Good evening and welcome to a special edition of Montpelier Civic Forum and we have a very special guest Libby Bonesteel our superintendent of the Montpelier Rocksbury School District and she's going to talk about the school opening and I want to tell you when this is being taped. It's being taped Monday the 23rd so everything we say might be different next week but it is true as of right now and from prior experience not much of it will change in a week. Libby when do the schools open? We invite students back on Thursday of this week and you expect students on Thursday yes that there's difference between inviting and expecting now whenever I interview you it's usually about the budget except for when we're talking about a pandemic disease and we've done a couple of these now on the pandemic disease it's your third school year going through this uh is this other duties as assigned? This is what I signed up for when I signed my contract of super intent. So you felt at that time that you would be a frontline worker? No no I would definitely not say that but it is what it is. Let's start a couple of years ago when we shut down as a state in March how much time did you have to prepare for that? About a week but maybe a little less than a week. Did the state you could hear a railroad that what you're hearing is a railroad train in the background um did the state have dictates or were you off on your own? We were on our own uh we worked very closely with our teachers union and uh got something going relatively fast with their hard work and that was the virtual presentation. Was it a success or do you know how to how to put metrics to it? I think um many people would have a different answer to that question uh our teachers made it through with their mental health intact and I think the large majority of our students did as well we all did the best we could I know there's lots of different opinions on that but I'll say it we did the best we could in that moment but you felt that it was successful enough that you went into a dual system in the fall you had the opportunity I believe to just do in school. Our fall was different than than what it was in the spring of 2020 that was an emergency situation our fall was planned for so uh the difference being is that our seventh through twelfth graders if they chose a virtual option they were we worked with a Vermont um the Vermont virtual learning collaborative sorry had the mind blank there vtvlc and our younger kids kindergarten through grade six worked with our actual teachers we created another school essentially virtual academy um and those teachers only taught virtual students so we were able to design something different with some more planning time and we worked all summer on it. Mike Berry was our principal of our virtual academy for our kindergarten through sixth grade so it was essentially its own school um for last year that was not how it was in the spring when we had to close in an emergency situation. Now is that sitting if we get a COVID outbreak a major COVID outbreak in one of these schools are we going back to that or what what is the planning for a major outbreak? We would have to go into virtual learning again but we're set up to do that in a different way yes it's not we have our teachers have more experience with that piece they know they know what to expect even teachers who didn't do it last year like some of our middle school teachers our rock spirit teachers never had to go virtual most of our UES teachers didn't most of our high school teachers didn't um so but they all were planned for that um and so they could do that relatively easy we have the technology we know how to do now I there's a lot of different things that we know how to do that we weren't sure how to do on a dime in March of 2020 so we're in a different place there. Now in that experience of last year you know which was fluid and the like I imagine that your outreach to parents got a lot more sophisticated and and basically you could reach them faster and more certainly. We had it down we had it down to a science whereas I would send out nearly weekly communication particularly in the beginning and middle of the year not so much at the end of the year but the beginning and middle of the year um either once or twice weekly and I typically tried to send things out on Fridays and then our principals all send their weekly memos out weekly newsletters out on Monday so they would reiterate what I said on Friday on their Monday newsletter and often talk more specifically about their own school and we also have thanks to our communication specialist Anna Hipko a robust communications and social media outreach and so as soon as I mine went out hers went out on social media with links and as soon as the principals went out Anna had those up as well so we had a pretty well-oiled machine particularly in the fall and winter of last year for communication. Are we to the point of texting parents yet? I have the capacity to text parents if they've signed up for it if they've turned that on that all parents turn that on. Are all of our parents hooked to the internet? The large majority are yes we know that. Now when we come to the virtual academy I want to stay with that because there's a large set of students that we're out for a year what is the percentage of students that I'm not trying to trick you with a question I know the answer to roughly what percentage. We had approximately 30% of our student body in virtual learning last year. So you're reintegrating now some of those graduated or did they? Yeah. So you're reintegrating a sizable chunk of kids who've been out of the social flow at least the school social flow they still lived within the boundaries of the town. What steps are you guys taking to make sure that socially that works? Yeah we're so we redesigned our calendar once again we did this last year actually too but we have parent conferences tomorrow and Wednesday and we really like for families to consider that an in-person conference so that students and families can get into the buildings and see the classrooms and the teachers it's a it's a different dynamic when you're in person and can read body language and can answer take the time to answer questions and that kind of thing. Will the parents be expected to be masked? Yes masks are mandated in our district and so we're that's our first step at the different buildings they're doing different things in the first couple days and teachers are masters at ensuring that kids feel comfortable in their classrooms so I know that each individual teacher and team of teachers are thinking about that but it will look differently depending on the age of the kids. Now I want to stay with virtual on snow days the rumor was out that the Montpelier snow day is a thing of history and that parents will receive word to get your kid online. Yeah we tried that about 66 percent of our student our parent population our caregiver population and our teacher population supported the idea of virtual snow days because they like knowing what the last day of school is but our secretary of education said that was not allowable this year that we that he reads the attendance statute of Vermont law to say that it has it it has to have a kid in seat so it has to be an in-person day in order to be considered a school day. Now considering that my school child hasn't been in school for 12 years how do the parents know that it's a snow day do you get in touch with them? Very early in the morning yes they hear my lovely voice at about 5 45 to 6 o'clock in the morning so they don't have to listen to WDV or any of that. It's also up on all of our social media sites. Which I'm sure that everybody checks at 5 30 or 6 in the morning. Do you anticipate that the lessons that we learned from virtual learning will enhance the number of students that take AP classes that aren't offered live at the school? It's been an option for years but it hasn't been used as much. I honestly don't know I that's yet to be seen I'm not positive whether or not that will enhance the AP or not. I mean it allows a small school the high school to sit and expand its curricular borders but I think we've had that for years. Yeah we have had that for many years. Let's go into the schools and let's talk let's start with the school bus. All kids are required to be masked. Yes. What happens with parental objections to masking? Parents can choose what they want to do outside of schools but inside the buildings and on school buses the kids will be in masks. So if parents object to it's what happens? We'd have conversations kids would come talk to the nurse parents would talk to the nurse we'd have talks with the administrators. It's a it's a matter of a duty of care statute so I'm responsible by law to provide a duty of care for students. This is a public health crisis experts in the field say masks are what will help as a risk mitigation factor in fact next to vaccines it's the highest risk mitigation factor so there's really no question in my mind our students will be masked for the until further notice. Now for the younger kids who are riding the school bus when are the temperatures going to be taken still? No no that was proven as a mitigation effort that was not necessary we are asking caregivers to do a check on just well-being check before the kids enter the school building that would probably be our third highest mitigation risk if we're thinking about it in order that we do not want sick kids and sick people in our in our buildings so we ask that if kids have sniffles common symptoms of common colds that we keep them home during the day. Our staff have they've been vaccinated? A large majority of them have yes. Our teachers? A large majority of them. Will we are we hoping to go beyond 85 percent to 100 percent or you're working on that or at this point we are what we are? At this point we are what we are we I believe we are over 85 percent vaccinated in terms of our staff. I don't have the exact percentage of that because we haven't asked them but just knowing and through conversations