski or Burlington programs like that? But when you've got zero- But when you don't have a place for these people to live. And I actually think that a program like that would do wonderfully in a town like Montpelier. We have a very supportive, very tight-knit community. It's a very walkable community. I mean, you have your hardware store, you have a couple of drug stores, several different grocery options- And a pet store. An excellent pet store, might I add. All within walking distance, we've got a lot of great jobs. And I should say, I am on the city's housing task force. I haven't been able to participate as much as I'd like to in recent years. But we are fortunate to have a mayor who's very committed to the idea of adding housing. And we have a number of city council. District employee and Watson. That is right. Physics teacher at the high school. That is right. And math teacher. But also with regard to the issue of affordability, if you're able to add housing and add residence in a way where you net positive revenue, where adding those houses doesn't take 50 years for the state's infrastructure improvements that add sewage and stormwater and other utility expenses, if it doesn't take 50 years to pay something like that off. If you can pay that off in a short period of time and start netting positive revenue, you can take advantage of what are called economies of scale. So if you have certain opportunities that you want to achieve, it can cost less to achieve those opportunities when you achieve an economy of scale. Now as we speak as economists, let's go off on economies of scale. What's your feeling now that Washington Central will ultimately become one district? And the politics of the merger and consolidation play itself through. Do you see us ever merging Montpelier High School and U32 to get economies of scale moving, to get more students critical mass to be able to offer more course offerings? So this is a hot button issue, as you know. And it has been in this community and in the surrounding communities for a long time. And there are a lot of different perspectives on this. I think we're already seeing some of those economies of scale being leveraged with regard to sports teams, for example. And whether, this isn't a direct answer to your question, whether there's ever a direct merger or whether the two districts, well, Supervisor Union and district are able to share resources, I think there are a lot of opportunities there. I mean, we're so close proximity-wise. If there are certain programs that in Montpelier, we just don't have the number of students to be able to offer that in Washington. Such as fine arts. There's all sorts of art programs. I mean, I went to a high school that had about 1,500 kids and the art offerings that I had were twice, maybe three times what are offered in Montpelier. Well, they've often said that U32 has humanities down very well, but they're deficient to some degree in terms of advanced placement classes. Montpelier has advanced placement classes but doesn't have enough kids really to support the humanities offerings as they do up in the hill. Yeah, and with regard to this question, it really is, so I approach this position as I have the technical skillset to help the community plan and execute its vision. If it can articulate its vision. And that is really important. It's important to engage, but for the community to articulate its vision, the community also needs to be engaged in a manner that can help it think through these issues. And I think that this is really a huge issue that the community really does need to think through. And it's not just one that we would have to make. It would be a bilateral decision, right? There's a set of communities in another supervisory union right next door. And then we have our community and Roxbury. And so even if Montpelier said, yeah, we wanna do this, we would also need partners on the other side to feel the same way. But there are a lot of decision points here that would need to be accounted for. One thing that Montpelier families would have to consider is, they might have Montpelier families would have less control. The voice of an individual Montpelier family in a school district would be a smaller percentage, right? It's one family, if you have two school districts of roughly the same size and they merge, one family therefore has half the voice, I guess, you could say. That's a potential. Now when I've talked with those who are in favor of this proposal, they say, well, Middlesex and Calis and East Montpelier, they're our neighbors. It's not a bad thing for us to have more people. We can talk it out. We can work things out. It's not like they're approaching the world from a very different vantage point than the city of Montpelier. We're all in the same community together. And I definitely hear that. I think it's something that, so as I said, we're in the middle of a big transition period in this city right now, transition. And they're an even bigger transition. And they're in an even bigger transition. And right now, if we were to have this conversation, I don't think it would be very productive, but I think it is certainly worth something that I think it's worth a discussion at the very least over the next three years. We need to let things settle down in Montpelier and Roxbury and we need to let things settle down in Washington Central. And we need to see where both of the school districts are. But at that time, a conversation, if anything, it might revalidate for both communities that, hey, we have it pretty good. This is working really well for us right now. It might also lead the communities to a different conclusion. I'm not certain what the right answer is. I'm not- Well, there is no right answer. I don't think there is either. For Montpelier for years has struggled with small class sizes. And the idea that the inefficiencies of very small classes. The school in Roxbury, it's not popular to talk about, but you've got 28 kids in an elementary school that are dedicated through the next three, four years, something on that level. Is there an efficiency in keeping a school open that only has 25 or 26 kids? I haven't looked at Roxbury's situation closely enough yet, just having been on the board for six months, I haven't drilled down into Roxbury specifically. The district gets, so first of all, Roxbury isn't an island in and of itself, although geographically it is a little bit further. It's not an adjacent town. But- It's a half an hour school bus ride. Yeah, 25 minutes, half an hour. If we look at all of our resources across the district, that merger isn't such a bad thing for our district. Why? What bleach is that conclusion? That building is in excellent shape. That building is in much better shape than our middle school, for example. It doesn't need the type of work that our elementary and high schools need even. So we're establishing a capital fund to pay for a bunch of improvements. Our high school would've paid for a bunch of improvements and we're in the process of paying for a bunch of improvements. Let me stop you right there. There is a second school issue coming up, which is the capital bond issue. And would you explain the difference for us in terms of having periodic bond issuance where we do a big $3 million bond vote and having every year 260, 270, 280,000, what is the thinking on that? You've arrived pretty much at the same place at the end, don't you? Well, it depends on the project. And it also depends on interest rates. So when you bond for something, you're paying interest on it. You're taking out a loan, right?  Now what we're bonding for is school improvements. We're not bonding for staff. Capital improvements. Capital improvements mean we're bonding for construction work on the schools. Okay. Yeah. And so some of this construction work can be done in a phased approach, like changing windows and doors.  And so in that case, and with regard to some of the improvements at the elementary school, bonding for that all at once was something that the board felt made sense and something that the community made sense. The community ultimately voted on it, right? In the case of the capital fund, the idea is we just took out this big bond, right? And we're paying debt service, okay? So we're paying off that loan. At the same time, at the middle school and in some of our other buildings, we do have some other capital needs. I mean, just on a small scale, we're gonna have to... Well, we're talking about things such as bathrooms, we're talking about gym backboards, we're talking about painting a playground, we're talking about a gym roof. Right. And so the idea with the capital fund is putting in $200, $260,000 a year. A capital fund, it's different than other funds where at the end of the year, we wipe them clean and you have a centralized fund balance. This is the balance that you have left at the end of the year and then those funds start anew each year. The capital fund is different in that you can keep money in it from year to year. So if you put $260,000 in it this year and $240,000 in it next year, you have $500,000. And if you have some improvements that you're estimating are gonna cost $500,000 rather than taking out a bond and paying interest on it, if we set aside a little bit of money and pay for it in that manner, the idea is that it'll cost taxpayers less because we're not gonna be paying interest on it. And for these types of improvements that we can plan for and are a bit smaller in cost than the new playground, for example, and some of the other renovations at the elementary school, this