Systemic Shifts in Inclusion: Neuroscience-Informed Practices for Transformation and Capacity Building

Please join us for “Systemic Shifts in Inclusion: Neuroscience-Informed Practices for Transformation and Capacity Building” with Angelina Zara and Nicole Keler.

Angelina Zara was born and raised in the heart of Washington, DC; Angie found her passion in education in 2015, serving students and caregivers in her hometown. Angie’s career includes the creation of the position of Social Emotional Learning Specialist in her previous school building, which subsequently expanded across the Local Educational Agency, ranging from elementary to high school campuses. Her experience includes implementing school-wide shifts through sustaining positive relationships, capacity building, addressing adult mindsets, and leveraging positive outcomes for staff and students. In the Spring of 2024, Angie made her transition to work for Washington, DC Public Schools to support schools across the city in implementing restorative practices to support the whole child. Additionally, Angie collaborated with the Office of the State Superintendent (OSSE) to create the first set of Washington DC Social and Emotional Learning Standards. In addition to working full time in the DC school system, Angie presents nationally on the topics of trauma accommodating principles and strategies, applied educational neuroscience, and adult wellbeing and nervous system regulation. Angie also serves as an adjunct faculty for Butler University’s Applied Educational Neuroscience Certification Program under trauma-informed trailblazer Dr. Lori Desautels. In 2023, Angie co-founded LiveWellEd, LLC, which supports caregivers, educators, and organizations responding to the needs of the post-pandemic education system by sharing best practices and systems design through consulting and coaching.

Nicole Keler is a passionate special education leader with nine years of experience working in the public charter school system across Washington, D.C. She is currently a Specialist on the School Equity and Effectiveness team at the D.C. Public Charter School Board. However, she started in the education system as a special education teacher, then transitioned to working as an inclusion manager to support families and students with diverse learning needs on a larger scale. She believes that home-school partnerships are the key to successful student outcomes. Rooted in trauma-informed practices such as Flamboyan and Conscious Discipline, Nicole works tirelessly to engage families throughout the special education process and has created systems to ensure team collaboration during the Tier 1,2,3 process. Her experience inspired her to establish LiveWellEd, with co-founder Angie Zara to bridge school and family best practices

Transcript

Unknown: 0:16

Well, hello and welcome to the alliance against occlusion, restraint Live series. It is Thursday, March 13, and I am Guy Stephens, the founder and executive director of the alliance against occlusion restraint, excited to have you here today. We've got another great conversation in store, and I think one that will be really important. Those of you that may not be familiar with who we are and what we do. The alliance against occlusion restraint was formed just about six years ago. In fact, March marks six years so we were formed about six years ago. Started the alliance after a personal experience have a neuro divergent son who was restrained, secluded and traumatized, got me asking a lot of questions, trying to figure out what we could do differently. Never, never at the time, planning to start a nonprofit, or, you know, leaving my career, but ultimately, kind of took a deep dive into this and realized that there were things that we could do that were better, better, not just for kids, but but also teachers, staff, families, communities, and that's what this work is really all about. So in that vein, really excited to have our guest with us today, who I will introduce here in just a few minutes, but we've got Dr Mike Licklider here with us today. And you know, what's really interesting, this is going to be a conversation with a school superintendent that did some, I think, really meaningful work related to restraints seclusion. And as you all know, part of our mission here is, you know, how do we influence change? And I think bringing people on that have had journeys and done things that have made positive differences, is really important. So at any rate, we'll get to that in just a moment here, before we do a couple things that I wanted to share with you. One, I wanted to thank one of our podcast sponsors, and many of you are familiar with supportable solutions. They've been a sponsor of ours for going on two years for our podcast. Supportable solutions, of course, is a company that's run by a friend and colleague, Connie persic. Connie does a lot of work in educational consulting, and has developed something called the why toolkit. And the y toolkit is really a way to get at the deeper why, beneath behavior. You know, many of you have heard of things like functional behavioral assessments, and the Y toolkit is something that's very aligned with all the work that we do here. You know, it's aligned with kind of those five principles. And let me share with you a little information about it. Here. Behaviors are signals to the deeper Whys the why toolkit a tool built for and approved by teachers, parents and administrators that can both assess and support individuals struggling with behaviors. Connie has created a document that turns typical behavioral documents upside down and replaces them with a deep dive into what really matters, how to support each child within a compassionate and relational framework based on their individual differences, the Y toolkit was found to decrease seclusion and restraint by 21% in a year long pilot study. And we thank supportable solutions for their support and being a sponsor for our podcast. And as you saw there, I mean, you know, doing things like using the Y toolkit, they can help us to reduce and eliminate practices like restraint seclusion. We're in a great opportunity today to learn from Dr Mike about some of the things that they've done to reduce the use of restraint seclusion as well. So stay tuned. One other quick announcement before I introduce our guest, I just wanted to share with you, many of you know we are, of course, a very small nonprofit, although we are kind of national, in reach here, you know, we're a small organization. We're a small organization trying to influence change. You know, not only here in the United States, but elsewhere, and we've done a lot of work to try to support that. You know, our focus is on education, it's on legislation, it's on individual support. But as a small nonprofit, you may imagine, you know, sometimes it's difficult, it's difficult for us to find funding to do the things that are really important to us, to be able to support families, to be able to create programs and do things to make a difference. And I'm always encouraging people, if you're interested in the work we're doing, think about joining us. We have an option now to join the Alliance. And if you go to our website, which is n seclusion.org, there's an option to join by joining us, you can kind of help support our mission, and you can do that in a number of ways. We have an option, of course, to join us as a supporter. And what we're looking for is people that this work resonates with and are willing to, you know, make a small contribution, and a monthly contribution of even $5 a month makes a difference and helps us to do the work that we're doing. But a number of options, there even volunteer options as well. I encourage you to check it out. So check out our website if you're able to. We really appreciate the support. Because, you know, without help, without support, I. You know, it's hard to it's hard to do this, and so at any rate, thank you for considering that. And let's get to why you're really here, because it's not just that. You're here to hear me talk. You've heard me talk enough. I want to introduce to you somebody that is a colleague, and you know, Mike, if you don't mind, I don't even say a friend, because I feel like we've known each other for a while, and I have a lot of respect for you, and I've gotten to get to know you over over a period of years as well. Let me read your bio here to give people an idea of who you are, but we're really excited to have you here. And of course, you know you are a superintendent, and you've been doing some amazing work. So Mike is passionate about the ability, the ability of public education to provide all students with high quality education, and is proud to be the superintendent of the Harwood unified Union School District in Vermont. And Mike's goal is to improve classroom experience for students and teachers and be a champion in the community for public education. And that's something I think is so important. I often say, like, we can improve outcomes for not just kids but but also the teachers and the staff. And the impact that can have on the community can be so great. Started your career in 1991 as a middle school and high school social studies teacher in the city of York, Pennsylvania, and following experiences as a high school assistant principal, middle school principal and assistant superintendent for personnel. He was named as superintendent of schools for the Penn Manor School District in 2009 school system serving 5400 students in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. After finishing your educational career in Pennsylvania, you were drawn to the Harwood unified Union School District in Central Vermont through