with our nurses who've talked to pretty much every member of our our community who works in our buildings and we're well above 85 percent vaccinated. Kids are going out of state you know you couldn't last year you weren't allowed to travel out of state or you're severely discouraged from doing that is there a COVID testing capacity at the schools when kids come back into state? Not specifically for when kids come back into state although the state I believe recommends that kids do that or that families do that people do that in general but we are we did sign on with the voluntary testing that will happen weekly in our district. What is that could you explain please? Yeah so the state is set up for school districts who wanted to participate voluntary weekly testing for students and staff. It will happen in the school buildings parents will opt into it and when that we're working out the logistics now we haven't we haven't you know we're still working with the state as to what exactly that will look like. Kids who are younger than seven I believe the test will be done by the school nurse and it's just the nasal swab that many of us are very used to at this point those of us who have gotten tested often and anybody older than eight will be doing it a self-administered nasal swab so that will happen weekly we send it off to a lab and caregivers will be able to check a website to see what the results are pretty quickly. When the vaccine well right now the high school students could be getting the vaccine and part of our middle school yeah. Are we going to do vaccinations at the schools? We do have had vaccination sites at Montpelier High School we've had a few vaccination events in fact Governor Scott was vaccinated at Montpelier High School in the spring so we'll continue to do that when the when the vaccines become eligible for under 12s we will and the boosters that are coming we will be first in line to offer that to our to our students and make it as easy as possible so we'll we are right there next to the agency of education they know how eager we are to get our students vaccinated so they reach out pretty quickly and set something up we're also a centralized location right off the highway so it's easy access to our buildings in order to get more of public vaccinated so we've been pretty we've worked very closely with Vermont Department of Health and our agency of education to set up vaccination clinics. When it goes down lower and lower in terms of eligibility for this will we have vaccination clinics at MSMS or at UES or Roxbury is that anticipated? Most likely our clinics will be at the high school because we don't have parking at MSMS or UES so most likely they'd still be at the high school building just because of access but that's not to say that's written in stone either you know they might change how those vaccination clinics go we wouldn't need parking but we right now that's that's the deciding force as to where it is in our district. Is there any policy on unvaccinated students? No. When that arrives are you saying that the mask is sufficient? The public health officials are saying masks are efficient so sufficient. How fluid is that right now? I'm sure that you're cut well into that loop from the Department of Health you know that that's feeding into the education realm. Are you seeing a consistent message during the entire period of the Delta virus or is that shifting? It shifted considerably so we well it hasn't shifted actually in the last so we get received our guidance for masking and it wasn't guidance or the recommendations. But it was left locally to determine? From the Department of Health and the Agency of Education the second week of August that was kind of right when Delta was spiking here in Vermont or starting to spike and people were starting to get worried about it they've held tight to those recommendations since that time so what was that two weeks ago you know wasn't wasn't that long ago and Delta has certainly not gotten any better in the last couple weeks so superintendents around the state are having to deal with the fact that their recommendations and not you know not rules that have to be followed our community has been very supportive of masks and so for I haven't heard much from people who don't agree with my decision around masking. Was it your decision or the board's decision? It's my my decision so the board has authorized me to make safety decisions for COVID-19 they did it in the last board meeting they did it last year too so I certainly keep them apprised of any decisions that we make I ask ask uh ask their opinions when I need them but those are my decisions to make. Last year we were talking about a six foot separation between people in the schools as well as in public how has that changed? It's changed to a three feet recommendation and their recommendations they're not mandates anymore so because we're not in a state of emergency at the moment we have no framework for guidance or rules around this piece so for instance last year we received a 50 page document around rules that we needed to follow this year we received a two page recommendation document so the distancing piece that the agency of education verbally has said to us try to keep them as close to three feet apart as you can and that's what the CDC currently is recommending as well so we have we've we've put in different um different pieces to try to make try to keep kids as apart of separated as possible and not have kids congregate in spaces. Now I'm venturing into something I know nothing about how's the ventilation in the three schools have we worked on it? It's actually really well yeah Andrew the Roses our director of facilities and uh right when we closed in the summer after the first closure he worked very closely with Efficiency Vermont they offered grant money and Andrew LaRosa was first in line to access that grant money and because he acted so quickly we have our HVAC system working at at the highest peak it possibly was designed to do. At which school? All all four of our buildings. Okay I was going to ask about Roxbury. Yeah all four of our buildings so um Andrew also had engineers who designed our system up on you know at the HVACs this summer to ensure that they're still working we just got new um controls for Montpelier High School to ensure that that HVAC is actually going to be working better this year than it did in the past so our air circulation and and work with the HVAC is actually quite strong. A pod we went through this last year and we'll go through it this year what is a pod what schools were their pods at are there going to be pods this year? Last year Main Street Middle School Union Elementary School in Roxbury Village School used the concept of a pod so each classroom had two adults in it it was either a teacher and a teacher or a teacher and another staff member and that pod stuck together they went to the bathroom together they went they lunch together they they were together all the time and did not they were out at recess together they didn't um integrate with other pods in any way shape or form this year we do not have that system in place um we have kids in homerooms or in classroom rooms. Are we back to where we were several years ago the same model or is it a modified model of what many of us are familiar with? It's definitely modified uh so at Union Elementary School for instance kids will be starting the year eating in their classroom instead of 100 kids in the cafeteria we've also got uh if you go past Montpelier High School I haven't been past Main Street Middle School today but if you go past Montpelier High School there's a big circus tent up that we're going to have picnic tables underneath so kids so we can spread kids outside for recess and for classroom activities and things and we're putting one out in front of Main Street Middle School as well it's a little tighter fit fit there um so we had to dig up the street in order to do that. No that was not us so we uh we won't be potting kids we we weren't planning on potting kids and this Delta variant hit Vermont very late in the summer and in order to do the pods again or in order to do the pods we had to do significant shuffling of kids and of teachers and of classrooms and we just we simply don't have the time to do that. Sociologically what's the difference between a class and a pod do kids see more kids different kinds of kids traditionally if it's a if it's a traditional class structure or home room structure yeah you especially at Main Street Middle School you you integrate with more kids um you might have classes with different groups of kids this year we're keeping homerooms together as they move from class to class so we are we have a little bit more control than we would in a typical year um and I know classrooms at the elementary school generally are with the exception of lunch and recess are generally just with their classroom you know you don't switch with other classrooms to go to music for instance you go to music so we're having music now we're having plays we're having sports yeah all of that is planned to go on this year even though it's difficult to play a woodwind through a mask yeah they have special masks so uh last year in the spring the music music was able to begin last year um late you know around April and our music team followed the guidance we're starting this year right where the guidance left us last year so kids playing instruments have special masks that are designed with a small hole in it to fit the instrument in um our singers will be wearing just a mask and just a typical mask um so we have safety precautions in place but we want to make sure that our students who are more musically inclined get that opportunity watching an ultimate frisbee game on the sidelines i'll be expected to be masked uh we haven't gotten any rules around that yet we're not sure well i'm using that as an example if i'm watching a basketball game in the gym if you're in the gym yes right as of right now you'd be masked to what age if i've got you know little brothers and sisters