was proposed by our business managers a more responsible way to pay for these, a more affordable way to pay for these for the community. So these will not piggyback when in the eventuality that the major bonds that we took for the roof of Mount Pillow of Main Street Middle School, this was before the playground bond, when those bonds expire, we're not going to issue major multi-million dollar bonds and then piggyback this on top of it. None of those decisions have been made yet. So I don't- But was the thinking that these would be an either or, that this approach would- The thinking- The preventative maintenance in a sense. So it's not as expensive and you don't have to do the entire roof. Yeah, I mean, that is part of the thinking. I mean, really part of the thinking is we also have a new facilities manager, right? Andrew LaRosa, who is doing a great job and was out front on, we were one of six schools that weren't required to test for lead in the water fountains and we did test for lead and very thankful for that, that our administration took the initiative on that. That's going to be a capital expense, for example. Shouldn't be a huge capital expense, but making sure that we don't have high levels of lead and the drinking water fountains in our schools is very, very critical to the board and to the entire community. And most importantly, the health of the community's children. But what this is really looking at is Andrew and the team have identified some capital expenses that we really do need to address as a district and we don't want to necessarily bond for them because it'll increase the cost over time. So the idea was, here are these expenses, we know we need, how can we pay for these? How can we do this in a responsible manner? And the proposal is this capital plan, creating this capital fund and paying for it in a phased approach. So the two approaches will not be on top of each other. This will be... So if the community, for example, at some, if the community, for example, wants to make a major investment years down the road, there's nothing to stop the community necessarily from bonding for a major capital investment while still having that capital plan to pay for these smaller capital improvements. About 10 minutes ago, you spoke about a family in Montpelier, if we extended that family's influence would be less. Now you speak of a community sitting on the school board. Do you really feel that you have a touch with the community that doesn't involve families with kids in the school? They don't attend the meetings. Do you feel that you really have touch with the entire community in terms of input? Even those who do not attend because they don't have children. Does the board reach out to them? So I mean, I talk to members of the community who don't have children all the time. I also talk with members of the community who do have children. I live up off of Terrace Street and both of my neighbors have young kids and many of my neighbors are kids in our schools. Many of my friends have kids in our schools, but many of our friends also don't have kids in our schools. This is a very supportive community of public education. I think one of the reasons is that if you look at our community demographically, it's a very highly educated community. This is one of the most educated states in the entire country and this community, the city of Montpelier, is one of the most educated communities in this extremely educated state. So I have a lot of friends that don't have children who are interested in issues facing our schools and we talk about them regularly. Am I able to talk to everybody in the community? No, no, no, no. Do I have a perfect feel? Is there a way that the board can reach out beyond the parents who are sitting there at your board meetings and giving you their constant input as stakeholders? Sure, and I think in some regards we're doing that right now by having this type of conversation in this public setting. I think it's happening a lot on social media. I think it's happening, I think just by so going back to talking about me being in the minority of being one of the three board members that don't have children, I think by having folks on the board who don't have children, not everybody. I mean, to me, it's kind of irrelevant if you have children or not. It's about the approach that you take to public education and how do you value public education? How does it fit into the community and what does a specific board member bring to the board? That's my own thought, but getting back to the input issue, I think there are opportunities for the board and the administration to solicit feedback in a more effective way. And that was something that we were actually talking about at the board meeting the other night in terms of areas of improvement heading into this next year. You talked about the health of children a little while. Let's talk about the safety of children. That's been an issue since Parkland last, well, it was an issue before Parkland, but it was highlighted by Parkland. What are your thoughts on school safety and the measures that the board has urged and that the administration has taken? So we are following the administration on this. Our, my understanding of the situation, which is largely anecdotal, which is through our superintendent, through my wife and talking with other public educators in the community, and I have a number of friends who are public educators, is that Montpelier is a little bit behind in preparing for some of these events. And I encourage community members to look at the board materials from this past week from the meeting on. Which are on the website? Yeah, which are on the school district's website. So that would have been February 20th. The superintendent provided an overview of what the district has done and is doing on this front. And there is a need, and we've identified this as a need, talking about community input to engage the community on this issue. This is, I mean, this is a tragic issue. The fact that we're talking about how to train educators in providing emergency tourniquets, and we're talking about emergency buckets in classrooms. I mean, this is- What is an emergency bucket?  And- Well, you have to buzz your way into the schools now. Yes, but that, unfortunately, there are, yes, you do have to buzz your way into schools, even in schools where you have to buzz your way in, there have been these tragic incidents, these shootings. One of the biggest concerns of the board is how do we do this in a way where we can reduce the trauma just in the practice of this? Just practicing doing these drills. This can be very, very traumatic for students and for teachers and support staff. It's a very, very difficult thing to address. You know, how do we deal with it with our youngest children in elementary school?  That all, so I had to do that when I was a kid, too, but that all seemed so surreal to me. This is much more palpable. These incidents are occurring at a much higher rate than fortunately, we haven't had a nuclear incident in quite some time, but very, very unfortunately, we're experiencing these tragic school shootings. Have any community members approached the board yet? Oh, yeah. To armed teachers? Oh, no, I haven't heard that. Would you be in favor of arming teachers? No, I'm not in favor of that. Why not? I don't think that the solution to this problem will be solved by putting weapons aimed at killing other human beings in the hands of those who educate our children. I don't think that that is the solution to this problem. I don't know what the solution to the problem is, though. I just do not think that- As if there's one solution? Yes, I just do not think that that is the solution. I am ardently opposed to putting guns in the hands of public educators during school days. Now, public educators outside, public educators who are engaged in hunting and things like that, that's a totally different story. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm not talking about restricting anybody's First Amendment rights here. I'm talking about- Second Amendment rights. Second Amendment rights, thank you. Second Amendment rights. I'm talking about, yeah, certainly not their First Amendment rights, either. I'm talking about not having guns in school days. In the school setting, yeah. You talked a little while ago about this being an extremely well-educated community. Yeah. What happens on the test scores of segmented populations like food stamps, minorities, and the like? That's a really- Where we find that there is a real significant gap. So that's a really good- And a persistent gap. Yeah, and that is something that, so when I, Libby Bones steal our new superintendent and grant our business manager will tell you that I'm a huge pain in their side because I'm constantly requesting data and I'm very thankful for the information that they're providing. I have a lot of data requests and one of the ones that, and our district has not done a great job of keeping the type of information that can help us evaluate progress- What would you- Very well. What would be an example? I would, so I'm very, so first of all I would defer to the educational experts on what is the best way to track outcomes but I think it's really important to track outcomes by socioeconomic level and I know that's something that the board is very interested in and it's really important that we're not allowing our, that we're not allowing students who are at a socioeconomic disadvantage to start with fall behind. For Montpelier to show progress on that front would be a major achievement