E27 - Big 3 Briefing, Week 11 - Don Your Green-Tinted Glasses

See our Show Notes

[00:00:00] Christie Robertson: Welcome to Rainy Day Recess, a podcast about Seattle Public Schools and the forces that impact the district out in the world. I'm Christie Robertson.

[00:00:10] Megan Larkin: And I am Megan Larkin. This is Week 11 of the Big 3 Briefing series, where we're tracking bills in the Washington State legislature related to the key funding gaps for school districts across Washington: special education, student transportation, and MSOC – which stands for materials, supplies and operating costs. 

Christie, do you have your glasses?

[00:00:38] Christie Robertson: Oh, you mean the fancy green tinted glasses that everybody has to wear in Budget Land?

[00:00:43] Megan Larkin: Exactly.

[00:00:44] Christie Robertson: Everything looks different over here. The players, the timelines, the norms, the rules... And just when I was getting my orientation in Bill Land. Although they do have some parallels, which we will point out.

[00:00:58] Megan Larkin: They do have parallels.

Today we'll update you on our last two standing Big 3 bills, which are making their way through Bill Land. But our main focus will be making you comfortable in your green-tinted glasses while we take you on a tour of Budget Land, which has totally taken over the stage at this point.

We'll also highlight the bag of tricks that legislators will use to make you think that they're doing their constitutional duty and fully funding education, but they're not actually doing that.

[00:01:33] Christie Robertson: Your actions for this week... The main one is going to be just understanding the budget so that you understand the process and are able to discuss. And then in Bill Land, there's still a chance to email with members of the Appropriations committee, because they have not yet taken a vote on our last remaining big two bills.

Bill Land

Let's talk about Bill Land first. Let's do a recap.

[00:01:55] Megan Larkin: Okay, so, the budget is handled like other bills are handled. So we're going to recap the process that we've been through over the past 10 weeks.

[00:01:03] Christie Robertson: Yeah, so remember you go: 

Policy --> Fiscal --> Rules --> Floor. 

Then crossover, and

Policy --> Fiscal --> Rules --> Floor. 

We are in the fiscal committees in the Opposite House. Which is Appropriations with our bills that are moving – 5192 for MSOC and 5263 for special education. 

And we had a hearing! 

[00:02:35] Megan Larkin: We did.

[00:02:37] Christie Robertson: They were both heard on the same day, back to back. 

[00:02:39] Megan Larkin: Yes. I want to shout out everybody that signed in pro for both of these bills. 

There were a total of 4,680 people who signed in on Senate Bill 51-92, which is the MSOC bill. About 3/4 of that total was Pro. 

And for the Special Education Bill, 5263, there was a smaller number of sign-ins, at only 2,588. But only 10 people signed in Con.

So that's amazing, and thank you for everybody that signed in Pro. Prior to this session, I think people thought that 500 sign-ins was, like, a big number. Great job. I feel like people are activated, and that's amazing. It sends a strong message.

[00:03:30] Christie Robertson: There were lots of testifiers that testified on both bills, especially superintendents from a great many districts. We'll put a link if you want to listen to the whole hearing, because it really was quite inspiring. But here's just a few examples.

[00:03:45] Sandy Hayes: Sandy Hayes, a school board member from North Shore and immediate past president of WSSDA. MSOCs are like the tire of a car, the roof of a house – boring to spend money on, but if they are not taken care of, it can be catastrophic. If this Bill is not passed, we will have to make cuts at every level in our district, from deans at our elementary and middle schools to an assistant principal at each of our comprehensive high schools. These are the people that work with our students on attendance and behavior. They are the ones that interact with our students on all the issues that have been brought up during this time in session. 

[00:04:10] Angela Steck: Angela Steck, president of the Washington State PTA. Districts are great at stopping the bleeding, but it's only a matter of time before the fiscal instability catches them. 

[00:04:20] Paultoro Tanaka: Paultoro Tanaka, an 8th grader at Robert Eagle Staff Middle School. I've been at Eagle Staff for three years, and every single year we run out of paper and pencils, and then the teachers are forced to buy it and pay for it out of their own pockets. My teachers routinely buy tape, pens, markers, erasers, supplies for science experiments, and more. so I urge you to pass this bill to give students the education they require and to support the teachers.