at what age is masking mandatory our pre-k's are in masks any anybody who's in our building is in a mask okay um what happens if someone in a class tests covid positive yeah we're not positive quite honestly we believe no pun intended yeah right we got some uh some contact tracing guidelines on friday that look very similar to the spring of last year um there have been some positive cases in sports teams around the state not in montpelier or roxbury but around the state where superintendents are getting mixed messages we're on contact tracing and who needs to quarantine and who doesn't um so we're still i think the health department is still working that out a little bit so we're working that we're waiting for them to work it out so we get the guidance what is the contemporary quarantine period so last year it was about two weeks i know last year but so we're not positive as to what the vdh is going to tell us this year as i said this is fluid right now this is this is monday before classes start yes what happens we know um what happens with the people who are immunocompromised yeah you know and who were home last year for that reason who are coming back again this year yeah it's it's good to be clear that not all of our immunocompromised kids were home last year several were in person as well so we have we have students who fall in that category most definitely we will do everything we can to mitigate as much risk around them as possible parents have the option to do home study if they're really worried about it that's certainly an option for for parents but like i said the the delta virus truly spiked in vermont two weeks ago so we've really pivoted quickly to put more guys more mitigation strategies in place than we were certainly planning we've changed schedules around at union elementary school we changed schedules around a main street middle school we've added the tents in the in the tables to spread kids out more not as many kids will be on the recess out at recess at the same time as we were planning just three weeks ago so we really um we're really cutting down on where congregation sites happen so we feel comfortable with the cleanliness of of the the playground at union the cleanliness of it well yeah i i don't know last year they weren't on that playground they were out in the street oh they were in both we spread them out so are we gonna have the street again no okay no the street is back to public use but we feel comfortable with opening that playground again yeah it's scheduled so that there's not as many kids on it at one time sir anything else that we've done to accommodate that that you'd like to discuss i think just thinking about vaccines fizer i was listening to vpr on the way over here and fizer just got it's no longer emergency authorization anymore it's got the full approval of the cdc at first 16 year olds on up so we just encourage everybody who is able to do so to be vaccinated because i think that's our way out of this we'll keep masks on until further notice um and we'll keep our risk mitigations measures in place until until we feel like it's all it's clear so anything that parents can do to support your effort yeah parents can keep their kids home if they show any kind of sickness any kind of cold symptoms um i would question travel right now especially if you have unvaccinated students travel defined as what uh travel outside of outside of vermont i'd say i'd question you know me and myself as a parent i'm questioning large going to large places with my unvaccinated 10 year old we don't do that right now what about birthday parties i think that's a parent's choice um but i think it's parents choice i think i'm not trying to cast you know fear into the community i was just wondering again my my son's a lot older yeah i think it's a parent's choice and it's a matter of what you're comfortable with you know my daughter's birthday is coming up in the end of october and we're planning a much smaller birthday party with people that she's been with all summer you know that she's played with all summer and there's about two or three people in that group so i feel quite comfortable with that scenario um but that's me that's my parental decision i've made so i think parents have to make their own decision assuming that covid is with us in one variation or another like the flu you know that basically it's a fact of life for a while what does the light at the end of the tunnel that the health department is projecting to you look like vaccinated people if we will get to that place when we can count on people being vaccinated against this that's what the health department has said to us now now we're going to the social issues how many unvaccinated children do we have against chicken pox measles and like what is the anti-vaxxer population like in our community it's actually larger than you think it is so if you take covid-19 out of the picture the last data that i have that i've looked at is is not the most recent data i think it's like 2017 so it's not the most recent but we were at about 85 percent and that's uh at the high side for a potential outbreak of something like measles when you're at 85 what does the high side mean so the health experts and i'm not an expert in this so i may be saying it correctly i'm less of an expert than you are um health experts have that kind of point of that percentage vaccination where they don't necessarily worry an outbreak could happen but when a window starts getting larger and larger the potential of an outbreak becomes more just like with covid and so with measles i know that we were at 85 percent the health officials want us to be higher want us to have a higher how do you speak to that community that feels it's it's not a question of convenience right it's a question of core philosophy how do you speak to that with that community i think all we can do with our school nurses or pediatricians is just state this is these are the these are the facts around the vaccines um and this is this is the reality of what it is and parents make their decision now should we have an outbreak it would hit those who aren't vaccinated is there any ancillary blowback to kids who are vaccinated of covid 19 no no no of measles or chickenpox or any of those common childhood diseases so ask your question again i'm sorry if 85 percent are vaccinated 15 percent aren't if there were an outbreak you know amongst that 15 percent would that mean anything to the 85 percent i think that would be a better question for an epidemiologist or pediatrician i'm not gonna give an epidemiologist to answer that question i'm not positive um let me ask a couple of questions just touch questions that i'm sure make your life more interesting is there any discussion of critical race theory in our district not that i've heard of other than from teachers and people who are reading what's happening across the nation and within our state and other areas i have not had any uh emails from parents or conversations from caregivers or community around critical race theory i then i'll just hit you with the question is is critical race theory taught in the elementary school here well you have to think about what that actually is critical race theory comes theory comes from law school and it's looking how laws are have been it's a theory around how laws were created it's not an educational term so we're not teaching critical law theory in our elementary school we're not no we teach to the vermont standards that were required to teach to which talks about talking about perspectives and bias those words are in our our standards documents and that's a measure of a well-rounded education when you can think critically across an idea context a story that there are multiple perspectives and there's multiple ways people experience that perspective and that's good teaching how are we doing that at the high school i know we've gone the extra step in terms of talking about bias and talking about social issues from from that perspective how is that changing and evolving at the high school i think the evidence is in the putting there around how strongly our students work with social justice causes whether it's climate change or racial justice our students lead the way there and our leader in which way they are the ones out front they're the ones out front demanding that black lives matter they have a race against racism that is planned and designed by students every year we have coursework designed around perspective and bias and that kind of thing at the high school we have a very strong sustainability program that's now being extended into the middle school as well so what is the sustainability program sustainability talks about food justice and social justice and climate change you know the un's sustainability goals united nations use sustainability goals for living and through that lens we have a significant group of students who very much care care about our climate and ensuring that we their grandkids are going to be able to eat good healthy food and be able to live in a healthy climate and a healthy planet so our students through our education through caregiver focus as well at home our students have very strong opinions and know quite a bit about social justice movements and are going to be strong voices in the future for a much better place is there any blowback on on open bathrooms that are used you know beyond cis identification not that i've heard of no okay just just wondering yeah and if one i know they're the middle school bathroom when the middle school bathroom remodel happened on the third floor in the in the basement for i guess it would be the first floor one has to see those bathrooms to to really understand what's happening you know they're not traditional stalled bathrooms the stalls have walls that go all the way up to the ceiling you know that there's no way that the the sharing of the bathroom could be anything other than just use of a bathroom if my son's been out of for a couple of decades i've been out for 50 years so yeah yeah they're they're they're wide open spaces