and I know that's something that all of the board would like to see happen. I can't think of anyone on the board who wouldn't want to see that happen. When we've asked for data on this front we're told that it's coming, the data isn't consistent across the schools which makes it very difficult to track this type of thing. We want data that's not just test scores too. It's important to have information about graduation rates, job rates. There was a really interesting study done on this this past year by some US Census Bureau employees and I believe it was an economist from Harvard and an economist from Brown and they mapped what's called income mobility by region across the United States and I believe it's called the Opportunity Atlas but that's a very difficult thing to do, right? Tracking that type of thing, you need access to very confidential and sensitive information and obviously the board isn't gonna do that. Well it's also lunch, too, no, it's also overtime. Yeah, it's looking at it over, I think it was a 30 year period. So some of the questions I have is what outcome measures should we be looking at? I'm not an educational expert, right? I'm coming into this role with experience in public policy but more on the revenue side, the environmental side, the economic side, socioeconomic side and less on what are the best metrics to gauge educational outcomes? I mean, I know some of them, right? Like graduation rates and we can look at test scores, it's not bad to look at test scores but something that we don't wanna be doing is just teaching to the test. Some of the greatest successes that we've heard from past students is the experiential learning. Matt McClain's program. That's one of them, yeah, certainly. That's the community engagement where kids go out in shadow and kids in turn and things like that. Right. Real life. Yeah. Let me take you to another outcome and that's how few kids we have going to the career center over at Barrie and to the Votech track that leads to two years of Votech that leads to an awfully good employment outcome in life. Why don't we have more kids going there? Why do we still terminate kids who aren't going off to more college in either the academic track or the VOED track? Why do we have that general education track that ends at 12th grade? Is that realistic for a kid to compete these days? I really don't know the answer to that question. I don't know too much about our enrollment in that program right now. I know that we do send some of the funding for that program comes from our school. I don't know what our enrollment is for. Well, if the funding comes from, then we're sending kids because kids are company funding. I don't know how many kids we're sending. I don't know what percentage of a certain class is going there. But if we're driving towards a higher rate of high school graduation, regardless of where it leads afterwards, is that really all that desirable? So we certainly don't want to be just aiming to have... Our aim shouldn't just be graduation and getting kids to graduate and just aiming toward graduation rates. We want to help kids accomplish whatever goals they want to accomplish. We want to foster their interests, passions, and talents in our schools so that when they do graduate, they're lifelong learners, and they can pursue whatever type of career and whatever type of life they want so that they're engaged and active citizens. I think that's an important role. You're touching upon a very philosophical debate, which is what is the role of schools? What should the role of schools be? Well, the board should be the ones who are discussing that level. The board is not out there. The superintendent is taking and operationalizing what the board is setting out in terms of what a community considers to be education. I'm not sitting on the school board, but for those of you collectively, isn't that what you're trying to do is to figure out what that baseline is? I think it is. I do think that is the case. We're a new district. We're establishing a range... We have to establish all new policies, right? We're in the process of doing that. But one of the biggest things that we need to do is we do need to... We do have a general 5,000-foot, like one, two-sentence vision for the district. But we really need to set out, I think, a little bit more of a specific vision. What do we want our kids... What are our goals, right? And that is the role of the board. That is definitely the role of the board. And we need to have those goals clearly established so that we know what outcomes do we want to use, for example, when we're measuring the set. So you need the goals, and then you need to establish criteria for how to get to those goals, and then we need to say, okay, well, where are we? What's our condition? How close are we to meeting this criteria that aligns with our goals? And then when we look at the gap, we say, well, how do we close that gap? And I think that is something that the school board definitely needs to do. And that's something that... I think we should be engaging the community in that discussion, too. That's not just something that the board needs to do. That really is something that the community needs to do. And my understanding is that after the budget, that general area is something that we're going to begin to address. How boring are those meetings? I think they're pretty interesting, actually. So the other night, for example, we were talking about what is the school safety situation. That is really important. At our next board meeting, the board is very likely going to be adopting an equity policy, which is... What is equity? So in this case... In this case, what is equity? In this case, what we're talking about is creating a welcome and respectful environment that, in our schools, that celebrates students' differences, racial... But haven't we been doing that for decades? So what this does, though, is this spells out clear roles for the administration as well as the school board in ensuring that hiring practices meet those goals, as well as professional development for our current staff, and ensuring that certain... Sorry, that certain... That these issues are built into our curriculum, curricula, rather, and I'm not speaking very eloquently on this, sorry, and ensuring that there are policies in place to foster this type of environment within our schools and that they're acted upon. And it is the board's role to evaluate that. It's been a fascinating conversation. It's been a great conversation, and I thank you for stopping by, even though you're running unopposed. I am. For how long a term? Three. Three years. I won't see you for another three years. Well, I'm happy to come on back. I'd be happy to have you back. For you guys, I'd be happy to have you watch the other shows because every one of these is really, really good. And particularly, Jim Murphy's show on the school budget and Watson's show on the city budgets. The two candidates for parks, the city council candidates, they're great shows. But most importantly, show up on Town Meeting Day, get out and vote. Make it a habit. It's the lifeblood of our democracy. Make sure your friends get out there. And thank you very much.


I want to now invite to the stage our panelists. I'm going to introduce each one of you if you'd please come on up to the stage. Kim Bannerman, our emcee. A 12 year veteran of the tech industry, Kim started out in consulting and moved to business development before finding her passion in the community and developer relations space. She founded the Seattle chapter of Startup Chicks and both the Atlanta and Seattle Cloud Foundry Meetup Groups. When she's not on an airplane, she's helping her blended family of four daughters and one son navigate through everything from coding camps to high school and college. Opal Perry, Opal Perry is the vice president and divisional chief information officer for claims at Allstate Insurance where she leads a global engineering team focused on digital transformation. Opal is active in creating and enhancing diverse technology communities and organizations and is also an executive sponsor of the Allstate Pride Employee Resource Group which promotes an inclusive work environment for LGBTQ Allstate employees and their allies. The US Air Force veteran, Opal and her wife, Lisa, currently reside in Evanston, Illinois. Kyla McMullen is a tenure track faculty member at the University of Florida. She earned her master's and PhD degrees from the University of Michigan where she is the first underrepresented woman to graduate with a doctor in computer science and engineering. She is also the conference chair for the National Society of Blacks in Computing. Cornelia Davis is senior director of technology at Pivotal where she works on the technology strategy for both Pivotal and for Pivotal customers. She is an industry veteran with almost three decades of experience in image processing, scientific visualization, distributed systems and web application architectures and cloud native platforms. Cornelia is also an activist working on achieving a better gender balance in technology related disciplines and is active with the girls who code. When she's not doing these things you can find her on a yoga mat or in her kitchen. And finally, Rachel Reynitz is an IBM fellow and CTO of IBM Bluemix Garage. The Bluemix Garages are consulting labs housed in starting communities that partner with clients of all sizes to transform how they design, develop and deploy engaging cloud applications. She leads clients on adoption of new technologies and is currently