[00:04:58] Lily Eakin: Lily Eakin, on behalf of McDonald PTA. I have never felt so drained of hope. Walking through the same elementary school where my oldest daughter thrived just eight years ago, I see a stark contrast. Many spaces that once nurtured learning and support are now empty because of cuts. Where storage shelves were once full of books, pencils, paper, now empty. Our school can no longer provide after-school space for children to access math or reading help, because our parents cannot afford to hire required janitorial staff to clean and lock the building. This service used to be provided by the school district from MSOC funding. Floors are dirty. Rooms are unkempt. Morale is down now more than ever, because our once beautiful spaces are gloomy and empty. I understand that our state is experiencing extreme budget deficits. However, our public schools have been making cuts to our children's educational resources every year now for the last four consecutive years. Please support this bill for basic education.

[00:05:50] Nikki Otero Lockwood: My name is Nikki Otero Lockwood, Service Board President for Spokane Public Schools, Board Vice President for WSSDA, and mom to a now adult with a disability, reminding me of my why every day. Our district has made incremental improvements for our students with special needs with every dollar invested at the state and federal level, so thank you. We use state inclusionary grant funds to increase secondary inclusion, raising the percentage of secondary students with IEPs accessing general ed for most of the day from about 40% to 60%. We've used one time ESSER funds and OSPI support to update staff training and staffing to do better for our students with the most behavioral challenges. In six years, we've moved from over 6,000 incidents of restraint and isolation to less than 200 incidents of restraint last year. And lastly, our rate of graduation for students with disabilities has gone from 62% to 81% in five years. Your investments translate to better outcomes for our students with disabilities.

[00:06:47] Mary Templeton: Dr Mary Templeton, Lake Stevens School District Superintendent, also representing the School Alliance. More than dollars have been lost. Superintendents, we are very creative. We are confident. We're educated. And we're experts in education. And we have not been able to invest that energy into making sure that we are getting systems in place that see and serve each student that math scores have gone way up, that ELA, every kid can read and critically think. We know how to do that. And the energy that's taken from all of us to figure out what to cut, how to cut it, who's not going to be with us, what excellent teachers no longer get to serve our students, and how do we explain that to our community who are counting on us? That's where our energy is gone.

[00:07:26] Christie Robertson: And the big reveal, Megan?

[00:07:30] Megan Larkin: The big reveal is that Dr. Kelly Aramaki, the Bellevue superintendent, said straight up that Bellevue will be in binding conditions at the end of the year if something isn't done to better fund education.

[00:07:45] Kelly Aramaki: I'm Kelly Aramaki, Superintendent of the Bellevue School District. As painful as it is to say this as the superintendent, Bellevue is one of a number of school districts that are likely heading into binding conditions by the end of this school year. Bellevue joins districts across Washington – small, large, urban, rural, in having to cut millions in order to make up for the insufficient funding for public education. Lack of sufficient state funding for special education is the largest driver of our $20 million budget deficit in Bellevue. My humble ask on behalf of the 2,300 amazing children with IEPs in Bellevue is that you'll find a way to pass and fund this bill with its multipliers and the reduction of the safety net threshold.

[00:08:26] Christie Robertson: And that was after he said that they were going to be laying off 150 staff.

[00:08:30] Kelly Aramaki: My school board this past Thursday approved the reduction of approximately 150 staff members. That includes teachers, mental health counselors, assistant principals, to compensate for funding gaps, including the MSOC funding gap.

[00:08:42] Megan Larkin: And that's a big reveal because it's Bellevue. It's a big, wealthy school district. It's also important to note that Shoreline, while smaller, is also pretty wealthy. And they will also be in binding conditions at the end of the year. “Binding conditions” is, like, School Budget Land talk for “bankruptcy”. So if this is happening to wealthy districts, the ones that can't pass bonds or levies, or their property tax values are just not that high – they're in real trouble. So when Dr. Araki said that, it was like you could see everybody on the committee perk up a little bit and be like, “What??” So yeah, that's a bombshell testimony. 

[00:09:29] Christie Robertson: Yeah. So the hearing was last Wednesday. And the bills have not been scheduled for exec yet.

[00:09:37] Megan Larkin: Correct.

[00:09:39] Christie Robertson: So that will happen sometime in the next couple of weeks. 

[00:09:47] Megan Larkin: We sure hope so, because it has to be out of Appropriations by April 8th, and then outta the House entirely by April 16th. So we've got a little bit of time, but we want to keep our eyes on the ball and make sure these things are moving.