your travels in the state, and that is a beautiful area. I've not I've not been there much, but I had an opportunity several years ago to kind of go up through Vermont and New Hampshire and so beautiful, and particularly during the time that your daughter attended the University of Vermont. You are a member of the Vermont Superintendents Association and currently serve as its representative on a statewide commission on the future of public education in Vermont. You are somebody that enjoys the opportunity to learn, discover and help Harwood make progress the school's desire for its students and communities, and I just really appreciate all that you do. And of course, you know, I get to know you through some things that were happening there in your school district. And you know, we've gotten to collaborate, I guess, a bit, on, you know, the things that you were working, you know, through in your school district. And you know, one point we even put a proposal in to speak at a conference together. Unfortunately, that didn't come through. But I'm always eager to collaborate with people doing this work. So Mike, thank you for being here, and we're really excited to have you here and to kind of share some of the journey that you've been on. So thank you. Thank you guys. I feel the same way. I feel like we've developed a relationship in two and a half years, that I consider you as a friend as well as well as a colleague. So I need to come visit you in Vermont soon, because it's beautiful area. I do want to let people know if you're watching live, and I know we've got a number of people that are watching live. Let us know in the chat who you are and where you're from. It's always fun to see where people are joining us from and who's on you know, we tend to get a lot of people that you know, kind of episode after episode are here with us, and it's always great to see the familiar names. We also, believe it or not, we get people from all over the world. So, you know, when we do these events, we get people from Australia, New Zealand, the UK. And it's always fun to see where people are. I in fact, we have the people so often that I know the time zones a little bit, and I'm like, oh, okay, like, it's 730 something in the morning in Australia. So it's already tomorrow there. So anyway, if you're here with us, live, let us know in the chat who you are and where you're from. Would love to know who's joining us here today. So Mike, we're gonna have a conversation, but I just want to kind of start with how we kind of became connected. And want to talk about kind of your work, your journey, the things that you've been doing, really, over the couple of years that we've known each other. But of course, you have a career that spans far longer than that, which has certainly probably influenced, you know, the work that you've done. But you know, I guess we got to know each other, because going back a few years ago, there were concerns being raised. And in fact, I was trying to think about how Harwood first kind of got on my radar, and I think it was, there was a board meeting that the issue of prone restraint and seclusion was being raised. And this was actually before you had started with the district. I think there was a current superintendent who, I think at that time was was planning to leave, and you hadn't started yet, as I recall, but there was some discussion about prone restraint and seclusion, and that got on my radar. And educator in the area that I connected with at some point as well, but there were some concerns being raised in the community, so I. My recollection, and you're going to help me with dates here, but I want to say that was around the May time frame, and I think you started a few months later, if I recall, in the district. So this is always fun, right? You're coming into a new position, and there's something brewing that is going to be something you're going to need to work with. So how did you first become aware, as you were coming into Harwood, how did you first become aware that the issue of seclusion and restraint was kind of on the radar there? Well, guy, I don't think we ever talked about this level of detail, but I'll give you a little background, because it's actually an interesting story. I decided that I was retiring from Pennsylvania and we wanted to move To Vermont in the fall of 2021 so I researched schools. I researched other jobs too, consulting jobs, jobs with state agency, with some non profits University. And I decided I wanted to stay a superintendent, because I believe in the work we do. So I interviewed in Harwood starting early January. I was hired in February to begin July 1, 2022 so after that point in time, I started watching board meetings as a good superintendent does, just to understand the culture. And I was literally in my family room in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, watching the April and I can't remember the date, but it was April 2022, watching the board meeting, and at the beginning there were citizen comments. And the educator you referenced community member spoke up and said he was concerned with the number of total number of restraints, use of seclusion and particularly prone restraints, in the district, and cited numbers for previous years that in some cases exceeded 300 a year. Now this for some other contexts, the school district Graham now has 1700 students, K through 12. We also have pre kindergarten. So when you include those students in it's about 1850 the district I was coming from was in a geographically smaller area, but had a population three times the size. So I was very familiar with restraint and seclusion. I worked with the special education director in Lancaster, who had strong belief that we needed to reduce those numbers, starting around 2011 when US Department of Education, and I think I'm right, on that year when they started highlighting some of the concerns nationwide. So we had done work in my previous district on restraint, but I think a key point was in Pennsylvania, prone supine restraint is not permitted in public schools. So when this community member brought that point up, I about fell off my chair that that prone restraints were something that were permitted because Vermont's a very progressive state. It really surprised me, and the numbers also surprised me. So I texted my current special ed director and said, What can you tell me about prone restraints still being permitted. It was something that I was not connected with. So that's how I learned about it. I contacted the the superintendent at the time to discuss that issue, and at that point in time, I knew that, in essence, the the early honeymoon was over, because there was some really serious work to be done. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And absolutely. And, you know, I often when I think about restraints, seclusion, there are a lot of in fact, even at a higher level, you know, as you talk about being a superintendent, one of the things I think is having attended a number of board meetings, you know, in not only my home district, but across the country virtually as well. I always think to myself, Wow, being a superintendent is a really tough job. There are a lot of people coming to you with a lot of concerns about a lot of issues. And, you know, I've often thought to myself, even the Board of Education. I mean, that can be a really tough place to be as well. But nonetheless. I mean, you know, when you think about policies. And certainly that's a big, a big part of what a board does, looks at policies, looks at budget, things like that. When you think about policies, there are very few policies in a school that can result in death, right? There are very few policies that, you know, if things aren't going well, that can have such a major impact. So, you know, I always think about restraint and seclusion in this context, it's a really serious issue. And when people begin talking about it, if, if issues like this come up, there's, there's a lot of, obviously, there's a lot of concern, a lot of passion and a lot of push, you know, to bring about change. And it's funny, as you were walking through that, I was remembering one of the first times you and I talked and kind of both had the same response, you know, as you probably know, I mean, there are many states around the country that have prohibited the use of prone restraint, and this is not universal. We don't have federal law here. But. Yeah, I was actually very surprised that, you know, Vermont was not one of those states that had already been permanent strain at the time. I want to say it was like 37 states had. So, you know, I wouldn't have suspected that, you know, Vermont would have been on that list. But of course, California, at the time was on that list as well. So, you know, sometimes these things do surprise you. So at any rate, you know you're, you're coming in. This issue is has arisen. It's interesting. You were talking about kind of going back, because it was, it was 2009 that the GAO, the Government Accountability Office, put out their, one of their, their really big reports, which was a evaluation and look at restraint, seclusion. And that report that was titled seclusion, restraint selected instances of death and abuse in public and abuse in public and private schools and treatment centers. That report really began a lot of dialog around this, and in fact, there was an initial effort to pass federal law following that report. That report highlighted hundreds of instances of potential death and abuse due to the use of seclusion and restraint. And it was a couple years later, I think, you know, they tried, in 2009 to get a piece of federal law. Moving forward, it made some progress, and