focused on applying agile methods to building cloud applications with clients. Welcome. So, do you want to do each panelist? Each panelist is going to tell a little story, supporting or in response to the framework and then we're gonna open it up to questions on the floor. All right, so get them ready. Kim, why don't you start? Sure. So about five years ago I kind of came to a crossroads in my career. I wanted off the hamster wheel of managing national sales teams to be on an airplane all the time, funny enough I'm still on airplanes, it's fine. Good thing I like to travel. And I wanted to do something different and so women in tech friend of mine and she said, what are your superpowers? Like what are you talking about? She already knew. And so she convinced me to apply for a position inside of her company, working for a very supportive CTO and a great team of folks and that was tier three CenturyLink and that's how I started this journey with Clifondry. But really the story I want to tell is I was always the person behind the scenes elevating other people and I still love to do that. That's one of my favorite things, especially if you're doing great work in our community, in your new, I want to make people feel welcome, right? So I've never really spoke at a conference before and two things happened. It was my first interconnect when I worked at IBM and the CTO that I reported to said, what is up with this panel? It's the same people all the time. What are we doing here? And they said, you know what, like you're so right. Let's mix it up a little bit. Rachel spoke, he put me up there and I was like, oh no, you don't want to put me up there. He's like, you can do that. No, I'm serious. Like I just got here back in October. This is like March. Like I'm still kind of sort of ripping up. He's like, you got it. It's a 10 minute light and talk, you can do it. He sat down with me. He gave me his deck. We prepped speaker nose. It was amazing. He really spent a ton of time with me that he didn't have on his calendar to get me ready for this. And I sat at the table and I went right after the OpenSec Foundation spoke and Claude Founder was speaking after that and Sam Ramji was sitting next to me and he said, just focus on me. He's like, I've heard you speak before. This is gonna totally be fine. And he said, I know people say don't focus on someone in the audience because that's when you mess up and you forget your lines. He's like, but it'll be fine. And so that's what I did.  And we're 17, I think 15 or 1700 people in the room. It was insane. And after that, I was like, oh wow, okay. I can do this. This is great. A lot to people that call themselves allies. I wanna say, make sure that you're doing the work as well. You kind of tie that off. And also don't just lean on the diversity in your community to do all the hard work, right? And those are kind of two things that can tie into these push and pull things inside of a community or a company. And if I was not for those key people in my life in the last five years, there's no way I'd be doing what I really love to do right now. So. For me, it's, I'm a very affiliative person. So it's all about the team. It's all about that cohesive team that's doing big things. And I've had the opportunity throughout my career and in the last six years at Allstate to be part of a number of different teams. And I love each team. You know, I've got special memories and special things we do together. But really over the last three years, I've been the most thrilled at our composed labs effort where we've been building lean and agile methods and labs at Allstate. And I've just been, I've been so thrilled because I came into Allstate. I was recruited in as a change agent to help transform technology. And it's a big mission. And I had a lot of ideas and was working with other people and initiatives. But after a few years, you know, you start going like, I know we're making progress, but there's still so much more to be done. And I had some other colleagues coming in from other roles and other sides. And I remember when I sat down with our head and had an infrastructure one day to talk to him. And I was just kind of geeking out, trying to sell him on all the stuff I wanted to do around CI, CD pipelines. And he was like, oh my God, you're the first person here that's talked to me about Chef and Puppet and all these things. And then I knew I had a kindred spirit. And as he started picking up speed within the organization and my good friend who ran the PMO came in, which is a really non-traditional thing and a lean and agile transformation. Like a lot of companies talk about, the PMO is gonna be the last bastion of resistance to new ways of working. And she just jumped right on board and we had this really diverse senior leadership team getting the support and then empowering other people throughout the enterprise to do it. And it's been thrilling to me. I was on assignment for almost two years in Belfast, Northern Ireland. And it was really meaningful to me too that we created a global leadership team with people from different backgrounds and skills. It was doing the work together but it's just also the organic way it started coming together to me. There's all the direct work and when you find yourself having the sidebar with people and finding commonality or you start to realize like somebody had a really bad day or week and then everybody's just even on a text message chained together venting and supporting each other or people notice you look a little down in the hallway. Like there's so many different ways it's expressed but it's that real spirit of belonging. And then when you start accomplishing things as a team the real pride to be able to see it reflected in other people not just in yourself. So that's just really, really thrilling to me. The common theme going on here very much like Opal with this sense of community and belonging. My story is actually towards the very beginning of my journey when I was in high school. I didn't know what I wanted to major in but looking back I should have known because every single toy I had was computerized. I wanted everything that had a screen but when I was in high school every person who ever did computer science I'm like well that's not me, that doesn't look like me. So you know in high school I'm like all right well do I have to just not have any friends and I'm gonna get a Dragon Ball Z T-shirt and just not care about my hair and just like I was literally in my head trying to figure out how in the world do I turn into a white boy to do this class. Like that was exactly what I said to myself if I can be candid but in the end I was like you know I'm just gonna take the class and if I don't like it I can switch to something else. So then there was also a new teacher who came in, Mr. Ware and Mr. Ware was someone who had just completed his master so he was still very young. He was a black man who was studying computer science and you know we do the warm up exercise. He could talk to us about the basketball game and then come back and we talk about logic. And I really remember having that thought in my head like whoa he is a normal person and he is doing computer science and just having that sort of depiction of a person who I didn't see as you know kind of being weird or eccentric because who wants to sign up for that right? So I wanted to just have just a picture of someone who I could attain to be even though we're two different genders. I said you know what here I'm actually my big brother. You know I can see myself following in those steps. So the importance of just having someone that you can look up to whose shoes you can see yourselves in is just it was transformative for me. So the first thing I have to say before I even tell my story is I just tweeted any day that you have a chance to meet Karen Holtzblatt is a really good day. Unbelievable. So thank you. So you know it's interesting because I've been doing this for about 30 years and I almost never have thought about leaving because I really really really really love what I do and I had for the first 25 years that I was doing this I would occasionally notice that I was the only woman in the room or a room of 50 people but for the most part I didn't really pay that much attention to it. And in reflection, I mean this definitely speaks to the the belonging part. It's to somewhat a bit of a reflection of the way that I grew up because I was the kid I was the girl who didn't care about gender when I was a kid I was out there playing soccer with the boys. And so I actually always had a lot of male friends and I think that that allowed me to be part of that group and not see that as a barrier. So that's certainly part of my story but the other part of the framework that really resonates with me and I thank you for this because it actually took a weight off my shoulders is that I'm a woman and am I really supposed to just be interested in socially relevant programs? Because I kind of felt bad that what really got me going was whatever cool technology problem was out there. And so I think that you've given me permission not to fit in a particular box. You've given me permission to really look at that and say yes, in fact, I consider myself a change junkie.  