[00:09:56] Christie Robertson: Yeah, April 8th is only two weeks away, and this week will probably be all focused on the budget. So maybe it will be next week.

[00:10:04] Megan Larkin: I don't know what's going to happen. I do not have a crystal ball. But I expect that the House Appropriations committee will wait until they have a better handle on what's in their budget, and then they'll do executive action on 5192 and 5263, such that those bills would line up with what they have in their budget.

[00:10:27] Christie Robertson: We put a call out last week to talk to members of Appropriations, and we heard from a couple of listeners who did that. First, we talked to Kaitlin Murdock, who gave testimony for the first time at the Appropriations hearing. And we'll talk a little bit about her experience with Joe Fitzgibbon on the Appropriations Committee. So here she is:

[00:10:51] Kaitlin Murdock: Testifying – it's real time. You see that there are people in a room, and they call on you. And so you know you've delivered your message, and that somebody had to listen to it. At least in auditory. And whether or not they take it to heart is another question. 

Joe Fitzgibbon sits on the House Appropriations Committee, and he is leader of the House Democrats. And we have tried to set up meetings with him both times that we've gone down, and he has not scheduled those meetings. We were able to catch him coming out of the chamber and have a conversation in the hallway as best we could. In which he was very... defensive, I guess, about prioritizing education over other things in the budget. And gave the counter arguments to everything that we were saying. So, it didn't seem like he was listening then. 

[00:11:48] Christie Robertson: We also heard from a listener, Meg, who went to her 33rd District town hall. And I'm just going to read a little portion of her email. "As someone who has voted for Gregorson several times and is generally really happy to be represented by her, I was pretty underwhelmed with her response around education. She was very strong in other areas, but didn't sound terribly fired up about education. So long story short, Mia Gregerson needs to hear more from us."

[00:12:23] Megan Larkin: Yes, and thank you so much to that listener. 

[00:12:27] Christie Robertson: And thanks to Kaitlin for letting us know we need to reach out to Fitzgibbon as well.

[00:12:33] Megan Larkin: So we will link you to an email template to help you reach out to those folks around the remaining two Big 3 bills. We also have an email template specifically for Gregerson. If you are in the 33rd, please consider reaching out to me at Gregerson.

If you happen to know that your legislator is Macri, Berg, Bergquist, Fitzgibbon, Pollet, Ryu, Springer, or Street, congratulations! You have a legislator on House Appropriations.

[00:13:04] Megan Larkin: Yeah, it's pretty exciting stuff. 

Budget Land

[00:13:08] Christie Robertson: Glasses on?

[00:13:09] Megan Larkin: Glasses on. We are crossing the Rubicon. We are now in Budget Land.

[00:13:14] Christie Robertson: The next five weeks is largely about the budgets. And this is where I have not followed very closely in the past, and is more confusing to me. So, as I'm learning, we're going to work to try to make it understandable to everybody. And so let's first talk about: how does this budget process even work?

[00:13:38] Megan Larkin: Okay. So far, our bills have been making the case for why we need more money and how that money should be calculated. So we've seen, like, multipliers in safety nets in the special ed bill. Like that's how that money is calculated. And in the MSOC bill, there's, like, a baked-in increase for inflation. That new money is going to be added to the maintenance level funds and the caseload forecast that came out last week. 

So, “maintenance level” is, like: “If we were just going to keep this program going as it is, here's how much that's going to cost in 26/27, the next two fiscal years.” This is what you would have to spend in order to just keep things exactly the same.

[00:14:32] Christie Robertson: So, with, like, no new bills.

[00:14:34] Megan Larkin: With no new bills, nothing happens at all. It just stays at maintenance level. 

And then you have to add in “caseload forecasts”. So maybe they're looking at special ed, and there's expected to be more kids that need special education services. So then there would be an increase in caseload forecasts. Ao that would also be added into the budget. Because, even just keeping everything the same, we still have to pay for the increase in the number of kids that need that service.

[00:15:11] Christie Robertson: This has been a big conversation topic this session with, I think, early learning. The caseloads for early learning have increased a lot and were bigger than they expected, and so they had to increase their expectation for how much that's going to cost.

[00:15:28] Megan Larkin: Yes, exactly. And costs have gone way up due to increased caseloads and then also inflation. So something to watch out for is...

[00:15:40] Christie Robertson: Bag of tricks.