teachers can see what's happening from the hallway the the stalls are completely private in every way possible like there's no way somebody could look underneath because the wall goes all the way to the floor and the wall goes all the way to the ceiling there's just not it's just not possible so the thought was given in design again going to the high school is one of your special prides the community-based learning that matt mclean does like that's matt mclean's special pride i would never take no i'm saying that so many kids participate in community first of all what is community-based learning and what percent do participate in yeah matt and his team have designed an amazing program that's been around way before me that offers kids the opportunity to to learn through internships and apprenticeships out in the community and we have fabulous community partners that help us out with that each year in which we think profusely to have our kids there and kids have just it's just a different way to learn and it's it's more of what i can imagine the future being rather than the eight to three school day but how can we design learning so it fits with kids and and we get them out getting to learn leadership skills and use their voice in a different way are there any curricular changes that are being discussed by the board right now that that would have an impact on what the school of the future or the schools of the future would look like we're starting actually i was working on an rfp with uh me and more one of our board members rfp being a request for proposals uh this morning with me and more is one of our board members around a visioning process a community visioning process and the the rfp is to look for facilitators who can help us um what is the community visioning process it's interesting because when we merged we never did this we never talked about um what truly do we want out of our education as a as a new district um and so one of the things that people like to talk about quite a bit is community values and what i've learned is in my you know now fourth year superintendent is that people define that very differently they may think that they define it similarly but they may define it similarly as their neighbor or their friendship group but once you get outside it could be defined very differently and so what the board recognizes is that we need to come together and get a professional in here to help really engage stakeholders and ensure that all voices are heard particularly those from our marginalized group groups and um say well what are they what's name them so then we can make financial decisions in the future based on them we can make curricular decisions based on them we can any decision we make is held up against this lens that that the the process going forward has determined would those stakeholders include those who don't have children in the schools absolutely absolutely yeah that's why we're trying to get a professional how long do you envision this process taking and when do you envision community meetings and like we're not sure yet we're in the very beginning stages of this like i said we're literally just writing the rfp today so um then that's going to go to the board for approval on wednesday next wednesday's meeting not this coming wednesday but the wednesday after um and then we'll put it out we have in the proposal that the work would start in uh december and we'd award the contract to somebody in november we the work would start in december and go through june of 2022 this again is not a trap question um what some capital improvements have been made over the summer and and are coming in in the fall in the schools yeah if you walked into main street middle school you'd see a completely different besides the tents in front uh yeah that's not an infrastructure piece though uh main street middle school's gym got repainted it's bright and cheery now which is beautiful um much different space than what um it was certainly in the spring um other major projects we got new control system that at Montpelier high school to help with the hvac to make the hvac work even stronger than it did in the spring um those were the those were the biggies those were the actual major major pieces of capital besides typical classroom renovations which we do every year you know we kind of do two or three classrooms every year in a building i know you have capital projects every year major capital projects written in year after year that that's the reason i asked yeah we just had a presentation with the board last wednesday concerning um kind of a laundry list so the board can start having conversations with our community around what what we want to prioritize for for federal money that's coming in as well as our capital plan libya i thank you so very much for answering a long laundry list of questions well beyond covid so anything else that we're on the eve of school what should kids what should parents say to their kids they're coming on in back into those schools for some of them they've been gone for a year yeah um what's your message to a parent i think it depends on where the parent is themselves and their anxiety level um this is what we do we keep kids safe we do our best to do that we know how to do that we know kids really well among failure high school i have the best teaching staff and and and other staff in the state by far um and so everything's going to be okay we're going to have some bumps we're going to no doubt about it we may have to go remote we may not i don't know nobody really knows those answers but we will do the best we can and kids safety is the absolute utmost concern that we have and so we're going to do everything we can to do that so i think uh as as i think of my parent hat myself my spin for my kids is always a positive one is always one that things will be okay you can trust what's happening you can you know go talk to people when you're not when you're not sure who are the people is it the school super arched school separate i'm sorry people are welcome to come talk to me the school is it the school principal that sure you talk to your principal yeah any of us would be happy to talk to parents caregivers and students if they're they're nervous or anxious we have a large social work staff our guidance counselors any of our teachers we're all there we love kids and that's what we want them to feel as comfortable as they can be in our hallways and in our classrooms so that's what we do and we hope that there's that open line of communication when things aren't working that we can figure it out with our caregivers but really kids feed off of what you know the adults around them the the vibes the adults around them are giving them so if it's a positive can do a vibe the kid will feed off of that so i encourage parents to do that i also encourage when kids can be vaccinated to get your child vaccinated if i could put an editorial comment to those parents as well i'd encourage everyone to get vaccinated yes uh in our community if we can approach 100 that would be collectively the best for all of us and that would be what would keep our kids in school thank you so very much for watching this was Mount Peal your civic forum


Na kwa kuf Adita kufdes. Here's a gospel artist as well. Goss by the name Razby. Ani tumahkutu hiongia Karibuku anyi su Razby? Thank you so much. How are you? I'm fine. In all white, Looking good. Mikiama ko apia. Asante. Pia mimi. Am happy to be here. Aah you're welcome. Asante. So kindly introduce yourself, utwambu na itwa nani unato kam tagani na maapia? Aya, my name mi na itwa Resby, nimi okoka na mpendayesu sana na I come from United Kayole Valley, but she's said ya Kayole sana, he's said ya Kangundoroda, Kosaika, yondyohu diyangu. Na I do music for those people that they don't know, na fanya music, na fanya emcee, son na ngaingia TV host kido go. Hey, unato join. So mongu na, na wajohi mi, mongu na fungu atu milangu polepole na fraya sana sana sana nani pilek. So utwambu ya? Yes. Out of all the things that ya unafanya, umesema unafanya emcee weni misani na ngaingia TV host. Ni gani unafraya kufanya over the others because at the end of the day kumene moja enewe, this is where I was supposed to be. Ok, at the end of the day, zoto zeni zime ni drive ni passion, but kuna kamoja tu umbo ni music. Music I believe I was called for music ya nani ni calling ya anguwa zi music. Nini kitu suwezi wacha. Nia zi nika acheze zingine bati music. Always ya acha. Always, lazime standout. Acha je. Kwa na amu? So wuki zime ni calling. Yes. How would you define amu? Kweni wuna zime ni calling? Ni calling kwa zi music. Unadiwa calling, calling is something that wuna discover. Ya. Inanzaga tu ni kama kitu flani, wuna penda, wuna penda kufanya. Ukiwa around yuki tu wuna skia kupua. Kupua. Ya niku satisfied kabisa. So wini fika maali, nika get into. Unadiwa kiki get into something wuna kamuku realiza. So I was supposed to do this. Ya. Like you, to say me for example, uta kwa ta kigro, maybe wu kuna rako TV host. I know ni, tuki wa dowa kila mtu anu kwa na. Agot. Zileza, mi na ta kwa pairoch. Na skakwa sadjo, na skakwa pijitresha. But you see where you ended up. Ya. So life is all about that. At least, tunanzaga before you realize papa siya kwa. Uta jipata kwa witu nyingi sana. Vitu juta jiri bwa pana pale ya pana pale. Pata the end of the day kuna ya kwenyumiti wana. Unadiwa, if ni li miletapa kwa dunia fani this and that. For this thing. Ya. So you... Ya, and I believe, mine ni li ya kwa kwa music. Kwa music. Yes. Na ina kwa le kaji sofa? Good. I don't, I'm not complaining. And I appreciate God for being with me on my kajani. Ija kwa rahisi sana. Baki na shukuru. At the end of the day, ena appreciate. Cause remember to give thanks in each and every situation. Ya. Yes. In music kumesa kwa chiv several things.  