And if you look at that table that Karen showed, by far and away the tallest bar in that bar chart was learning something new. And so that really, really resonated with me. And the fact that it's the same things that motivate men in the field is just eye-opening. That's liberating. Thank you. Rachel, you wanna wrap us up? Yeah, so we're gonna talk about family. So I was progressing my career. I was a fairly senior technical leader in IBM and heading towards the next level, which is the significant level becoming a technical executive and distinguished engineer. And I was at a point in my life where I was like, all right, if I wanna have a child, I need to do it soon. And I did not have a partner. And so then it's like, all right, am I gonna have a child, am I gonna do this on my own? I had a great discussion with some friends of mine and I said, you know, I don't know about doing this and I'm worried about my career and the impact. And one of my friends said to me, he said, you know, you will gain skills that will help you in your career. I was like, really? He was absolutely right. I was an inpatient person and I am now a patient person. According to me, according to my 12-year-old, not so much. But you know, and it's amazing how it worked. I take care of all these things and I'm patient and I negotiate and I get home and my 12-year-old goes, I'm like, what, you know, it's definitely very different. So I had my daughter. I did donor insemination. I was very open about it at work, including to my senior vice president when I was up for promotion. And it was fine, it was fine. But to reach that next level required a lot of travel. You know, it required being networked. It required being known. I was actually in consulting when I had my daughter and doing so, I also talked with my VP at the time, like I can't do the same kind of work. I traveled 75% before I had my daughter and she found me a role that was more internally facing but still in the same area, leveraging the skills I led, service oriented architecture and taking out to the field for IBM. And I figured it out. And the company did support me. We were talking about, they didn't pay for the nanny or anything, but I lived with my sister so I did have a co-parent and she would travel with me. My mother would travel with me. And some of the time it was great. My daughter's been to Istanbul. My daughter's been to Madrid. She can tell you that's the Iosofia, stuff like that. However, it's not always great either when you go to Austin and they're in a hotel room and my daughter's sick and you have to go find a pediatrician or a jet lag kid is not a fun thing. So it's trade-offs. Honestly, it's been harder more recently. So with going towards IBM Fellow and just with the Blumix Garage going worldwide so I have nine labs throughout the world, it's actually become more demanding in terms of travel. And my daughter is more demanding in terms of being more vocal and feeling more like I'm not there enough and things like that. And I have cut back on some of that. Again, you can ask my daughter what she thinks but and it is this weird time of the solilo... It's a constant trade-off. There's a lot of trade-offs, right? But I do feel like I am a successful parent. I like my daughter most of the time. My mother says I'm a good daughter. I also have the aging parent thing and they promoted me. So it's going okay. But there's always trade-offs. And so I guess my core message to you is everyone's path is unique. And you are in a privileged position to start out with. You are educated. You are educated in a field that is in demand, right? You can find the companies, you can find the supportive organizations. As long as you keep developing your skills and you keep current, you will have choices.  But you're in a great situation to do all kinds of terrific things. Thank you so much. So, encouraging stories, a little nearer to home than RBG. Questions? Who's got a question? I was wondering, has any of you ever considered leaving tech and if you cared to share the story? Yeah, there's been points. It's funny because I was having this conversation earlier this week. I said, so I've been in tech almost well over 12 years. And if I had known what I shouldn't have been putting up with a long time ago when I first started out in tech, I don't think I would still be here. I just felt like that was just how life was.  You have to put up with these comments. You have to put up with various things that happened from all different types of people and we don't. I wanted to leave tech about, the first time I said I want to rage quit tech was about six months ago. And I don't want to get into, it was a compounding different things that were happening and various places of getting interrupted, all these crazy things that I thought we had left behind a long time ago. But yeah, it gives me more value to be here than to leave. And that's why I stay. Somebody else wanna share? Yeah, I'll chime in. I think that it's been rare. I will say that it's gotten harder the further I get in my career, which I don't think is unusual. I think that there's fewer people, fewer women, the further you get in your career. And so it has gotten harder. And referring back to the framework, it wasn't said directly, but indirectly in some of the things, it was about those stretch assignments. It was about getting the opportunity to learn that new thing and do that new thing. And that when those opportunities aren't coming, that's when I wonder at this stage of my career, am I gonna get those opportunities? Is somebody gonna help move me to the point where I get the next stretch goal? Because that is something that is documented and understood that women don't tend to be given the opportunities for the stretch goals as often as men. And that it hasn't gotten to the point where I wanna leave the industry, but it's one of those things where I wonder whether I'm gonna get that opportunity to move to the next level. So I think that's something that we as an industry really need to look at. Kind of sponsorship. Well, I think this is where push and support comes, right? So you can hear her. And around her, she's looking for someone to push. And what I'm hoping is if you know you need push and support, go get someone and say, I need a push. Would you please do it? Cause I can't tell you, it works if you do it that way. Okay, so don't give up. Remember guys are just guys.  Do not forget that's what they really like on the inside, okay? Other questions from our young people. So I've heard like all these horror stories of like these like aspiring engineers and like computer scientists like that walk into college and as soon as they start taking like these math courses and all that, like they get bored and they back out and like they have to completely like reorient their focus. So like, was there any like ever a time in your like educational like part of tech like that you found to be boring as like push past? Oh my God, yes. I took material science and my professor was a monotone. It was Friday morning and a friend of mine was a TA for the class and I'd seen him out drinking Thursday nights like I haven't seen your homework, you know? And it was the worst class. I did the worst in it in my college career, but you know, I did pass, right? So, you know, there's some stuff you just got to motor through, right? You know, I mean, it's not all exciting, cool. I had some great professors like physics was awesome, but that's just, I mean, that's life no matter what you study, right? Economics was not fun either and that wasn't a tech class. I had some really tough times probably for a variety of different reasons. And I think my salvation was finding networks of friends. I was on the crew team and there was a great group that were from all different majors. And that was sort of like where I would go to my refuge when I had a tough time. Some of it was just the academics were really challenging. I was studying computer engineering. I had always done super well in my high school and then you just hit this, you know, you kind of maybe the big fish in the small pond of high school and then I'm at university and I'm in this really big pond of all of these people that seem to find their direction. Some of it, honestly, I was studying computer engineering and there's one other woman who graduated in my year in my class back then and there was just even some like blatant sexism. I remember having a male lab partner we went to talk to our professor about what we were doing and he like engaged with my male lab partner and then he turned and he looked at me and he said, well, what did you do this weekend?  And in addition to whatever's just challenging to me, there's someone not even willing to interface. But again, I just found my way by going and finding the groups and the supportive elements, the male and female classmates and people that just were like, no, you can do this, we can do this. Let's make it happen. And I'm so glad I persevered, but I definitely, I've never thought since I've been professionally out in the field about leaving, but I had some moments at university of thinking like, is this what's right for me? And I've been so pleased I personally persevered. I can think of just one mentality you should think of. So I actually teach an intro to Java freshman 500 person sort of course. And one thing that I've noticed is that lots of people will come when they're the valedictorian, salutatorian, top 1% of their high schools and they haven't experienced much adversity. So if you come in already saying, you know what, this is going to be a challenge and you can accept, okay, I may not be good at everything but I have the resources, I have the skills, I can build these networks to become better at it. Cause those are the students you typically see that they're very talented but they may just fall by the wayside and dropped out as you mentioned because they're not used to ever having anything be hard. So I would say just going with the mentality, this is going to be hard but guess what?  