then then stopped, as these things sometimes do. And I think in 2012 then the Department of Education began putting out more guidance around restraint and seclusion. And I think part of the the thought was, you know, and I don't want to speak for the people in that room, although we've had an opportunity to meet with some of them at one point, but you know, I think it was guidance, and it was guidance intended to maybe help states think about how to look at these things. So they came up with their their 15 principles, you know, talking about how, you know, these things should be only used in certain situations and and in fact, they even in that that early document had talked about prone and supine restraint and talked about, you know, restraints that could potentially affect breathing, and recommended against using those. And what happened at that point is that states slowly began, you know, updating policies and bringing in new laws. But it happened very unevenly, and it didn't happen everywhere. I mean, there were some states were very slow. So, you know, there's absolutely a lot of history there. So I can imagine, you know, kind of that initial coming onto your radar, you know, following, you know, the GAO report, and there were some news, in fact, Connecticut. I mean, there were a number of serious stories that came out of Connecticut regarding things like restraint and seclusion. So here you are getting ready to go into a new district already knowing there's going to be some, some things that are going to be on your plate in terms of, you know, you know, policies and issues to look at. And, of course, it's, it's, it's a big one. It's one that I think is really significant. So, you know, as you came in and you kind of had a little bit of background, you know, I know there was some thought, and I remember watching some some board meetings, but it's been so long that your memory is probably far better than mine. But there were some board meetings and discussions about, kind of what to do about it. About, as I recall, that was there a committee or something that might have been formed as well. Tell us a little bit about the kind of the beginning of this, sure. Well, well, at the time in April, when I mentioned speaking to my at that time, current special ed director, when I said, Well, it's per minute in Vermont, and they use it in the district where I'm going, her immediate comment, without missing a beat, was, Mike, you got to stop it. You can't continue with prone restraint. That's just unheard of. And this is only a year and a half after the George Floyd killing. So this was very, very much in my mind at the time, and I knew the dangers of prone restraints, so I started in July. I met with the person who who brought the concerns forward, very, very brave on his part to speak out at that point, he was working in the school district, so I spoke with him, met with him. I met with principals. I met with people in the community. In Vermont, we have a citizen legislature, so it's a part time legislature, and the there was particular school that was of concern for their numbers, and she was the representative for that community. I met with her. She had a background in mental health, so I just gathered a lot of information. I had a very supportive school board who this was a very serious concern to them as well. And I after processing this through, after meeting with our schools attorney, I approached the board chair and vice chair and said, I think we need to put a moratorium on the use of prone restraint. So we did that in August. If you, if you do a Google search on myself and Harwood, and you'll probably find that if someone wants to reach out through you, guy, I'm happy to give them some more information on this, but we instituted that, but I also knew we needed more work and training, because teachers want to do the right thing. This was not a fault on the part of the teachers and what also. Made this somewhat of an unusual circumstance, is rather than totally relying on our own staff for support for students who may have had needs that required a higher level of intensity, we have a unique relationship, where we would contract and still do, in some cases, with outside mental health agencies. So in this case, the county mental health agency. And one of the other issues that I've learned is that they that agency used one program Handle with care, and our school district used CPI training. So there was this piece and kind of the struggle with who's responsible from there, when there's a high need of a student who may need either de escalation, or, in the worst case scenario, some level of restraint. So that was one of those other pieces too. But again, being a small state, the state where I am now Vermont, has 650,000 residents, which was about the size of just the county that I used to live in, we don't have the same level of educational resources and supports that a larger area does because of our morality and some of those other challenges. So I reached out to a person that I had worked with who worked for our Intermediate Unit, some people, some states called them BOCES, but she was a behavior support specialist, did a number of jobs. Was one of the best professionals I ever worked with. Her name is Diane Carrera, and she happened to, at that time, have retired and moved to Massachusetts. She's worked in various states, including Vermont earlier in her career, so the board supported me in contracting with her to consult, but also do trainings with our staff to to improve the level of services and to reduce our use of restraint overall. So you you initially, you know, not long after getting there and kind of getting in a good assessment, you know, probably with the words of your previous colleague in your mind as well, you pretty quickly put this idea of, Okay, we're gonna stop doing prone restraint right now and put that moratorium in effect. Did you get at that point a lot of concern or pushback around this? You know? I mean, one of the things that we often see, and of course, you know you, you know you were taking some action, but of course, you know there's a bigger policy question that has to work its way through as well. And I actually really appreciate that you, you took that action, not just, you know, kind of waiting for all of this to kind of work forward, but you know, often when, when you know these changes are proposed, there's, there's a lot of concern and pushback, and people's, well, you know, if we, if we don't have that in our toolbox, or we can't do that, x will happen, or we'll have to send kids the more restrictive settings all these so talk to me a little bit about that, as you first put that moratorium in effect. You know, were you, were you hearing concerns and pushback? And again, I mean, some, some may be very valid concerns, right? You know, there's concerns about, you know, we hear things about staffing now, of course, that shouldn't be a reason that we're restraining kids. But nonetheless, I mean, some of these concerns can be really valid and important in influencing what people think. What was your experience in that kind of early phase of things? There was concern. And it really wasn't about controlling kids or other things that you may think would come up, but it was really about we're talking about a systemic change. We're talking about changing a mindset, and how do we do that very quickly, without having the supports and training in place? So that's why we moved pretty quickly on reaching out with Diane. We had some people internally who could also do some of that training. I started alongside of John Berliner, who's now our special ed director. He came in at the same point, and interestingly enough, and I'm not sharing anything out of turn, he shared this publicly in a public meeting, but he was a behavior interventionist before he was a special education teacher, and was in the situation where he had to perform restraints on students and had his own trauma experiences and physical physical challenges. As a result of that, he was injured. So he was coming into it with, we need to do something different as well. So he had those boots on the ground type of experiences that and credibility of having lived through a circumstance where he knew that restraint needed to be reduced in our district. And I also want to point out in the previous year that I before I came when this was brought to light, I think there were about five prone restraints. So that was part of the piece, but a larger part of the piece is what I consider to be the overuse of other types of restraint in our school. So it was almost a two pronged approach, and then there was also the concern with seclusions and. Something else that we could talk about later, but, but there were multiple pieces to the puzzle. I think we allayed those concerns just because of experiences and because also there again, there was one school that was brought to light, and those teachers want to be doing the right thing right. So they knew that they they instinctively knew that they needed to do things differently. And I also think it's important to note that the teachers in most of the cases were not the ones who were performing the restraints. It was the outside agency. So part of that piece was, how do we collaborate with an outside agency to improve those numbers as well, and how do we put in essentially, de escalation training so that we can work with the students where they are at the time without moving to that most restrictive form of intervention, right, right? Yeah, you mentioned a couple of things there that really kind of jumped out at me. I mean, in one, talking about John's, you know, experience, you know. And this