[00:15:41] Megan Larkin: ...bag of tricks. Legislators are going to try to take credit for maintenance level + caseload forecast as being, like, an accomplishment. So Republicans, they wrote their version of a budget, I think they're like, “We're going to spend $35.9 billion on education.” And it's... you're... That's what you have to spend! That's... 

[00:16:06] Christie Robertson: That's what the current formulas calculate that you would have to spend.

[00:16:12] Megan Larkin: Yeah, that's just what you have to spend. You can't dress it up like you're putting more money towards more need. You're just keeping pace with the basics. 

[00:16:24] Christie Robertson: And so, let's see. Last week, we talked about the revenue forecast. The House and the Senate needed to see the revenue forecast before they could do their final budgets. And that revenue forecast was released on March 18th, last Tuesday.

I guess this maybe is the right time to talk about one of the things that I found very confusing with the budgets and the forecasts and everything is the different numbers. Like the number I had internalized was “between $5 and $15 billion” for the state shortfall. 

And so I just think it's worth going through and talking about: the $5 and $15billion that I've been following is the “operating budget shortfall”. Which is going to be the revenue minus the expenditures. 

The expenditures are what's determined by the maintenance level, plus any new bills.

And the revenue is the expectations for what's coming in, mostly from taxes. Any changes that might be federal or any other level can impact how much money that the state is bringing in. So it was the revenue forecast that was used to determine the operating budget shortfall.

And the revenue forecast went down.

[00:17:43] Megan Larkin: Yes. 

[00:17:43] Christie Robertson: And it went down by close to $900 million, which means that the operating budget shortfall projection went UP about the same amount. So it's now looking like around $15 billion of an operating budget shortfall. 

Which brings up another thing that confuses me about these budgets is the outlook period. In Seattle public schools we're always talking about this year's budget and next year's budget. But in the legislature, they do things as biennial two year cycles. So when they talk about an outlook period, they'll usually say the biennium or the four year outlook, which is two biennia. So always look, when you see numbers, for whether it's two-year or four-year.

[00:18:36] Megan Larkin: Yes. So when we talk about that $854 million increase in the deficit, that's spread out over four years.

And we should note that when we're talking about the budget, there are actually three different budgets. One is the Operating budget, and that's probably what we're going to talk about the most, because it's the biggest one. And that's where the special ed and MSOC money are going to come from. But there's also a separate Transportation budget and a separate Capital budget.

The Budget Bills

So what's going to happen? We are recording this on Monday, March 24th at 11:39 AM. So we haven't actually read the budgets yet. But here's the process. The Operating budget, which is what we're going to pay the most attention to, goes straight to the fiscal committees in the House and the Senate. And those are going to go straight to Appropriations and Ways & Means. 

The Senate and the House Democratic caucuses have been working for a while to figure out this budget. So they're going to want to fast track it through. They release the budget on Monday. It's going to just be a bill. 

SB 5167, that's the Senate budget, gets released on Monday. It's going to get a hearing on Tuesday, and then on Thursday they'll do executive action, voted out of Ways & Means. And on Saturday, that is when we're expecting to see a vote by the full Senate on their budget.

For the House, we're expecting a lot of the same cadence. And on Monday, that budget should be adopted by the House.

[00:20:22] Christie Robertson: So there's a hearing on the budget Tuesday, and they vote Thursday. How does that give them any time to incorporate any feedback from the hearing? Is the hearing just for show? Like, that just doesn't seem like enough time to incorporate changes.

[00:20:50] Megan Larkin: Yeah, so they already basically know what they want to have in the budget, and the real conversations around that have been happening all session. They have to go through this process because that is how you get a bill passed. But I would be surprised if they actually intended to make any changes based on any testimony.

[00:21:13] Christie Robertson: But there's a ton of people who testify, and it's viewed as fairly important. No?

[00:21:17] Megan Larkin: Yeah. I think people testify at Tuesday's hearing in Ways & Means and Appropriations because then that stuff goes on the record. And the things that you say at that hearing, legislators who are your allies will get to use those anecdotes and the points brought up during hearing to make their case in the conference committee for more money for your thing.

[00:21:45] Christie Robertson: Oh, ok. 

And the way that the hearings work on the budgets is that it's a long, long, long, long hearing, and they break it up into different sections. So, they'll often start with K-12 education. And so anything related to K-12, that'll be at the beginning. People will come in and testify just on that chunk of the budget, and then they'll go through all the different other areas.