Thank you. That's college in general. Yeah. Nice class. Yeah. Another question. Just wanted to say thank you for sharing all of your stories. It's been very helpful. And my question for you is when you do have those moments of doubt or you feel maybe I'm not good enough or maybe I'm not the best, how do you get past that? And what do you tell yourself? And how do you make it work? I go to people I'm close to, for some of the dialogue, because some of it's correct. I just had this happen. I've been asked to do something, to run something that I haven't done before and I talked with my VP about it and I say, I can do this, it's not that I can't do it but I have not done this before. And he's like, we're gonna get you help and I also have some stuff going on personal side and he's like, you're not in it on your own. And I have an idea, I have this great idea I got while I'm here and I'm gonna go talk to my best buddy Kyle, right?  There are questions that I don't really wanna ask, I don't wanna show that I don't know stuff sometimes, right? But with Kyle, I have 100% credibility and he's brilliant. If he agrees with me, it's a good idea and he'll also help me take it forward. So it's, for me, it's finding those people and sometimes it is the self-talk that just says you can do this, you know? One of the things that it applies even more broadly then to just your question there is that sometimes, I mentioned, they mentioned in my intro that I practice yoga and one of my favorite yoga instructors once said, suffering is the resistance to what is. And so when those voices, I agree with Karen, shoo him away, but at the same time, having a little bit of shoo it away in kind of a, okay, it's there. Acknowledge that it's okay, I'm feeling bad and don't stress about you feeling bad about yourself. Just send it on its way. It's kinda like the monkey mind, you send it on its way. And then the other thing is just telling yourself, look, I have felt like this before and I figured it out. And you will feel like that again and you will figure it out. And so after a while, you start to realize, gee, every single time I feel this way, it's okay, acknowledge it, let it be there, but I always figure it out and that makes it easier to send that on its way. So you will figure it out. Just one of the things people like when I talk about this, self-doubt is the inner noise of trying to do something new. There's no such thing as knowing how to tango before you take a lesson.  You're not in any flow. You're supposed to feel like that. Anytime you take up something new. I've been doing this 30 years. And when I said I think I'll address women in tech, that's exactly how I felt. Ooh, will anyone listen to me, blah, blah, blah. Just because you have a feeling doesn't mean you stop, you just go hi. Oh, I guess I'm doing something hard. Who else wants to share on that? I'm gonna apologize real quick. I have a 230 session that I'm speaking at. So I'm going to thank you all and excuse myself. We aren't stopping till 230 though, right? So what's that? Right? I mean, we're still on time, right? We have about a minute. Yeah, I'm on a different stage. I'm on a different stage here too, right? Thank you. So I don't know if we want one last comment. I did want to say one other comment. So yeah, that's definitely a feeling that you can have. And aside from making sure you have the positive self-talk, I actually asked my boss if I could see my letters of recommendation from my job and they were open. And I felt so awesome. Like these people think these things about me. Like it's, you know, just reading and I come back to it from time to time. So if ever you have something where people just said positive things about you, like it'll be like, I can do this. I get this. Somebody told me to make a happy file. Probably like six years ago. And I was like, what's that?   And so I really thought that was a little silly. And I was like, well, why would I want to do that? I've got all these different, you know, platforms. And of course we remember MySpace, right? That's gone. Not, I mean, it's not really, but it is. I mean, so I'm like, well, what if these things do go away? You want to show my countdown? That's actually a pretty good idea. So I started, I kind of put it all together when I was kind of in this transition period before I'm on the path I'm on now. And so I just, I just add little things to the happy file. And then when I feel awful or I'm in tears or what's happening and I just go through and I just start reading through the happy file. It works. I think that's great. You guys have really great positive strategies. I need to use more of those. I have to admit, I've also learned in my life, like if I think I can't do something or shouldn't do something or I'm not the best person to do it and I see it an opportunity and then someone incompetent gets that opportunity and I have to sit there and be a victim of, that's when you're incompetent and say, I remember that now when I think, why me? Because who else is it going to be? And to try to step into that opportunity. I want to mention one other thing that's kind of related which is you need to forgive yourself when you make mistakes. Everybody screws up. Everybody says the thing they shouldn't, right? Everybody interrupts their boss at some point when they shouldn't, you know? There are some things that you can avoid. The thing is to learn from it and to move on and forgive yourself and that's very important because if you're afraid of making those mistakes, you won't put yourself forward and you won't take risk, right? And it was great. I had a team member tell me that she's been really inspired because I acknowledge my mistakes to my team. I'll say you're totally right. I got that one wrong, you know? And it's really inspired her to feel more like she can share and doesn't have to hide that maybe something and go the way it should, those kinds of things. Well, everybody, great panel, yes? Come do something, yeah? I'm expecting it. I want to see emails and things like that. Telling me what you tried and come up and talk to me and you know, be part of the, be part of the change. Thank you all.


The Mutual Broadcasting System in Cooperation with Family Theatre Incorporated presents The Prayer That Won the West starring Ramon Navarro and Pedro de Cordoba. Henry Fonda is your host.  There are certain things in life that belong to all people of every race and age and creed. They are the necessary things, food, clothing and shelter. The beautiful things, happiness and hope, faith and understanding, friendship and kindness, they are the simple things all summed up in one word, home. Home should mean a fullness of life, life's most beautiful experiences and sweetest memories, and our home is really an upward expression of what we are. If there is holiness and happiness in our home, it is because we make an effort to be holy and happy. And these things have a wonderful way of going together, because holiness is the expression of our sincere faith in God. It means tolerance and trust of our fellow man. It means courage and strength to live up to our convictions. It means our unselfishness and kindness to others. That's why in a home where there is the daily practice of family prayer, there is a holiness that always means happiness. Now, Family Theatre presents the Prayer that Won the West, starring Ramon Navarro as one, and Pedro de Córdoba as Padre Cera. More than 178 years ago when our story opens, a sunny morning in the month of May in the year 1769. We're down in Mexico, two or three hundred miles south of the present border, watching an overland expedition prepare to journey north. Here, goods are being nailed into a box. Here, a muscular blacksmith is making a last minute repair on a horse's shoe. And here, down near the end of the long dusty line of beasts and men, a leather-jacketed Spanish soldier is showing an Indian lad how to load a pack mule. Oye, Jose, let me see if you remember how to make the hitch I showed you yesterday. Bueno Juan, first the rope goes like this, then over the back of the mule like this, that's it, then under and back. There, how is that? Casi, casi, almost perfect. Say, you know something?  It will be a long time before I am that good. That's right, but we'll have a long time. It's more than a hundred leguas to San Diego, they think, and nobody's sure.  Juan, tell me something. Why, when you speak of bibles and crosses, you always sound as if you don't like them. I have nothing against them. But the way you say it, it sounds... Well, I'm a practical man, Jose. And when we go to an unexplored land like Nueva California filled with nobody knows what savages, well, I would rather carry more muskets. But the bibles and crosses... Bibles and crosses. Don't forget the king of Spain is behind this. What of that? He is no fool, our king Carlos. He has it planned. Planned? What do you mean? You are not a practical man like me, Jose. You do not perceive these things.  Si. In each town there will be a presidio, eh? And in each presidio will be soldiers. Si. Seguro. And there, Jose, is the real reason why the king sends all these men and nules and the ships to meet us at San Diego. Christiani, you see, but also soldiers to keep out Catherine the Great. Catherine? Did you not tell me you studied at the Collegio de San Fernando in Mexico? Did you not learn of Catarina? Oh, si, the new empress of all the Russians. Si, a lady with very convenient morals. What she wants, she takes. And it's rumor that she plans to send men down from the northern ocean to take all California. But California was discovered by Spain. That may be so, but what is this? Is something wrong? Look, look what I just noticed on this poor boros back, a saddle gall.  