is stuff when we talk about a lot. I mean, first of all, you know, nobody becomes an educator because they want to restrain or secluded kid, right? That's, you know, we're talking about a profession where people become educators because they want to help kids. Not to say there's never any chance of a bad player out there, but by and large, you know, when we're talking about educators, no, but nobody wants to do that. And the other thing that you said was that these things really are traumatic for the staff. There is nothing at all pleasant about, you know, being in a position where you think you need to use a physical restraint, and you use a physical restraint, you know, that can be a situation where staff are more likely to get injured, but, but, but that trauma can be very real for the staff member as well. And one of the things that we talk about quite a bit is kind of what I call, kind of the, you know, the trauma cycle that can happen related to physical restraint and seclusion. And that is that, you know, we already know that the people that are more likely to find themselves being restrained excluded often already have a trauma background. These, these are often, neurodivergent kids, kids with disabilities, kids that may have experienced other types of trauma. And we know that trauma changes the brain. We know that trauma leads to individuals that are more likely to be hyper vigilant, more likely to have kind of stress related behaviors. And very often, we see the cycle where, you know, when these things are being done to kids, they're further traumatizing them, further leading to more behavior, not less behavior. But we see that trauma cycle also holds true with staff like and, you know, I don't know if you've had experiences like this. I mean, we don't have to dig into specifics, but where sometimes a staff member that might be doing these things more, they continue to do them more because they don't feel safe, you know. And when a staff member doesn't feel safe, they're more likely to go into a hands on intervention, perhaps, before that should really happen. And you know, that cycle just kind of feeds itself. And in their cases that we see, you know, things like this that happen around the country where, you know, you'll find it repeatedly happening to a kid. And you know, of course, you know, the Office of Civil Rights is kind of weighed in on that and said, you know, like, if you're doing this repeatedly, it's a failure. We need to figure out what's going on and how to meet those children's needs. But you know, sure, the matter is, these things really are traumatic. And you know, again, it's not just one side that's traumatic on kids, but it's dramatic for staff as well. So anything we can do to reduce, you know, is certainly work worth doing, right, right? Yeah, so, and that's some of the that's what we found, that once you move to that approach, unless you have really good procedures in place, really good evaluation and then support and looking at what the needs of the child are and how you have to adjust your approach that you will continue to go down. And that's the data we looked at with the with the explaining this to the public was very difficult, because they had the thinking that we had teachers just restraining students, but when we looked at the total number, it was pretty shocking. In fact, I was just looking, am I able to present? Because what I did, you should be able to if you go down to the present option, down in the middle, you'll have a couple options. And what you can choose is share screen. And if you choose Share Screen, it might pop up a thing to ask you for permission. And if it does, tell it Yes, and then it should give you a screen that says, screen sharing works both best with multiple screens. If you hit okay, it should show you an option of things you can share. And if you click on one of those and hit Share, hopefully we'll see it okay. So what I am sure, and I just okay, I'm going to bring it up, but now and share it. Okay, perfect. Yep, okay, I had so any in Vermont restraints, seclusion is covered by a rule 4500 which defines what we can and can't do and what the reporting is. So I review now every single restraint that occurs, and this is just a history. Be from the beginning of the school year through today, of our use of restraint and seclusion, and then the number of students involved. So what was striking to me and back in the 2021 2022 school year, which is when this was first brought up, I think at the end of the year, the total use of restraint was somewhere in the neighborhood of 130 restraints that year. But what this shows me is that we have about the same number of students who who have those concerns. But to your point you made during that time, during this time period, in the 2021 2022 school year, there were seven students with 86 restraints, wow. And so something's not working. Our numbers came down as a result of the work we've done. We're still looking at about the same number of students. I think even this year, 11 is too high. But I am far more, I am less alarmed with that number than I was looking at seven students with 86 restraints total, right, right, right, yeah. I mean, I mean, and that's significant progress. Significant progress. Yeah, absolutely. So let me, let me back up for a second. And you know, at some point we went from kind of your initial prohibition on prone restraint, but it got broader than that, and you know, you were looking to eliminate the use of seclusion as well. Tell me a little bit more about how kind of that came to be, how things began to shift from just this concern around prone restraint, but also, you know, seclusion and reducing restraint overall. What were the catalysts for that? So for the seclusion piece, that's something I had no experience with. Seclusion was not permitted. We did not use it in my previous school. What complicated it in Vermont is just to remind everyone that the time period we're discussing occurred during COVID. So there was guidance from the Vermont agency of education, which oversees the process, saying that in cases during in cases where restraint may be needed, seclusion was the preferred option, which doesn't necessarily make sense to me. I understand whether that guidance was really concerning when it came out, well and for a lot of reasons, because seclusion is involuntary confinement, right? How do you get someone to a seclusion room involuntarily? You restrain them. I mean, that's what happens in practice, kids are restrained and then put into seclusion first. It's not an either or. It's often a both, but, but even to say one is preferable to the other, we've actually had even, even entire state agencies that have somehow can't come to believe that like seclusion is It's better. It's better to put a kid in seclusion than to restrain them. Yeah. Anyway, I'm the aiming to catch off, but that, when that came out, I just almost blew a head gasket. I was like, What are they saying? This didn't make sense to me, right? I can, in a kind of strange way, I can understand where the logic came from, right? But in a practical educational manner, it just, it's nonsensical. Yeah, and, you know, for our sake, you know, I, you know, we had, you know, kind of gotten some awareness of what was going on with the situation there. And the, the educator you mentioned, Brian, Brian delamer, who has actually written a couple articles for us as well. You know, Brian had reached out to me, and we had a couple conversations, and we publish a couple pieces as well. And, and kind of, you know, from at that point, kind of from the outside perspective, like, or would you should do something about this? You should eliminate seclusion, eliminate prone restrain. But at some point, you know, you and I connected, and I'm, I'm, I'm not even remembering the exact circumstances, but you and I connected for a phone call, and, you know, had a couple opportunities to chat. And you know, one I, you know, you know, I was really just pleased that you were willing to take a few minutes and chat with me. Because sometimes you might be in a position of a superintendent go this person from the alliance against seclusion restraint wants to talk to me, but you were, you were willing to have a conversation, a really honest conversation, and that kind of started the relationship that we had. Do you recall kind of some of that initial, I do okay and, and that was also at a time where we were looking for, we were looking for anyone who could help us, right? And I think I did some research, very brief research, before I called you back. And I think we're all looking at solution oriented approaches, and that's what's important. And I think, you know, you are about, not the gotcha, but the, how do we make this better for kids? That's right. That's right. So the, you know, the focus begins to also include. That overall idea of reducing restraint and eliminating seclusion and so. So where does that go with the board? So the board begins some discussion about this. And I know there were some meetings that this was, was a topic of discussion. Where do things go with the board? And I remember, actually, you know, kind of having some involvement talking to you when that situation was really active, but talk us through that a little bit, if you would, of kind of what the what came next, sure, and we live in a very progressive community. So I had a board who felt we needed to do something, and we do something yesterday. So I had a lot of support, and I had resources to be able to work with our staff and make those changes. And the board also really wanted to look at the policy. We used the model policy from the state. And the board felt very strongly