Yes. Na udi wa zaku win award at Fema Awards. Sell us a bit about that. Okay. I didn't expect by the way. Ni li kwa so nervous. And I remember that time I was... Ya ni, I came from a group in Yutrotiji Square. Ya. I used to work with the group since 2015 till around 2019. ゝveangiue Kidogo,  Fear of Acent. Kwa busy, kwa nau. So Sana Ina kwa ningumu. Diu fwere xampun ni vergeka mkulunti niuso testimony. Jeffi video tku wa tuwa saba. Lakin I mo kwa pe Admiral. Aseku ni kwa nama sualiielle Ny себе. Ida le fkama le tu Kambeana now, I think to pause music Kidogo.  Aga appearedu, kwa kaw,' kwa kwa kwa kwa kwa umumadani, kwa kwa kwa mamiakinii Naajiru.  We Over na mnasa kwa maaluna fika aga, bakunanza kwa ni kama oku ente wrong routes. You get. Nikiwa mae naende le yama si fika kwa uku. So iwi fika maalقة, nikiwa diyebia evo, nikiwa ni kama kwa God. Mena takatununia nyesite, ukuna wei kwa idhiyani. Ento all I need ni iwa ward. Iwa ward ita ni provea. Ukuna memi kwa idhiyani. Iwa ward vasuni dolu kwa no na nikiwa matu na hipokilia vingini. was kquelle kwa? K� na agano mahali. Niki pata nade wukuna mimi 2021. Sana indelia kupuski? Sana indelia kupuski. Ay k환 liku Wolo kwa yek stay zutezi. Pikama yung bili no Hero sta no qikej voluntary第二 kwa maguwa. Yung bili no camino na kitu ang Antonаксia, na kut makine jud육u kwama.   At least kinim bodyt fold kwa kabilizu gandci. But this is happened with me. So I am here to stay and do big things for that power Ah... Yes, so what is next. There is a lot of projects here Eh Ata na fraya ni kusimahivi kuna projects ni ingi sana And bazo ni so personal zingine Personal sana Yani ata ni kisha ya Mi first zinani bless kwaan So na jwa sayi zingine yun wata zi pata Wata zi like to Lazima Lazima So there is a lot of colabos I'm working on Enda Singles Before sasa tu pangitu one kama Tuta fanya ipiki dogu Akini kwanza na ta kwa Singles Singles kaza Kuna DJ mwinginia pa uneza DJ nesinia Oneza Anyway, my want us to wind up Nige taka hourly biawa tumali Oneza pattern u maza con social media Okay Okay, follow me on Facebook at RaiseBee. Ni kuna page manze Facebook yungi media poli ni mabi shiteza yungi. Nde ni pali kwa page RaiseBee Kenya, pali Instagram tu patani ni raise underscore B, alafu ni YouTube manze, YouTube ni sensitive sana. YouTube ni RaiseBee. Kuna some projects there ni me fanya fanya, go there, comment. Patasongi me kubule sana, share piya. Ni muimu sana. Alafu ni zabiga patu kata, juna jwa paivi kama lizwa. Nde biga pibrayo kiyomombasa, alembi ni sikose. Biga pisa na, my producer Eski Mandela maliako kiyomombasa. Biga pisa na, kuna soundboy, kuna my family wa kiyo at home wa nani watch manze, thanks so much and each and every fan of me, ama mwenye sasa mini jwa leo manze, support me by watching all my songs, subscribe music zangu ziko kwa platform Zotti. Anywhere, RaiseBee. Nanda shukuru sana na, Goda kubles. Aswanti sana kwa kukam through RaiseBee. We hope to see you more and more in Biga Project, apani home by the way. I am happy that you know apani home. Thank you so much for inviting me. Anyway, so Upnext is Power by RaiseBee featuring DJ Nix.


Hi, I'm Owen Hannie and you're watching Ready to Renovate with Builders and Private Property. As of Africans, we love our outdoor living and patios are very much a part of that lifestyle. This outdoor renovation started by stripping the old floor tiles and replacing them with these. So from the gate code, it was very important for us to have non-slip tiles on the patio as well as in the bathroom and in the kitchen. Luckily this tile only came in a non-slip version, so we went throughout with it. Our paint color was a directive by the body corporate requirements. Here's a great tip for any leftover paint. No need to waste, especially if you love the color. The guys at builders can match it and remix a new tin for you. It's always advisable to take the original tin in, but if you only have a chip of the paint they will do their very best to get the same color. We also added counter shelves and natural oak cupboard doors under the counters. The addition of the cupboard really brings out the slick look and modern feel that Amanda was after.  We installed a countertop gas bri with handy storage for gas canisters. The gas bri was installed by a professional sabs approved and there's also a certificate of compliance that was issued by them. Mood lighting and comfy stylish furniture make this space for any season and any reason. The patio is quite small so I just wanted to add a bit of character and this area where you can just hang out. So we've added some furniture, gas bri which makes life very easy and grass lampshades. Make sure that you hire a professional contractor for your renovation. You'll find a list of better tradesmen on the Get It Done app. Download it today. Sorry, sorry being a contractor isn't always easy but it is what it is especially dealing with body corporates, dealing with occupational health and safety, dealing with noise complaints. It's never easy but it is what it is we need to do it. Now I'm generally running out of sorry's that's left in my bag. Now your friends and family can contribute to your renovation or home improvement with the Boulders Gift Registry app. The app is also a great way to manage the materials your contractor purchases for your renovation. Well if you like this patio refresh you must see the full makeover of all the other rooms in this two bedroom apartment. Catch the ready to renovate with Boulders and Private Property episodes on the Boulders and Private Property websites and popular online channels on screen now. And don't forget to shop at all Boulders online or in store for all your DIY and home improvement requirements. Get to Boulders, Get It Done.


So this is our last poll for the day. What is an important achievement for the arts and culture in the next four years? Cultural center in each neighborhood and international arts events, like South by Southwest, based in Boston. Permanent affordable housing and art making spaces. Access for every child to affordable and high quality arts education. Living wage policy for artists. Art specialists in every city department and a platform for the arts community to regularly convene. Please go ahead. OK, I'm really nervous, but my name's Mary Hopkins. I'm an OFB originally from Dorchester. I'm also a proud member of IACI, which is the International Alliance for Theater and Stage and Police. And I have to be like someone's here. Anyways, I came to Sets. I work on film and TV here in the city of Boston. I'm really nervous. I became a member in 1991. And I didn't get my first job until 1993. But I'm very glad that I have hung in there. And now it is 2014. And there's a lot more work here now in the city of Boston. I don't have to travel all of New England. I can stay home. But there are things that I like to see. Personally, I'm a high school graduate. But I'm also a graduate of Mayor Gray Flynn's very first cycle of women in the building trades. And it was a very important program for me anyways. So that got me involved, or how to get a union job. And then, OK, and then how to get a job in the film industry while I became a member of the union. But we all work union, non-union, low budget, no budget. If we're not on a gig, we're freelancing. And we're here and we're not going anywhere. It seems like we're invisible. Everyone's talking about space. Just so I can throw these out quickly. The film Heat we did inside the Harold Travel Building just torn down. American Hustle was filmed entirely here, the city of Boston, Worcester, and Chelsea. And then at the end, and you get reading the credits, special thanks to Mayor's Office, the city of New York. There was only two days of work done there. We're here. We do the work. We're not going anywhere. So the bottom line is, tax credits or no tax credits, union or non-union, the city hall needs a specific film and television office. And make this type of work of someone like myself, not the odd ones, that I don't have a college degree, or that I'm not coming with a theater background, that I came from a labor background, and I'm blessed to earn a living wage and do this work. Thank you. My name is Ian Fall. I am a journalist and critic who writes for the arts views and the Clyde Fitch report. And I am also a former community editor for the Jewish advocate. I'm also a playwright, poet, and teaching artist specializing in physical theater. On February 14th, 2013, a number of experienced teaching artists, including myself, were asked by the city center to provide free content for a February 23rd, 2013 arts festival at the Dudley Branch Library. I had had no prior relationship with the city center beyond having repeatedly submitted my resume to the education department over a period of several years. Let me reiterate, there was neither an offer of an honorarium nor in-kind services. I declined because this request for free labor went against the recommended labor practices advocated by state agencies, including the Mass Cultural Council. The city center is not a cash strapped organization, according to the most recent tax forms that were available to me, 2010. At the time, their end of the year net assets totaled $35,586,107. Their top five compensated staff members received a total of $1,224,307 a year. Additionally, Nathan Pussy, an officer of Citibank, has compensated $1,685,240 for undefined services, even as linked in a profile silent on what he had done to earn this. In short, the city center had 2,909,547 reasons to ask artists for free labor. I request that the city review the labor practices of organizations with which it contracts for arts programs. At 26, I work with Arts Street. I've also taught at Corbett College a class called Street Art 10. I want to discuss real quick the positives and negatives of what I've observed in my students. The positives is that local citizens find guidance to band together and to collaborate in ways to beautify the city. And the negative is that the city hasn't prepared itself to embrace the pursuits of visionary artists. It's been documented in cities across the globe that criminalizing graffiti is a wonderful and successful campaign in uniting neighborhoods to solving crime. And the visual aesthetics are absolutely breathtaking. I know he's had a very intimidating word right now in front of all you