Jose, hand me that cast there on the ground. This one was full of grease. Grease? That's my own secret open for saddle galls, here. Hold back this strap while I rub it in. Bueno. Pobre burrito, this will make you feel much better. Did you not, why didn't you tell your friend Juan that you were in pain? Juan, Peter's done his attention. Pan four. Governor Dor, Portola is coming this way. Ah, de veras, I'm glad you told me. He's a hard man on discipline, this commander of ours. Si, look who is with him, Padre Sierra. That limping old man in the brown robe. Is he the one who's going to build the missions? Shh, they will hear us. Eddie is men. Muchas gracias, señor gobernador. This is Padre Junipero Serra, president of the California missions. He has expressed a desire to meet the men of our company before our journey begins. Greetings. God love you, my children. This man is one of our best muilteers, Padre. Juan Coronel. I'm happy to meet you, Juan. Muchas gracias, Padre. And this Indian boy, I do not know his name. I know his name, señor gobernador, Portola. Buenos dias, José, my son. Padre, I did not think you would remember me. Did not I baptize you when you were a babe in the Sierra Gorda? Yes, Padre. And thought you for a little at San Fernando? Si, Padre, but you have baptized and thought so many. José, when you've tried to bring someone to God, you cannot easily forget him. That reminds me, Juan, I don't think I saw you this morning at our prayers for the success of the expedition. No, Padre, I... Well, someone has to stay with the mules. Can they not be tethered? Oh, you can't trust them, Padre. Mules get strange ideas in their heads. That will be enough of that, Coronel. Speak the truth. Si, señor gobernador. Bueno, the truth is, Padre, I... Well, I'm a practical man. I... I don't believe in prayer. And mules get strange ideas in their heads. Oh, Padre. I respect your right to believe as you wish, Juan. And I'm glad we have a practical man like you going with us. Hmm, eh, what is this on this mules back? Some ointment, Padre. Que as a saddle, Coronel.  What is this ointment? A mixture of my own, Padre. Tallow and certain herbs of which I was told by my father. It heals goals like a miracle. So, well, we may need miracles before we are through. Let us go, señor gobernador. Adios, Padre. Adios, my sons, and God be with you. So, a limping, half-sick old man, and they pick him to build the missions. It only proves what I said, Jose. The missions are not important to the king, for he wants his soldiers in the land. Padre Ser is the best man in Mexico for work. He is as close to Christ as a man can be. That may be so, but see how weak he is? One leg he can hardly move. See, that is where he was bitten by a serpent. Serpent? You do not know this story? No. Twenty years ago, when Padre came here from Spain as missionary, he left ship at Veracruz and walked to Mexico City. He walked? That's a hundred leguas. See, but he is a Franciscan. They are expected to walk as San Fritz Francis did, unless they seek. So, he walked, and on the way he was bitten by a serpent, and the wound never healed. Look, they are lifting him onto a horse. See, that is because of his wound. He is in great pain. Even writing is going to be hard for him. Jose, I'm afraid he was right. Before we are through, we may need miracles. Slower and slower every day, Jose. See, hardly a leak have we gone today. And look how low the sun is. See, it's all these stops for your poor Padre to rest his leg. Poor old man, but he is... Here, look up ahead. The Padre is falling to his horse. Catch him, somebody. Hold, hold the mules. Wow, burritos. Stay here and watch the animals, Jose. I will go and see if I can be of any help. See, Juan. Stay, stay, burritos. Here, put my jacket under the Padre's head. Raise him a little. There. All right, men. Make camp. Prepare to return to the south tomorrow. Yes, Your Excellency. Señor Comenador, did I hear you say return? Go back. As military commander of this expedition, Padre Serra, it is my decision that you cannot continue. I shall not turn back. You must, Padre.  God has given me strength to come this far, and I believe he will give me strength to reach San Diego Harbour. Ah, is that you, Juan Coronel? Back to your mules, man. No, no, no, let him come closer. One, my son. Padre. Some days ago you spoke of this wonderful ointment you put on Gauls.  But, Padre, that ointment is for mules. Am I not stubborn enough to be a mule? Please, my son, bring it to me. It is dawn. Wake up. Look who is coming. Padre Serra. Walking. And almost without a limb. Where is the ear, my son? Padre, you walk. Yes, the pain is gone. The leg is much better. Oh, God be praised. I don't understand this, Padre. My ointment could not be this good. It could not cure overnight a swollen, ulcerated leg. I know, Juan. That is why I use something else with it. Something else? Prayer. I pray too, Padre. Gracias, Jose. Prayers did this. Could it not have been your ointment, Juan? You are laughing at me, Padre. No, Juan. I am smiling to myself because you are a practical man. And with the help of God and practical men, we will reach San Diego. Well, Padre, we have reached San Diego. But you do not seem happy, Senor Govnador. No. There is no reason to be happy. Why not? From this point, we can start to build our rosary of missions north. Yes, yes. Those were the plans. But have you looked down there into the harbor? No, Senor Govnador. We were expecting three ships with supplies. Without the supplies, we cannot go ahead. And what do we find? One of our ships has been lost. And as for the other two, almost half the men, a hundred altogether, are dead. Dead? Bad water, bad food, scurvy, and more are dying. Those huts, you can see on the beach, are filled with the dying. God have mercy on them. We must hurry to give them our help. I have been thinking, Padre. Perhaps the best thing is to put them aboard the ships, take our men for sailors, and go back to Mexico. Abandon the expedition. If we stay here, Padre, our well men will contract its sickness and we may all die. Not unless it is the will of God. But Padre, we cannot possibly go on to Monterrey without enough men a surprise. I believe we can, if it is God's will, despite the difficulties with which we are faced. I believe it is God's will that we bring the message of Christianity to these pagans. And I think that you, a soldier, will not grow faint-hearted because there are difficulties. I wonder if our friends in Spain will know how many thorns there are in your grocery of California mission. Then you will go on. I will do this. I will find a few sailors who are strong enough to handle one of the ships. I will send the ship back to Mexico for supplies. Bueno. Then I will take our company here and journey by land to find the harbor of Monterrey. In the meantime, I will stay here and tend the sick. Muy bien. I will give you eight or ten soldiers to help you. You have your choice. Gracias, señor gobernador. First, I would like the Indian lad Jose. He can interpret for me when I speak to the Indians. As you wish. Next, I want my friend Juan Coronel. But you will not need a mule to eat. No, but I will need a man who is gentle with the sick, as he was when he put that ointment on my leg. I will need a man who is strong and he is to help build huts and a chapel and most of all. Yes. I will need a practical man, one who is stubborn. You look very tired Juan. Yes, I am a little. That leg is heavy and this sun is hot even here by the water. I think I sit down. Well, my son, you have finished. No, no, no, no, don't get up. You have earned the rest. Let me look this building over. Muy bien. You've done a very good job. It's no cathedral padre, but we did the best we could with stakes on the roof of grass. It is fine Juan. And next Sunday I will dedicate it the first mission in Nueva California. Well, I must get up. I have much work to do. Say, what is wrong with me? Juan, careful. You almost fell. Come on, my friend. Oh, it's just a little dizziness. I'm all right now. No, my son, I'm afraid you're not. I've been looking at you.  You have scurvy like so many of our others. No padre, not a big strong mule like me. Yes Juan, and this time you're not going to be stubborn. Come, I'm going to see that you're put to bed. How do you feel tonight? It's strange padre. It is like I have been asleep a long time. You have. You've been lying here in a delirium for days. No padre. See, this is the 15th of August, a great feast of our lady. Here my son, lift your head a little if you can and drink this. Gracias padre. Oh, tell me, has the ship returned? The one we sent to Mexico? No, Juan. El señor gobernador portola? The harbora montere is thought to be more than 200 leguas to the north one. Or we cannot expect him back from Manche. Here, drink some more. Gracias. How is my Jose? Jose, he is well and strong one. Right now he's gone down to the stream with some of the soldiers for water. Oh, I'm so anxious to see him. He's a fine lad. I'm very fond of him too and I hope... Padre, what is that? The soldiers, they're shooting. One second one, I'll try to see what it is. Len, what is happening out there in the dark? Len, don't shoot. Padre! Padre, somebody's hurt. Don't try to get up one. Who is that out there? Who is it? It is only us padre, the soldiers. Easy Miguel, carry him gently. He's bleeding. Padre, help me. Jose, my son. The Indians attacked us Padre. He got an arrow in the throat. Bring him in here, man, to the light. Who is it? Jose? Here, here, put him down. Here, gently, gently.  