that they wanted to just outright eliminate the use of prone to Pine restraint and seclusion and what? And that's that's also what led to my decision for a moratorium, because what I said to them is, you know, there's a lot of there's a lot of things to unwrap in this puzzle, and we know it's not the right thing to do, but before we enact a board policy, a formal policy, which has implications, legal implications, let's move to the route of putting a moratorium on this, and then let's, let's study this so you fully understand what the implications are, what the what the potential risks could be, even though, I think, educationally, morally, legally, that we needed to stop doing it. If you're in a state that says, yes, you can, and you're working with partners that have different methods, you have to understand what those risks are, because we live in a we live in a society where it's best to be informed on what you're going to do moving forward because of those legal ramifications. So the board put together a committee, and we had some really good board members. In fact, the there was one new board member and one fairly new board member who joined the committee, who are now our board chair and vice chair, and I think part of the reason our board eventually elected them in those positions because they provided a lot of strong leadership for our board at the time. So they we spent time. We examined the data, we shared the data of what we found for previous years, and that's something else we could talk about. Some of the challenges with that data. We also talked to various experts. We had advice from legal counsel and really looked at the policy for the first couple of months, and then my memory is not entirely clear on exactly when we started writing the new policy, but I think it was around the January time frame. So they started working on that new policy, sharing it with the board, and then adopted the policy in May, which effective immediately eliminated the use of restraint seclusion, I'm sorry, eliminated the use of prone restraint, and put an end date on seclusion, which was at the end of the following year. And there were some various reasons for that, and some advice that the board received. I'm happy to say that even though there was some criticism of keeping that seclusion piece opened a little longer, we were still committed to not using seclusion. And in fact, did not have any instances where we had a case of seclusion under Rule 4500 for for that school year. Yeah, and you and I talked a bit about that as well, and we were very supportive of what you were doing, and understood that need, kind of, that need to sunset, and, of course, at the end of the day, as you said, you ended up not even doing it at all in that year. And I absolutely understand the desire, like, let's get rid of this right now. But I think you, you know, ultimately, the board crafted a policy that was significant. And I think one of the things that's really interesting to me about it, and, you know, I sometimes use you as an example, and it's in a positive way, but I talk about the fact that, you know, people often will fall back on, well, this is what our state says. So this is what we have to do. And I always kind of come back to, and of course, there are attorneys that will say that as well. You know, I come back to the state is setting the floor here. You have to, you have to meet these standards, but if you are going to exceed these standards, if they say you can do this, but you decide that you're not going to do this, absolutely, that is a possibility. But there's, there's often that idea that you can't do that, that you can't have something that's different, and we're seeing it more and more. In fact, in Virginia, just about two weeks ago, another district in Virginia, you know, passed the prohibition on the use of seclusion. It is allowed at the state level. They're not the first one in Virginia to do that, but I think that's important, and I'm sure that that, in fact, I have some recollection of that being a little. Bit of a challenge for you. You know, what would your advice be to superintendents that might be in a similar position? Thinking about this, my advice is to do your research, but in the end, to go with what you think is best educationally. And in that case, I think the research is pretty clear on what's best educationally. There's various reasons in Vermont and you were involved in some of this. Our state representative, Teresa Wood, who I mentioned, introduced legislation to ban prone restraint, and unfortunately, that did not make it out of committee. But I still think in the end, we know that that's the right thing to do. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, you know, at the beginning of this year, kind of, I guess, on on his way out, the Secretary of Education, Cardona, put out some guidance around restraint and seclusion. And really, you know, took a deep dive into, you know, kind of the impact and the trauma. And it was, it was, you know, I think, the strongest guidance to date that we've gotten from that level. And, you know, again, I agree with you. I mean, just because you can doesn't mean you should, and, you know, it may be a little bit more difficult. So I want to talk a little bit more specifically. You mentioned Diane earlier, and Diane somebody that I've had the privilege of getting to know as well. And have, you know, actually interviewed Diane, and, you know, she wrote a book called the reset process, has done a lot of fantastic work, kind of, in the trauma informed and neuroscience, kind of a behavior space. Can you talk to me a little bit more you mentioned earlier? Kind of, you know, reaching out and dying coming into the district, but talk to me a little bit more about that work. You know, what it looked like and and, you know, again, change is difficult. So, you know, as you're bringing in, and this is, this is a really important thing that I think that you did that probably goes to a lot of success. You can't just say, don't do these things. You've got to say. And here are things that we can do instead, and here's a different way of doing things. So can you tell me a little bit more about the work that Diane did and what she brought into the district and how that was received? Well, we brought that in immediately, but we also our district, we have an early November full day staff development for pre K to 12 teachers. So one of the pieces that we wanted to lay out was the why. So why is this important work, and why do we need to re examine our practices? And Diane did a really good job bringing that trauma informed lens of the harm it does to children long term, and went through a really good presentation for, you know, kindergarten teachers, teachers of special ed, high school, you know, high school, English teachers, phys ed teachers of the whole process. And I also have learned from being a superintendent that no matter who you put in front of a professional development session, they number one, have to have to have credibility, and they also have to understand what it's like to be in the classroom and some of the challenges. And Diane met all those criteria, and she's just a very warm and caring person, very passionate person, but also extremely knowledgeable. I worked with her when I was I first connected with Diane when I was a middle school principal, and she worked with us when we had a student, probably one of the most challenging students in my 34 year career at this point, and she came in and brought insights to our team, child centered insights that really transformed how we worked with that with that student. So she didn't come in and tell us what we had to do. She just came in with the approach of, here's what I'm going to share with you. Here's some other things to consider, and let's talk about this as a team. And that's how she did this with a large group. So we had a large group session, which, as any teacher who's watching, or anyone who's been in the classroom, knows that one person talking in front of you know, however, 100, 200 300 faculty members is not always the best approach, right? So we paired that then with some smaller workshops in the afternoon that really targeted the audience. And then we brought her back into the school that had particular concerns, and she focused that conversation number one with a smaller group who really worked with our students, our students who had needs that that may result in restraint. And then she worked with the larger faculty on the reset process, and different pieces in her reset process research based that they could implement immediately. And then we brought her back in a number of times with with that group, and then some other smaller groups to take a look at what's the next step? What questions do you have? How do you take this information and make it applicable to the students you're working with right now? So that was a piece. We also brought her into our. There schools that may not have been experiencing the same level of difficulty, but how can we look at what we're doing in those settings differently to really focus on student need? And I think the fact that we were also at the kind of the tail end of COVID and some of the challenges that all students were experiencing there, was transferable skills to other pieces. And she made that very clear, that and she gave very practical pieces of advice for classroom teachers. And she said, you may not ever have a need for restraint, but you do have the need to work with students who have challenges, who may actually benefit from some of the strategies we're using, de escalation strategies. So she gave very practical tips, very practical advice, and we