[00:21:47] Megan Larkin:  Yeah, it's a marathon hearing.

 So this is what I expect to happen, but this year is an outlier in many ways, so who knows? What I think is going to happen is the Senate is going to vote 5167, which is their bud Operating budget, out of the Senate on March 29th. And the House, I think, is going to do something called “catching it on the fly”. Which means it's just going to go straight to the House floor. And the House is going to just do a striker amendment, strike the Senate's entire budget and just replace it with the House budget. So then you have two different versions of Senate Bill 5167. One is the Senate budget and one is the House budget. 

[00:23:03] Christie Robertson: Okay, so, and then that's like the starting place from where they can try to reconcile the two versions.

[00:23:12] Megan Larkin: Yeah. If the Senate and the House can't agree on a bill, something called a “conference” or “concurrence” committee get together. They look at the Senate version of the bill and the House version of the bill, and they do negotiating, trying to all get to one version of the bill

I think that Republicans are going to look at the Operating budget, they're going to see that it has new revenue baked into it, and then none of them are going to vote for it, either in committee or on the floor. Because they're just, like, not going to support anything with new revenue. Full stop. So as far as our advocacy work goes, I think that's important to note because if you have a GOP rep, they're just not going to vote for the budget no matter what. So they don't have a lot of influence at that point.

Traditionally, the governor has acted as, like, a bridge or connector when the House and the Senate can't agree on a bill. So you'll get the House budget, the Senate budget, they do a conference committee, and they're trying to make a compromise, but it's difficult. So the governor comes in there and helps mediate that. I don't know, though, what Ferguson will do. Like, he is a mystery. We will see. 

It's also worth noting that there's a lot of new legislators too. So there's a lot of things we don't know. And so because we don't know how these various actors are going to behave, it's really difficult to predict how the budget is going to go.

But generally speaking, the farther apart the two proposals are, the more difficult the negotiations are going to be.

Budget deadline

Ideally, there is a budget that's passed before the end of session, right? So the regular session gets over on April 27th. And, knock on wood, that's when this session will get over. But I think there's a possibility that they have to extend the session just because everything is so crazy this year.

They have to have a budget, though, passed by June 30th, because the next fiscal year starts the next day. So for the legislature, the fiscal year starts July 1st.

[00:26:31] Christie Robertson: Okay. So that is the process. A thing to note for districts is that they are already well in the process of developing their local budgets. As everybody who listens to this podcast knows, the Purple Book with all the school budgets already went out to each school. And that will not feel totally finalized until the state completes their budget. So any bit that this gets extended is going to be... you're going to see a lot of very stressed superintendents of schools.

And in particular, a date to keep in mind is: by state law, May 15th is the last day that state employees can be notified of a termination of their contract. And that's sometimes called RIF or Reduction In Force. The last day for reduction in force is May 15th. Unless it's a case of this, where the legislature misses its deadline. And then it can be as far as June 15th.

Okay, so that's some of the convoluted process. 

[00:27:09] Megan Larkin: At the time of recording, the full budget hasn't been released yet...

[00:27:12] Christie Robertson: The Senate was! Oh my god, 1,295 pages

[00:27:16] Megan Larkin: Yeah.

[00:27:17] Christie Robertson: An actual PDF took a long time to load in my browser.

[00:27:21] Megan Larkin: Wow.

[00:27:22] Christie Robertson: Wow.

[00:27:23] Megan Larkin: Yeah.

[00:27:24] Christie Robertson: But we're not going to delve into this right now. 

[00:27:27] Megan Larkin: So, like, another bag of tricks that they have is: there's been so much negotiation behind closed doors, and they've released this document that's like a thousand plus pages and highly technical, and then they have a hearing on it the next day. And it's... no one's going to have a chance to really digest this in its entirety and come up with super nuanced testimony, right? Like, it has to be the next day. And that's because they want to just try and push these changes through without too much pushback.

[00:28:07] Christie Robertson: Yeah, this whole Budget Land has a lot of “man behind the curtain” stuff going on. There's a lot that happens behind closed doors. I would love it if those conference committees are on TVW, but I'm guessing that they're not. And that timeline between things keeps information from people who are not super connected and makes it hard for them to weigh in.

[00:28:35] Megan Larkin: Yeah. So I'm not a fan of them doing it this way, but this is how they do it. This is what to expect. They negotiate this behemoth, and then they push it through as fast as possible, and then the real negotiating starts once the House and the Senate both have bills that have passed their respective floors.