There, there Jose, it's all right now. Juan, your friend Juan is here. Juan? See, I'm glad you are better. Do not let me slip away Juan. Do not let me Padre.  Oh God, in your infinite mercy, give peace to this innocent soul. Yes Padre, in here you savage. Get in or... No, no, no, do not strike him. But Padre, this is one of the savages... That will be all. You may go. Very well Padre, as you say. You lie down here, my brother.  That's... You'll be comfortable there. Juan, Juan my son, wake up. What is it Padre? You? Padre, why do you bring this Indian in here?  You can help take care of him. Take care of this savage? What is wrong with him? He came to us for help. He has a bullet wound in his shoulder. He must rest until it has healed. A bullet wound? Padre, that means he was one of the savages who killed Jose. Who knows? And you are helping to heal his wound? You are putting him here with me, Jose's friend? Have you never heard Juan that we must love our enemies? Buenas noches Juan, my son. Padre, Padre, come back.  Can you understand me?   You're up and around this morning. You are better, eh? I... I've come to speak with you Padre. I... I have come to make a confession. Confession. Not in the manner of the church Padre, but as man to man. As man to man. Last night, that Indian you left with me, I tried to kill him. I hurled a knife above his throat. I needed only to plunge it down. But I did not have the strength. I was weak as a baby. I... the knife fell from my hands. I do not think it was weakness that kept you from doing that, Juan. You prayed for me? See, Juan. And it was prayer that stopped my hand? Would you not believe so, Juan? Oh, I do not know what to say Padre. I'm a practical man. For seven months, this heroic little band worked in the hills of San Diego to build the first of the California missions. They waited for the return of the ship from Mexico with much needed supplies. And when finally Governor Portola... That is how matters stand Padre. Months of futile search for the Bay of Monterey. We could not find it. Even though it is shown on the navigator's charts. I come back here to find 20 of your men dead and the rest near starvation. So, there is only one decision. We must go back to Mexico at once, before it is too late. I beseech you, Senor Gobernador, wait just a few days more. This ship from Mexico may still come with food and supplies. I fear that ship has been lost many months ago. Listen to me, Senor Gobernador. This is the 10th of March. The 19th is the feast of St. Joseph. Give me until then to make a novena. Nine days of prayer that the ship may come. And if it does not come by the end of nine days... Ah, we will go back to Mexico. Bueno Padre. I will give you nine days until the 19th of March. Coronel, Juan Coronel. You call me, Senor Gobernador? See, help the other mule-teers to get things in readiness. On the 20th of March, we go back to Mexico. I beseech thee, dear lord, send thou the ship that was promised, that it may arrive within nine days, lest we be forced. We must not desert these Indian pagans living in spiritual darkness. Five days remain, oh, send thou the ship. But one more day, oh, tomorrow may the ship arrive. The ship, send it. Hear me, oh, God, hear me. Oh, I did not see you here in the dos, Padre. I have come to ask if I should pack your vestments and the crucifix. Pack them? Tomorrow is the 20th, Padre. We leave at dawn. No, Padre. We will not leave. The ship is coming. But Padre, it is dark now. The day is over. We have no hope. We have always hoped one. When we have faith, we look. Look out there on the horizon. The light. Yes. It is the ship. The ship. It has come. I knew God would hear our prayers one. Your prayers were answered. Yes. God is good one. Now we can continue with the work we have undertaken. We can build our rosary of missions. We can bring thousands of these poor people to the gentle faith of Christ. We can give them schools and farms and trades. We have won the victory. We have won the land. And you have saved it from Catherine the Great. Run and tell the others one. I will stay here. I want to thank God. Padre, Padre, may I stay with you. May I join you in prayer of thanks. One, you, the practical one. Yes, Padre. I have found out something. No, it's you who have taught me something I'll never forget. There is nothing more practical than prayer. Then kneel here beside me one. We lift up our hearts in thanksgiving to thee. Not only for the ship, not only for the salvation of the missions. We give thee thanks that another practical man has been taught the power of prayer. You have heard the prayer that won the west starring Ramon Navarra as one and Pedro de Córdoba as Padre Cera. Now here is tonight's family theater host, Henry Fonda. We have a way of measuring success in life by fixed standards of accomplishment. Public opinion often seems to put home life in a secondary place. There's usually business first. Yes, today we frequently forget fundamentals. Fundamentals like God and family prayer. Fundamentals like the greatest success story in the world, raising a good family and making a real home. And when the importance of fundamentals like these is forgotten, there's an emptiness in a home, an emptiness that nothing else can fill, an emptiness that leads to families breaking up. We need to get back to fundamentals, to the true meaning of success, to the joy and happiness that every family should have through daily family prayer. To a realization that a family that prays together stays together. Before saying good night, I'd like to thank Ramon Navarra and Pedro de Córdoba for their performances this evening. Our thanks to D.H. Johnson for writing tonight's play and to Max Tur for his music. This production of family theater incorporated was directed by David Young. Others who appeared in tonight's play were Don Orrick, Don Morrison, John Alvin, Don Diamond and John Faustini. Next week, our family theater stars will be John Lund and Marguerite Chapman. In heaven is like that. Your hostess will be Leetia Albanese. This is Henry Fonda saying good night and God bless you. This series of the family theater broadcast is made possible by the thousands of you who felt a need for this kind of program by the mutual broadcasting system, which has responded to this need and by a friend of the New York Founding Hospital, which cares for homeless and motherless babies without distinction of race, creed or color. Join us next week at this same time when our family theater stars will be John Lund and Marguerite Chapman with Leetia Albanese as hostess. Tony LaFranco speaking. This is the Mutual Broadcasting System.


Okay so it is my second night in Lisbon. Last night I literally was so tired I just crashed in my door room um but today we have like a little dinner thing at the hostel and some music so I think that will be really cool and I really want to make a friend because literally like I was out today and I just kept getting harassed by men so I'm hoping I can make a friend at the hostel to come out with me so we'll see that is the book we're heading to McDonald's are we? I think so okay so many McDonald's in our way listen to me many McDonald's in our way are closed she's not in our way in London I forgot to do a tour hostel and honestly like I went to the bleach yesterday it was so much fun totally for that to take any photos videos pictures anything so sorry but let's walk through the hostel I'm staying at so we're in the dorm uh there's two beds here two beds here I like these they both privacy curtains so it's really nice and in this hostel like I'm in a mixed dorm which I don't like but they didn't have like any like all female dorm options so you gotta do what you gotta do out here we have another little balcony just like in Marseille but my Marseille views were a lot better um this is so pretty cool like it's nice just have a little outdoor space come out here smoke a cigarette just it's so cool these pigeons I swear they like lived here they wake me up like every day just like doing whatever the fuck pigeons do um and there's a really cool like rooftop um I'll probably like take some pictures and a video up there later um and there's also like a really cool lounge downstairs uh but I'm gonna take a nap right now because I'm tired I just wanted to show you guys the room hey mom thank you a million don't really know but I'm on my one of my friends from the hospital for because this place looks really good and I feel like I haven't really had any good good super good food and live spin yet so it should be really fun I'm really excited to like try it out you guys probably already saw that footage um but I was hanging out with this guy Rodrigo and I was talking I was like you know I start graduate school soon and I don't know what I'm going to do after because I'm going to have a break between summer semester and fall semester and he was like just going to Mexico and I was like so I don't know we'll see I'll keep you guys posted I'm like I'm not even home yet and I'm already planning my next trip so we'll see I just feel like it could be a really good idea because I don't have a lot of time and a month in Mexico is so much cheaper than a month in New York so we'll see oh god it's so heavy here like it's crazy Lisbon is definitely giving San Francisco a run for their money