still continue to have a relationship with her. One of the other pieces that grew out of this, again, because we are a small state, we don't have the same level of resources, professional resources in our schools, and we're in a state where we really try to emphasize keeping students in their home school mainstreamed with other students. Sometimes there's, I found there's a reluctance to say, you know, we really need to consider a different kind of placement for the student. So we worked on a program that we have at one of our elementary schools now, which is that next level, when you're looking at the least restrictive environment, if a student needs that next level of support, a smaller, more inclusive classroom, then this is the kind of program. We call it rivers, which, if you think of the thought of a flowing river and kind of the velocity and how it moves and how it changes, that's kind of why we chose the name, because you have to meet the different needs of students. But she helped establish that program. We have an excellent teacher that we hired who has some experiences with students with histories of trauma, neuro diversion, students who need a little extra support. So we've established that, and have made some really good progress with that program. This year, one of our first bits of advice is be very specific, and in your first year, do not exceed a small number a handful of students, do not exceed three or four students in that classroom, until you establish that program and make it successful. So we have, think we've had some success with that program, and we hope to again. We don't want to expand it in terms of numbers, but we want to expand it in terms of quality and how it serves students that may have that higher level needs. So she's been involved with that process as well. So it's been multifaceted, depending on the need, but I think we've tried to bring a different lens to the work we're doing with students. Yeah, no, that's great. And I shared a link to Diane's book here in the chat as well. You know, kind of thinking back to that change again, I've often said, and not to say that this is the rule here, but I mean, you know, change is hard, and it can take a few years to kind of go from the beginning of something to really getting to where you want to be. And even looking at your data, it's like there's a progression, right? And you're looking at the data, and it's so far better than where it started. But as I heard from you, like, you know, we still want it to be better, right? But that process of change can be really difficult. And of course, bringing in Diane, having training, you know, certainly a good step. But anytime you you propose changes, there are some people that are ready to jump on board, some people that are resistant, and a lot of people that kind of wait to see how things are heading and where things are going, having, you know, a training again. You know, great, great step. Were there other things that you did to kind of get people on board and to to, to, you know, I mean, even, even feeling heard, I guess is important for people is they're, you know, kind of looking at things that are going to change. And it can be a frightening time. I mean, you know, I have worked with districts that have, you know, for instance, come under investigation for their use of restraints seclusion. And suddenly, you know, they know changes are coming. They don't know what you know. And even as things get in the news, you know, you might be an educator trying to support kids, but suddenly feel like, oh gosh, you know, like people think that we're terrible people, or that we're harming people. What other things that you do to try to, you know, one reassure educators and help bring them on board, to get them kind of really moving in this direction of change. I just also think that that support is a piece of that we really tried to, kind of like you did with us, that this is not about a gotcha. This is about a what do you need? How can we be supportive? And I think once teachers understood that, that we were looking to support, especially coming out of. Very difficult time for education in general. Yeah, I think there was a greater comfort that we're not looking to to discipline, punish, hurt adults or kids. We're looking to say, what are those pieces that we don't have in place? What do we need to do, and what resources do we need to provide for you? Right? Right? And I think that's been a big that was a big piece of people accepting that change and also being a part of that is also an important part. Yeah, you know, it brings me back to the the quote that's in almost every presentation I ever give, which is the Maya Angelou quote, right? It's the do the best you can until you know better than when you know better, do better. You know, none of this is about judging, but it's about, you know, are there opportunities to know better? Can we do better? And, you know, I think when it comes to, you know, supporting children, you know, it shouldn't only be aspirational. I mean, we really should be driven by that. You know, let's do better and, and ultimately, I mean, again, I'm a big proponent of the fact that I think that, and I'm going to ask you a question in this vein in this vein in a second, but I think that the same things that you can do to improve the outcomes for kids very often can result in better outcomes for everybody. And it can be hard to see when you feel like you're in the middle of a fire and things are really difficult. But ultimately, I think there's a lot of benefit to doing the things that you've you've done here. Well, I think back to my first year as a teacher, and what I did as a first year teacher just because I didn't know, I didn't have the experience, I didn't have the training. And I I think every year that we're in the profession, we try to be better at what we do. Yeah, sometimes we're successful. Sometimes we make a bigger jump than another years, but I think we're always trying to do something better the next year? Yeah, no, I hear you. So let's talk about, you know, a few years out from when this all started, and knowing that again, you know, it's all about kind of continuing to strive to do better. And you know, I know you've been involved kind of at state level, you know, talks here as well. But, but can you talk to me a little bit about, you know, what are some of the benefits you've seen so, you know, kind of coming out of this, and, you know, bringing in the training that you brought in, and, you know, making some changes to help support this work. What are some of the benefits that you've seen in terms of, you know, the staff, in terms of, you know, the school, the students, the leadership. Could you tell me a little bit about kind of what positive things have come out of this well, and some of this is just from talking to teachers and principals in schools that were more heavily impacted, just the overall climate, I'm told, has changed. I do not have the benefit of having seen that during the periods of higher use of restraint, but I can say that that from what I'm told, there's a more a more relaxed and confident feel in some one building in particular, but just other pieces, I would say we still rely on outside agencies, not to the same degree, and we've tried to pull that back, but again, we're in an kind of under resourced area, and I think our relationships have improved, and our training and our collaboration has improved. As a result of that, we have much clearer definitions of who should be taking the lead in certain situations. I think a lot of times, if you don't have the training, even though you may be the teacher in the classroom or the principal, if you don't have the training and knowledge and confidence, sometimes you'll let other people lead. As educators, it's our school, it's our program, it's our students. We need to be the one taking the lead. So the school that I'm speaking about, elementary school in Waterbury, there was that first year, especially, I had principals were going through a training that they would be out of the building for a day. So I committed to being the substitute principal for the day. So I had the ability to kind of visit the observe, but also to observe work with the students. And there was one student in particular who was having a challenging day, and I was the person with the teacher and a paraprofessional who stood in and help the student to de escalate. And I was told afterwards that that circumstance, they would have probably moved to a restraint, and that was a case where we did not have to there's a lot of challenges, a lot of emotion for that student, but we were able to use those skills that we've learned to help de escalate that particular child and and in a situation where that child was back in the classroom and restraint was not needed. So it takes patience. It takes some time. It takes some understanding and need of this, in need of what is, what. Is useful in that particular situation. But I I just, I think that sense of patience and concern has has come down a little bit since, since I entered the school district. That's great. So I'm going to ask you now the opposite question. Sometimes we hear when, when the topic of eliminating prone restraint or the topic of eliminating seclusion come up, sometimes we hear all the terrible things that are going to happen as a result of getting rid of these things. Now I happen not to generally believe that that's true, but I could ask you the question anyway, what terrible things happen when you got rid of seclusion and prone restraint? Nothing? Okay, you know, we had, we hadn't talked about that question. But I'm glad the answer went the way I was hoping it