Revenue

[00:29:04] Christie Robertson: Okay. What else?

[00:29:06] Megan Larkin: Maybe we should just say a little bit about revenue. 

[00:29:10] Christie Robertson: Oh, revenue. Yep. So, big deal this year, the Senate Democrats proposed really a great deal of new revenue. And we're not going to go into a ton of detail or a comparison between the two, but we will probably do that in future weeks. But just want to kind of run through the basics of the kinds of revenue that are being proposed this year.

[00:29:39] Megan Larkin: Yes. The House and the Senate dems have both released revenue packages. And they seem like they have the same type of packages including a wealth tax, B&O tax, reforms to property tax and the levy lid. 

 [00:29:58] Christie Robertson: As well as closing a bunch of budget loopholes. Actually, there's billions of dollars of tax loopholes that could be going out to schools and other places.

Here are Senators Noel Frame, and Jamie Pedersen, talking about this at the Senate revenue proposal rollout on March 20th.

[00:30:21] Senator Noel Frame: There are a number of tax preferences in statute that were passed in the context of some federal, state law And what's happened since the time that was passed is that the underlying law has changed. And therefore the conditions under which we passed it and the public policy objective to be met – it's not the same anymore. So they are legally obsolete. And that is the lens through which we applied that proposal. 

Senator Solomon and Senator Lovett, who are the prime and second sponsor are both members of JLARC. JLARC is part of an overall process that we put in place, I think in 2013, to have rigorous transparency and review of our tax preferences. And our nonpartisan auditors, they go through this... they try to either measure the public policy objective or infer it. If that's not clear, then they come back and tell us, “You need to review and clarify this,” or, “The public policy was not achieved. Perhaps you need to repeal it.” And we went through that and looked at where the public policy objective was not met, where it's unclear if it was met, or if the underlying legal conditions have changed, making it obsolete. And that's the tax preferences that you see in the package. 

[00:31:30] Senator Jamie Pedersen: In the modern world, we generally try to limit tax preferences, right? So we put an expiration date on them. But in the old times, we didn't do that. So we got stuff hanging around from the 1930s and 40s and 50s that just doesn't comport with the modern economy or modern conditions. And that's the whole reason that we have that process. 

[00:31:52] Megan Larkin: So it'll be interesting to see in the coming weeks which revenue packages have legs and which are potentially going to impact our remaining Big 3 bills.

[00:32:04] Christie Robertson: The other thing I think we should mention quickly is that the Senate is proposing cutting the sales tax, which is probably the most regressive form of tax that we have. So, as a way to take this opportunity to make our tax system less regressive. Remember that we are the 2nd most regressive state in terms of how we tax our citizens.

[00:32:28] Megan Larkin: We very much need progressive revenue sources and not to be reliant on the regressive stuff that falls disproportionately on the shoulders of working families. 

Something to note, though, as we are entering Budget Land, is that more revenue overall, or more funds overall, does not necessarily mean more funds for education. Inslee released budgets in December: one with new revenue. And the one with the bigger pot of money, I believe, had LESS allocated for K-12. 

So it's like we've got to walk and chew gum at the same time. We've got to look at the MSOC and special education bills that are sitting in House Appropriations right now and make absolutely sure that the Senate funding levels on those are just the floor and that we do see funding increases, ideally, codified into law through those bills, such that we know for sure more money is going to special education, more money is going to MSOC. We need to watch and make sure money is going to the right places.

[00:33:44] Christie Robertson: And we will help you do that.

[00:33:45] Megan Larkin: Yes.

[00:33:46] Christie Robertson: That's week 11 of the Big 3 briefing. Please email us at our new email address: big3@rainydayrecess.org. That goes to both of us.

[00:33:58] Megan Larkin: Yay. 

[00:33:58] Christie Robertson: Let us know what we made understandable and what needs more explanation, and we'll try to tackle that next week.

[00:34:05] Megan Larkin: Yes. This is pretty technical stuff, and this is an unusual year, so I think we're going to be doing a lot of learning together. Next week we'll go more into depth on the budgets and talk about the hearings in the House and the Senate. So keep your green tinted glasses handy.

[00:34:23] Christie Robertson: You can get free cutout green tinted glasses as well as our transcripts and our show notes at our website, rainydayrecess.org.

 Stay curious. Stay cozy, and thanks for listening to Rainy Day Recess.