very fine and respectable people in the room. And I want to bring it up now that the idea of decriminalizing graffiti is the dream that you're looking for. And the action plan is low to no cost. It starts within the existing law. And it starts with cooperating and respecting the land. Landowners possess this most valuable and sought out asset. The walls and streets of Boston have historically provided stability for economic growth. And they can do the same thing for the arts. So we're here looking for Boston's strong leaders to work towards a visible production that would be realized internationally and would, I wrote this like standing up there, and would most definitely make Boston a better place to live. Thank you. From Alston, my perspective is informed by my jobs as a seamstress for both the Boston Ballet. I'm a tutu smith. And I also work for an independent fiber artist at Midway Studios, Amy Nguyen of Designs. And also, because I live in Alston, I was once what I like to call a low-budget rock star. Let's be clear. Funding the arts creates jobs. And as many times as said today, what brings us here are matters of labor and real estate. I'm talking about having a place to be, and therefore having the ability to grow. Making art is a daily action. And musically speaking, Boston has long been known among bands around the country to be an exciting destination because it's an incubator for so many kinds of music. And this is a precious part of Boston's character. It tangibly builds a community. So there needs to be room for the underground. We have even fewer places. We have fewer places, ever fewer places, to play independent shows. We see practice in studio space is not to mention affordable housing be torn up to make impossibly luxurious apartments. Artists struggle to make ends meet while fulfilling their work. And additionally, the territory is inhospitable to younger people, worsening the effects of a youth culture built around socializing at the mall and worshiping screens. In a way, young folks also have no place to go. So you have to make it easier to have all ages shows. You work with the independent event bookers. You work with the Boston hair soap. You asked the Dick Boston, the very newspaper that gave Marty Walsh a winning endorsement. And I also, and also the artist that I work for at Fort Point, I think that she is doing a good, like she's a good citizen. She's created four jobs for me and one of my former bandmates. She wants to be a good boss, but she's afraid that she won't be able to keep this jobs. They do call us the hub in the city after all. I would like to say also that I'm grateful so far for the soon to be extended MBTA service, public art projects, music festivals this summer. Thank you very much. Also from Alston and I'm a musician. I moved to Boston a few months before the Avalon closed. And since then I have just seen the venues that my friends bands and bands that I wanted to see from other places play just keep closing. And with the news recently that the Middle East in Cambridge may be shutting down in the next couple of years. Yeah, yep. I've been looking at what's last. And unfortunately most of the major venues left in Boston are not venues that support local musicians. They bring in an outside band or two that plays for an hour and a half and then the show's over at 9.30, 10 o'clock. I've seen the shows ending very early lately in the past year and a half. And the bars and smaller venues that do support local bands are now becoming inundated with more and more people trying to find a place to have a show. We recently contacted, my band recently contacted a band in our, recently contacted a bar in Alston and they're booked out for nine months with shows every day of the week. So, Boston has begun lots of a place that has its own musical identity and more of a place that's importing it from out of state. Thank you. My name is David Vieira. I'm the president of the Citywide Friends of the Boston Public Library. And I'd like to say welcome to your library. In 2010, the Board of Trustees of the Boston Public Library sat on this stage and voted to close four of our branch libraries. And in the course of the next four months, operating with the coalition upon Beacon Hill and in City Hall, including then State Representative Marty Walsh, we turned that vote around and those four libraries remained open. Please don't make us fight for our libraries again. There's 24 branch libraries throughout our city today that are still open. But they're locked down from the second Saturday in June to the second Saturday in September. A vital time when our communities need to have a space to gather for the arts and for other things. These spaces are closed up to everybody in this room. And those of you who have performed in public library venues know that we are open and welcoming and we're ready to receive you any time that we have a space that's open for you. This particular building is also locked down on Sundays from the last Sunday in May, which would be Labor Day, until the first Sunday in October. I don't know of any other major library that has its major venue closed on a Sunday. We need to do something to fund this. The Boston Public Library budget is about 6% of the city's budget and we really need to look to see public libraries expanded through the summer months. I would also like to applaud my friends from Chinatown. Eight years ago I testified in front of the city council that I wasn't willing to advocate for a branch library in any one neighborhood, but I would advocate for branch libraries in all neighborhoods. And that includes our friends in Chinatown. David, thank you, your time is up. Thank you very much. To represent my organization, Sociola Latina, but all community-based program, it's a pleasure to be here speaking with you guys on behalf of the youth of Boston, because we usually don't get a voice like that and we usually don't ever get to show that we actually do care about these programs and that these programs do help. My experience in these art-based programs have been life-changing. It provided me with so many skills and tools for my life, like in many aspects of my life. And I came in as a troubled team whether I wanted to admit it or not. Community-based programs gave me another way to express myself other than going out and doing negative things, because I didn't really have anybody to keep me on. I have parents, but they work a lot, and so I never really had anybody to put me on the right track or tell me what to do after school and stuff. So programs like this showed me that I, I'm sorry, I'm just a little nervous myself. Programs like this helped me understand that it's better to know that you're doing better than to have other people notice that you are doing better. And I feel like these programs help because it takes away the violence off the streets, because you are more focused on doing good things. So when they're focused on doing more good things, they're prone to make more right decisions in everyday situations. And people at these programs show a true connection. They make it feel like it's not a job or a little program. They make it feel like it's a family almost. So I don't know, I really feel like they've given me a lot of support and they bring unity to the community. So thank you for your time. If you could just step down one step, that'd be great. And I'm also a music ambassador at Sociolatino. I'm here to talk about the importance of arts programs. Music just, music isn't just a few songs of a priority lifeline to use to want more meaning in their lives. We're awakening our creative side and providing confidence and self-esteem for all youth in Boston. I've been in foster care for a very long time and had very low self-esteem, anxious to know if I'll fit in in society, but my program has given me very, I'm also nervous, sorry, has given me a lot of self-esteem. Community-based arts program have opened up a whole new world view, has introduced me to many youths similar to me and has developed in me a variety of skills such as being collaborative, patient, responsible, organized, and very open minded. Sociolatino, other arts programs should be funded in a way that sustains the programs itself and all the individuals involved. Arts and music has impacted in my life tremendously. In the midst of all my personal struggles, doing my involvement with this program has been changed. Has, has been changed. And I know others' lives have been changed as well. It has impacted in the community by bringing us as a whole, prevent less violence, and bring a more opportunity to our community. Thank you. I want to make sure that I did make the list, high-firm and perhaps in university, okay. Thank you for the opportunity to speak briefly. On behalf of Boston University, I'd like to thank the mayor for his commitment to the arts and for you for listening. I serve as the managing director of the BU Arts Initiative, which is a new position in the office of the provost. The creation of the Arts Initiative as a priority demonstrates our commitment to the critical role of the arts in the intellectual and personal development of our more than 30,000 students in Boston. The BU has a strong history in the arts for over 60 years. We've been training some of the world's finest musicians, poets, theater artists, and more. We proudly partner with many local arts organizations, including the Celebrity Series with the Street Pianas and Boston Calling Music Festival. We provide all of our students memberships to the BSL, the MFA, and the Isabelle Stewart Art Museum. In any given week on our campus, there are over two dozen arts events that happen and virtually all of them are free and open to the public, drawing thousands of people to the area. Over the decades, the US truly transformed the former Ottawa and the Commonwealth Avenue to a vibrant cultural sector, and we have only just begun. We are looking forward to partnering with the Walsh Administration and offering our resources to keeping the innovation district model while firmly positioning artists as a high priority within that framework. Implementing a Mayor's Arts Council that includes arts leaders from colleges and universities where we can participate in discussions around supporting, sharing, and benefiting from the cultural assets of the cities and our institutions, and dreaming up new ways to partner and support the development of new arts spaces in Boston that will make our region even more culturally vibrant. Thank you guys, our last testifier, testifier today. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for adding me. I wanted to make sure that the hip-hop voice was heard today. Thank you. My name is Cindy Diggs and I'm the founder of Peace Boston, which is a hip-hop peace movement that we started back in 2005 with members of the former music industry. When the industry began to crash, those of us who worked in the 90s decided to give our experiences to the young people and that's where hip-hop was created to stop the violence back in 1973. And when put in the proper hands, it can be done again. We have so many people that use hip-hop for negative means and we see people using it for commercials to sell cars and we wanna use it to save lives. Thank you. Thank you. One of the things that we've always had a problem with is space because everyone fears us. But it's something that if you have, those of us who are the leaders, there's nothing to fear. I was asked to be a part of the, actually asked to form Mayor Monino's hip-hop round table and we helped to put on the Peace Boston Hip-Hop Festival for many years at Government Center until they took it away from those of us in the hip-hop culture and brought in people from the suburbs to put it on and then there was violence that pursued because they brought in young artists rather than bringing old school because the young people love old school as well and their parents and they're not gonna act up then. So the one thing that I would like to see happen with the arts is that we have more art space and there are 35 Boston Centers for Youth and Families that are underutilized where we could have simultaneous talent shows that are happening so that kids aren't coming to the one talent show that's put on by people in the industry so that we can have a lot less violence because imagine never being able to dance or perform because you're a young person and now these young people put on their own events and their own houses and that's when the violence starts. So if you'd like to support our efforts we just started the Peace Collaborative and we have a fundraiser on March 1st we're bringing Mardi Gras to Boston to the Harborside and Lounge. So join us there, we're gonna build a youth activities fund and support the youth in hip-hop. Thank you. One, I just wanna thank everybody for their time your passion and please stay involved with this process. If you didn't give us your emails when you signed in please do that so we can make sure that we know how to contact you.  If you wanna know what's going on in the arts community. Here's our final poll. If you did not have an opportunity to testify if you have more to say you can feel free to give us your testimony in writing. We'll be here for a couple minutes afterwards if you have another meeting after this but please talk to us individually as well. So thank you again for your time and have a good day.


graduated with BA in English and now you are managing a medical journal. Tell us about this transition from graduating with BA in English to getting into the publication industry. So it's a great question so I remember it very clearly being a senior or a junior rather in college and sort of panicking about what I was going to do with my career in this English major. I realized that teaching for instance high school or junior high English was not something I wanted to do. So fortunately at SUNY Geneseo where I graduated from they had connections with a program in Washington DC and I was able to have an internship in Washington DC the second semester of my senior year. So I lived in Washington DC for a few months and I worked at the Publications Department of the National Museum of Women in the Arts. So it's not scientific technical medical publishing but that's how I got into publishing itself. And so they published a quarterly magazine it's very different from what I do now but it was a great insight into the field as a whole and some really good experience and really maybe realize this is something I wanted to do. So while I was in Washington in that spring semester I was fortunate enough to be able to apply to some jobs and one I applied to was at the American Institute of Biological Sciences and I was hired as their they called it assistant editor but it was basically just a copy editor position and I found out right before I graduated that I had the job and then I moved down to Washington DC with two suitcases on a bus two weeks after I graduated and I've been there ever since. And so that was a great that first job was wonderful had a very solid foundation copy editing had a wonderful boss who was a very hands-on editor and she's a great advisor and mentor and then from there I moved over to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. My title was production editor but it you know titles are sort of funny and STM because they can mean different things at different organizations. And what I did a lot of was manuscript work and not copy editing per se but getting a manuscript ready to go to the publisher. So it just meant making sure that several you know critical things were met. For instance did they have institutional review board approval?  So it's not copy editing but it's just making sure that it's ready to go and making sure all the author queries are resolved before we send it to the publisher. So that's how I got the got into ACOG and then I've eventually became the managing editor and I've been doing that ever since.


Live from San Francisco, it's theCUBE. Covering Google Cloud Next 2018. Brought to you by Google Cloud and it's ecosystem partners. Hi, this is Peter Burris from Wikibon SiliconANGLE stepping in for John Furrier and Dave Vellante. Continuing with our CUBE coverage here at Google Next 2018 from Moscone South. An impressive array of talent and that includes my next guest, John Thomas. John is the Director of Product Management for Digital Services Management, Cloud Services at BMC Software. Welcome to theCUBE, John. Thank you for having me. You know, this is a really interesting topic for me because as an old infrastructure hack, someone who's been in IT operations in a couple of different worlds as well as being an industry analyst in infrastructure, it's important that we not lose sight of the fact that there's a lot of expertise out there regarding how we run complex systems. That the cloud companies are demonstrating but the business as it adopts cloud services nonetheless has to sustain. So talk to us a little bit about what BMC is doing to try to bring some of that knowledge over 30 years of working in the data center and apply it for businesses as they become better cloud citizens. Yeah, thank you for asking. So BMC has worked with some of the largest IT organizations, in fact, over 80% of the Fortune 500 use BMC software to help them manage IT. And at this point, when I go out and talk to those customers, they're all on a cloud journey. And the really exciting thing is that the conversations stop becoming if we're going to use public cloud, but it's going to be a how to use public cloud and really at this point, it's about how do we use it in a way that we can scale that out, scale that innovation out within the organization. And we're seeing that those organizations are actually, and a lot of times they're reorganizing in order to really facilitate that innovation. And so BMC, like you said, is taking that expertise that we've had and helping them to manage the data center assets and to apply those same learnings that we had with a new spin to actually work with the public cloud as they start to adopt public cloud. So give us an example of a few of the more modern approaches in the cloud that are being employed by BMC to ensure that you get the type of control, manageability, and automation that BMC customers have gotten used to on premise. Yeah, I mean, one great example is for a very long time BMC has had the BladeLogic product line. And we've helped customers to make sure that they can harden their servers and their network devices and their databases on premise. Now as they move to public cloud, there's a big question. What does it mean to even harden a public cloud configuration? And a lot of organizations are trying to understand what is their responsibility in that shared responsibility model? And so one thing that we've done is take that knowledge about hardening assets and apply it to public cloud resources and also just in the way that we do it. You know, if you think about it traditionally, IT's gotten a bad rap as being Captain Know. And now with the public cloud and the ability of application teams to go directly to the public cloud, IT has to just change the way that it's providing its services to their consumers, their internal consumers. So now instead of putting a big block in the process, instead we're enabling IT to provide services because application teams, they don't want to be insecure. They're not out there nefariously trying to break things and leave data out there. They may sometimes not know when they're not being secure. Exactly, and so IT's new and changing role is about how do you provide services and consultation to your business to be a facilitator? And so with the products that we're offering now, we think we've taken that history and that legacy in our heritage and hardening in the data center and then applying that same model to the public cloud but in a model that fits for how you leverage public cloud resources. I presume that a customer that decides to go with, say Google or Google cloud, or that decides to go with Amazon or AWS is going to use your product and exploit the best or the capabilities of