would go. But, yeah, that's great. I mean, you had no ill effects. You've had no, you know, increases in other things that are concerning, or, you know, other, you know, incidental side effects from from doing this? No, and I would say too, though, that our problems disappear. The challenges in the the complexities that students are coming into school with, it have not gone away. Right? What it's required us to do is to think differently. Sometimes we've been successful. Sometimes we have not. It has forced us, in a good way, forced in a good way, to look at what resources we do need to properly serve students. And I think that's also an important part of this journey that we're on. In the resource vein, you know, you set the stage for kind of talking about, you know, being a smaller district without as many resources and and honestly, what's interesting to me is, if you look at these issues, you know, restraints, inclusion, for example, we often find it's smaller districts that are that are really struggling with these things. And that's, that's that's often what you hear. It's, well, we don't have the resources. We don't have the resources of this district over here. So, you know, we can't, we can't necessarily entertain the idea of, of prohibiting this or, you know, changing our policy here, any any advice that you would have for, you know, other small districts that may not have the resources, in terms of the journey that you've had, anything you might share with them to help, kind of in thinking about that resource issue, what I found is that there are people who want to help. So there's a superintendent, principals have networks in their region in the state. And I think if you look and are creative in the solutions that you will find people who will contribute, whether it's financially, we haven't had that need, but their own expertise. For example, when this came to light in our community, there was a person who is a psychologist by training, who has private practice, who reached out and said, Hey, I'd like to have a conversation. This is something that I think, this is work that your school is doing that's important. We need to do things differently. Let's sit down and have a conversation. And I'm willing to help as a resource or just a, you know, informal consultant. So I think being honest about where you are, trying not to be defensive about what you've experienced, and looking in ways to move forward that build on those community resources, I think you find that there's a lot of people out there who want to do the right thing and want to help or they can, yeah, yeah, no, I hear you, you know. And you know, organizationally, you know, that's one of our hopes as well, you know. You know, as we talked about earlier, you know, we, we've worked, you know, we've worked with you. We work with other leadership teams and schools across the country, and we've reached out, we've sent letters, we've done other things to try to offer support. And, you know, certainly there have been some really positive examples of that. And I always think about you when I think about this, because I felt like we had a really positive relationship. We talked about quite a bit of this is, is, you know, you were, you know, looking at policy changes and other things, and always very receptive. But there are others that are just not, you know, they probably see alliance against inclusion restraint. They don't take the few minutes that you took to go do some due diligence and figure out who we were. And I'm just kind of curious. I mean, you know, we're always reaching out, and we always want to help. Would you have any advice for a superintendent that got a letter from the Alliance or maybe hasn't, but is interested in reaching out, you know, any advice for that? The advice is just to be honest and say, this is, this is where we are right now, and this is where I see that we need to go. And can you brainstorm some ways to get there? And that's. You and I did, we talked about some things, I think at points. We didn't always necessarily agree on the immediate next step, but we always agreed on where we should be five steps from there and then we could find a way to to get there. Yeah, I think that's true in this case, or any case involving education, or you pick the area, that's how you do it. Your idea isn't necessarily the best idea, right? You being me, where you get the best idea is talking to 1234, people, problem solving, and then coming up with a solution. And it can't be about you individually. It has to be about what's the end goal, what's best for kids, and how can we get there, in a way that is, that is that works within the constraints we have, whatever that system is, right, right? Well, in fact, I remember you and I talking about the idea of sun setting, because our district, our local district, you know, which is where my journey began. That was one of the things that we ended up doing. We put into effect the policy that would sunset seclusion. And while, you know, in all honesty, at the moment we put that policy in effect, I would have far preferred the policy that ended at that moment in time. But I think as an option, it was a good option, and one that got us moving in the right direction. So I think by having those conversations, listening to other ideas, listening to perspectives for things that might be happening elsewhere, sometimes those ideas come and it can lead to a solution. And you know, I think it's important in that case, with the administrative procedure that we put together, required that if there was a request for seclusion, that it had to come with medical documentation, and it had to be approved by the superintendent, so we put some checks in place that and we just didn't have that need. But it was, it was some people, again, it was some people who were concerned, who had honest fears, but fears that many of us believe probably would not need to move to that extreme kind of intervention. Yeah, yeah. So talk to me about the at the state level. So you have Rule four to 500 which to date, still allows prone restraint and seclusion. You, of course, have put a policy in effect that you know does not I know that you've had some involvement at the state level as well. Can you talk to me a little bit about that? And you know what your hopes might be in terms of seeing changes happen at the state level as well. In the meantime, between restraint, seclusion and today, the initial concerns, Vermont has gone through a huge concern with funding. It's the part of the commission I'm on right now of how we fund our schools, property tax. Property taxes on a pretty considerably last year. We're a smaller state that's residential and tourist based. We don't have a huge commercial, industrial tax base. So that issue has kind of supplanted other more pressing educational issues, in my opinion, but at the same time, it's still on the table. I would say the biggest disagreement is from some educators who've seen that we can do things differently, versus people who work in the outside mental health realm. I think just the fact that you have, you have agencies using one form of intervention versus another kind kind of tells you that there's, there's philosophical differences. So I think we've done we've had some conversations to try to move closer together in those areas. And as I said, our local state representative is also the chair of the House Human Services Committee, so I think she has some ideas of how to move through again, rather than going to the the immediate ban of seclusion, prone supply and restraint, of how to get there in a stepped process, and we're in conversations with with how we could make some headway in that area. So it's actually a lesson you taught me earlier on. Sometimes, when you can't take that huge step, some smaller baby steps will may eventually get you there, because people realize that you can make change without the horror stories that I think people dream up, right, right, right. And it is frustrating sometimes, because you want it to come sooner. You know that it can come sooner. You know the legislative process was nothing I had any experience with until these you know, this came into my life, and I began working at the local level, state level, the federal level. And, you know, I've got my own impatience with how long it takes to get those things moving, but at the same time, I'd rather see some progress than no progress. And sometimes, you know, sometimes legislative change is incremental. Right? And, you know, rather than continuing to push for, you know, the same thing over and over again and not be able to move forward, sometimes taking a step can be a step in the right direction. And you know, these things can impact lives. So I mean, when you're able to make a change at you know, I was, I would say, you know, people you know, will say, Well, what about changing this level or that level? Change it at any level you can, you know, if you can change it in a classroom, change it in that classroom, you can change it in a school, change it in that school, you can change it in a district. And I think about, you know, the number of children, families and educators that are in a better position because of those changes. You know, wherever you're able to hold that influence, I think it's so important to do that. We're getting near the end of our time here. This goes by quickly, but I want to give a chance here, because I've been monopolizing all your time. If anybody here that's watching live has any questions or comments, feel free to put those in the chat, and we'll try to get to a couple of them before we wrap up here. If there are any questions that come in. But I have just kind of a couple more things I wanted to talk to you about, as we kind of wrap up here. One, I'm going to go back to, kind of this idea of, you know, superintendent to Superintendent. So, you know, I've not walked in your shoes. I've not and I told you before, I actually have a bit of a lot of respect. And, you know, I look at a job like a superintendent job, and think, Ooh, that looks like because you get it from all angles sometimes, in terms of, you know, trying to, trying to run a school, do the best thing. And everybody has their their unique concerns, but as a superintendent, you know, speaking to other, you know, school leaders and superintendents out there. You know, this is an issue, again, that I think is very important, but sometimes it's not even on somebody's radar. Or, you know, they know that these things happen, but, you know, kind of the way it's got to be right. Do you have any advice for somebody out there that might be kind of in your shoes, and, you know, maybe they have some issues with restraint and seclusion happening in their district. You know, what? What advice might you offer to somebody that is, you know, kind of walking in the journey you're in. I would just say in, I think I mentioned it in some way, when you, when you're a superintendent, you have a network of people who are in your in the same shoes that you're in. So I think we all have people that we trust, that that we know have expertise in certain areas. And I would say, if you're a superintendent, reach out to someone that you trust who's also a superintendent and talk through that process. I've been fortunate, just because of the experience we've had here, to have a couple of people reach out to us. We've had some conversations of how to make changes in your school and your particular context. So I think that's an important piece of it. And I also think it's important too that that when you're dealing with those challenges, if it is something that's very public, like ours, was is to acknowledge that we want to do better. And I think that's also an important part of that process, professionally and personally that that, I think when people see that you're open and honest, that they're more willing to extend some grace to make those changes happen and give that support in the process. You know, I always think about you as a really good example of that, of that idea, you know, what I'll tell you is having had the opportunity to, you know, in some way, you know, work across the country with, with various situations and schools and districts. You know, there are, you know, your your approach to that, I think, is really important. And you know, what I'll say is that there are a lot of places where, when these things become issues, you kind of see the the wagon circling and going into protective mode, and, you know, not, not acknowledging kind of the issue or the desire to do something better and different, and that can be really difficult place for, you know, those that are advocating for change. And you know, it's funny, because, you know, you know, I think you probably know this, but in the work that we do, we've got a lot of people in our community. We've got a lot of parents and caregivers, but we have a lot of teachers, administrators, related professionals. We've got a really broad community, because our ideas here, like, how do we do better for everybody? Right? How can we come together and do better? This isn't just about being critical and saying you're doing all these things wrong, but you know, still there can be resistance. But you know, we always believe that, you know. Even if a family comes to us and they're having an issue like we start out with, can we collaborate? Can we work together? Can we, can we offer some ideas here? Can we, you know, bring in, you know, can we make some suggestions? But again, not, not everyone is is open to that. And you know, I think that especially if you've got families or others that you know. And again, they may have been through things that are very difficult. They may be very upset, but if you can clear the table for collaborating, there's such better outcomes that can come from it. And you know, rather than, I mean, you know, let's face it, when things escalate then, okay, well, now we have complaints that are filed, or federal complaints, or attorneys or other things. I think that that importance of, you know, really, just trying for all parties to collaborate out of the box, is so important well. And I also think too, and I've just learned this from examples. I've been involved in all those kinds of circumstances I've had. I've been in two school districts where we've had complaints filed for various things. We've been in situations where we've had students with IEPs who parents bring in an advocate. And I think that's a good thing. I think sometimes you need a third party. A lot of times, what I've found, and I've been a superintendent for 16 years now, a lot of times, I've found that when an issue gets to me, things are pretty difficult, and you really are trying to manage that process, to bring resolution in a way that that you can come up with a win, win. In the end, it may not be everything you want, or we're envisioning. It may not be everything the parent wants, but having someone coming in with that outside perspective, neutral perspective, who isn't involved, I found is helpful. And I found that with with working with parents as a principal, that sometimes you you see your child in one way, and I also have, by the way, a child who's neuro diverse, you see your child in one way, and you see the solution in one way, and when you're bringing in a third party, sometimes they've had experiences that teach them that there's other ways to get to that same resolution. And I think parents in many cases, are open if it's someone who is who they perceive is on their side, saying, look what the school's telling you in that case is correct. Why don't we look at it in this way and try to resolve the situation in this perspective? We got to that solution faster when somebody from the outside is involved, whether it's an advocate or an attorney, right, right, right. Yeah, you know, I mean, and this is a discussion for a whole another day, but you know, the, you know, I wish we could re engineer some of the IEP process, because I think, unfortunately, it sometimes sets up somewhat of an adversarial process, and it shouldn't be. I mean, we should all really be around the table for the same purpose. But unfortunately, I think the process sometimes itself makes it a little bit more, you know, kind of kind of adversarial, and, you know, at the end of the day, when we're all able to kind of come together, work together, know that we're there to, you know, ultimately, you know, you know, support a child and, you know, improve outcomes, but, but it's hard. It's hard. I mean, I've been through, I've been through that, you know, myself, and been with many families that have gone through that as well, and had some really positive experiences. You know, I remember, in fact that, you know my son for the last four years, who actually went, we were in a non public but we still had the IEP process. And after many years of some really difficult meetings, we had this team that we were just all so aligned that the meetings were like pleasant, and they were, you know, that we would problem solve and work together. But, you know, it's a challenge. And I think, you know, realizing the humanity and everyone I think is important. And you know, again, you know, I mean, nobody's becoming a teacher, restraint and seclude. Nobody wants to not see your child to be successful. But at the same time, you know, there's all these different things out in the universe that may be affecting you know what's happening? You know, giving giving ourselves grace, giving each other, grace that's always worth doing, yeah, and I found the same thing I talked about from the parent perspective, but from the school perspective, I've changed my mind on the way we've approached situations and educational programming based on what I've learned through the process and just being open to listen. Yeah, yeah, that's great. Well, I think on that note, we will wrap up, because I promised you that I would have you out of here by 445 and we are just about there, so we will go ahead and wrap up, but I really appreciate you joining me for this time and and our hope here, when we do these is, you know, we get a number of people that watch these live, and we always encourage people share these. You know, I think that this is a really important one for for leadership and for people that might find themselves in a situation. Collaboration, where they're they're going through some of these things, and I really appreciate your, I mean, one, your collaboration, because I really do value, you know, the collaboration we had as you were going through this process. And, you know, I appreciate the changes that you've helped to bring about for your district and really make it a positive difference. So I want to thank you for being here today. Do you have any final word you want to leave us with as we we end today? No, I appreciate everyone who is watching and who's passionate about this topic, because it's it's important, especially with some of the challenges we're facing moving forward with with resources for schools, I think absolutely, we need to stay more in tune to this now than ever, absolutely well. Thank you so much on that note, we are going to let everybody go. I'm going to ask you to stick around for one minute, and then I will let you go as well. But I want to thank everybody for being here today, and we will see you again next time. Thanks, Mike, thank you. You.