both clouds as they are uniquely provided, is that accurate? Absolutely, yeah, when we talk to our customers, very few of them have the luxury of only using one public cloud vendor. Whether it's based off of decisions from application teams or even acquisitions, a lot of times they have to manage across multiple clouds on top of all of that on-premise infrastructure that they still have to manage. And so we do, we try to help to simplify that complexity for them by bringing it all together into one disability into what is the state of the risk of their cloud services. But to employ or to be able to exploit the best that each of those platforms has, while at the same time from an overall manageability standpoint, being able to provide a common view to those different resources, have I got that right? Exactly, exactly. Now how does that tie back into the data center? One of the things that we've seen over the course of the last week is something that Wikibon has been calling the true private cloud. The idea that there are going to be circumstances when an enterprise's data requires that you move the cloud to the data as opposed to moving the data to the cloud. And there's no doubt, there's going to be a lot of data that's going to, for any number of physical, legal, intellectual property control reasons, will be on premise or within the confines of the business. So how do you envision that the practices and tooling and automation regimes that are currently on premise and what we're doing now in the cloud are going to start together, come together over the next few years so we can put data where it naturally should be? Yeah, I'm glad you asked that. So some of the tools and some of the reasons that we're able to help our customers on their cloud journey is because we have that knowledge of their on premise infrastructure. So being able to do things like discover what they have on prem and understand the dependencies helps us to be really uniquely positioned to help them with cloud migration. And migration might not be just from on premise to cloud. It could be from cloud back to on premise. It could be between clouds or even between different regions based off of the need of the business at that time. So that's migration. What about overall classes of integration that might allow a DevOps person, for example, to be able to look at an application that spans multiple cases or multiple locations but still be able to administer it as a coherent resource? Yeah, as well. So in that same discovery capabilities that we have, we've extended those out to the public cloud as well. So we can discover on premise in the public cloud so that whenever you need it, you can go to a single place and understand what's the state of your infrastructure no matter where it exists. So what do you think of Google Next? Are you having good conversations with customers? Do you see Google coming on, Google Cloud coming on more? And how does BMC going to make it easier for everybody? Absolutely. We're really excited by the progress that Google Cloud is making. And we're seeing a lot of adoption in, in particular, certain segments of our businesses are really, really fond of Google Cloud. And what we're doing is trying to make sure that from the tools that we have that we're integrating into Google Cloud so that it gives our customers that choice to pick what's the right cloud for them at the right time and for the right circumstances and then still get that simplification by putting it all into the same tool where they can get it in a single view. Now every company has a challenge as they migrate to the cloud, both from a standpoint of where their applications are being developed, where their applications are being run, but also strategically, the cloud has a pretty significant impact. BMC seems to be one of those companies that's able to partly be, or I would presume, in large measure because of 30 years of really working well with customers, is having a relatively facile time enacting that transformation. Give us a sense, especially in the product management domain, thinking about how BMC is going to provide value in the cloud. What does BMC think the future of cloud and cloud management looks like? Well, we see it's evolving. Right now, a lot of organizations are creating centralized cloud centers of excellence just to figure out how, like I said, to scale out best practices within their organization. And right now, those teams really have a couple areas of focus. Number one is the migration, so figuring out how to do their migration projects. Number two is, how do we do security of those resources? So being able to understand what's their risk posture and set up some governance around that. We say cloud with guardrails. And the last thing is, last year was really a time of customers coming to us because they had 10x million dollar surprise bills. And so one of the things that we want to do to help facilitate the use of public cloud because we believe that it can be as safe or safer, as efficient or more efficient, is to take away those concerns that would keep a company from feeling like they're able to migrate more workloads to the cloud or build more applications in the cloud. So John, I'm going to do kind of a lightning round here. I'm going to put something in front of you and I want you to respond as best as you can from a standpoint of how the value proposition is going to play out. Let's start with speed to value. How does the tooling that you're providing improve speed to value, especially for those companies that are looking for greater flexibility in their strategies? Well, on speed to value, one of the biggest things is in order to have real data up in the public cloud, organizations just need to understand what is their risk posture. Make sure that those services that they're creating are hardened and so with our two-site cloud security products, we're able to give them that visibility so that they can get the check mark to move quickly to go to market with the solutions that they're creating in the public cloud. The second thing, modern application development. Containers, Kubernetes, those types of things. Yeah, absolutely. So that in the same platform that we support the public cloud, it's really all new modern innovations. So we also support Kubernetes and Docker as well so you can bring that all into the same platform and the same visibility. Big data, advanced analytics and AI. So as companies want to leverage AI, that's one of the examples where they're trying to figure out as they do it, what are their costs going to do? New services, we've heard stories where people turn on a brand new service and then find out that that service costs them a lot of money. And so with some of our expense management for cloud tools, we're able to do baselines of their spending and start to forecast out and identify when you have something that is going to come and surprise you later on. Can't talk about cloud without talking security. Absolutely. Yeah, so through TrueSight Cloud Security, we're helping organizations to not only identify where they might have risky configurations that might leave them open to data breaches but also built in automated remediation so that you can take action and to bring yourself to a very safe place. One of the big challenges of the cloud on a global basis is privacy, trust, local. How does GDPR fit into this mix, for example? Well, one of the requirements that GDPR is really to have state of the art, that's what they say. And so you have to have state of the art controls in place and so with our solution, especially TrueSight Cloud Security, that allows organizations to be able to not only have state of the art processes in place and tools to assess their risks, but to also prove it. And I think that's a big aspect. IoT. IoT is also something that's coming up a lot in our customer base. So being able to manage those same cloud resources in terms of the cost of the resources and the security as well. Serverless? Yeah, serverless. In fact, internally when we developed our application, we use a lot of serverless. So we love cloud native artifacts. We believe that they really can help application teams to develop applications quicker. And so one of the things that we provide is the ability to look at hardening of applications built on cloud native resources. Now you've already mentioned cost, but let's hit cost too. How do you use the tooling to get the most out of your expenditures in the cloud? So first off, we give you the visibility into what you're spending and then run that through machine learning to start to do forecasting to help you to identify when you're going to overrun your cost. But the second part of that is to actually look at optimization. So we're examining out your accounts to understand do you have idle VMs that are out there? Do you have ones that were over provision? Different ways that we can help you to bring down your cost to make it sure that you're maximizing your cost in the public cloud. Okay, so the next two years at BMC going to continue to drive its affinity with these new cloud-based workloads. What are you most excited about as you look out at working with customers over the next couple of years? Really looking at the adoption going bigger. Right now, and they talked about it in the keynote this morning, the number of workloads in the public cloud is still relatively small to what they have on-premise. And so we believe that as organizations start to do hardware refreshes, start to do data center consolidation projects, they're going to start looking to public cloud more and more, and we're going to see more and more resources making their way to the public cloud, and we find that very exciting. A lot of opportunity for thought leadership, isn't there, John? Absolutely. All right, John Thomas, who's been crucial to driving a lot of the product management efforts around some of BMC's cloud management software. Thanks very much for being on theCUBE, John. Thanks for having me. Okay, we'll be right back with more coverage from Google Next. Thanks for watching.