Sheldon:

Welcome, advocates, to another episode of the Leading Equity Podcast, a podcast that focuses on supporting educators with the tools and resources necessary to ensure equity at their schools. Today's special guest is a repeat guest, Miss Kate Kennedy is back again. So without further ado, Kate, thank you so much for joining us.

Kate Kennedy:

Yeah, it's great to be here. Thanks for having me, Sheldon.

Sheldon:

It's always a pleasure. I'm excited to get into our topic today. We're going to be talking from a central office perspective and about care. But before we get into that, why don't you share a little bit about yourself and what you currently do?

Kate Kennedy:

Absolutely. I'm currently at the University of Southern California as a doctoral candidate. I'm wrapping up my dissertation this year. And my research focuses largely on care and social-emotional supports. And I've been focusing on the central office. That's what I'd love to talk about today. And before that I was a teacher and I did professional development and I've been in education for a while.

Sheldon:

Okay. Well, I'm excited to do this. So I think what's really important, because we'll be talking about care and what that looks like from a central office perspective, but I would love for you to start off by defining what that looks like. What is that?

Kate Kennedy:

Yeah. It's a great place to start because I think we talk a lot about care. We talk about healthcare, caregivers, caring. And I think it's kind of one of those terms that we use a lot, but there's not a lot of consensus about what we mean. So I just want to share with you what I mean. And when I talk about care with you today, I'm thinking about it as a set of practices and theoretical underpinnings. And I consider care as connected to a few things that are important to us in schools, high academic expectations, authentic interpersonal relationships and the intentional creation of structures, routines, and processes that connect individual care with a communal ethic of care. And that's a definition I've been evolving over some time, as well as I culled from a lot of really smart researchers that have been doing this work for a long time.

Sheldon:

So I heard intentional was a word that really stood out to me. So we could say, clarify this for me because when we say intentional, because I think a lot of from the central office, we'll see a lot of messages from the model to the vision statements and things like that. What does it look like to be intentional with the approach to care?

Kate Kennedy:

Yeah. Well, I think it goes from the top to the bottom and in between and your school system. And so I think everybody cares. So I'm coming from this place that I think educators are working really hard. We get into the work, not for the summers off or the great pay, but because we really care. And so this is something that people, it really resonates with folks is when I talk about care. But I also think it should happen intentionally and we should think about it systematically. And I think that's a place where a lot of systems could use improvement.

               So for example, in my research, I have been interviewing central office leaders, such as superintendents and assistant superintendents and directors of student services and the like. And I'll say, tell me about care in your system. And they'll often talk about, oh, we do a really good job of building relationships. Or oh, I brought in a taco truck for my teachers last week. And I think those acts of care matter, but I also think often they're disjointed and happenstance and sort of ad hoc if you will.

               But I will say that I've found some systems where they're really doing the deep intentional work of connecting departments, structures and staffing with an equity oriented vision of care that is really thinking about affirming the needs of particularly their minoritized students. And that's the work that I think is really exciting. So again, getting back to that intentionality, everybody's building relationships. But are we thinking about, from the top and in our vision statements and in our professional development and in our staff meetings, affirming our queer students, for example, or affirming our black and brown students and taking that culturally relevant approach to care. That's where I think we need to be more intentional.

Sheldon:

Okay. Thank you for that. And so you have six points or six strategies. And I'm really excited to hear about these six strategies. So is that, these six strategies, is this for helping us to be more intentional with our approach to care?

Kate Kennedy:

Yeah. So I've taken all the research to date on care, love, social-emotional supports at the school and district level. And I've paired it with my own original research that I've been doing over the last couple of years. And it comes from a place where, if you think about the central office, for years, we thought about them as compliance and bureaucratic folks. Here comes the Title I money from the state and they're going to pass it down to the schools and so forth. But in fact, schools have changed a lot. And increasingly, federal and state initiatives are looking to the school district to be a site of intervention and change.

               So you've really got a lot of impact. We've got 13,000 school districts and in each of them, a central office cabinet ranging from five to 10 people with a tremendous amount of agencies. The first thing I think about is that central office leaders really are acting as agents of care, create the conditions of care. So they're not often in direct caring relationships with students. Those are jobs we give to our teachers and our principals and our social workers. And they're doing a really nice job. But my question that drives my research is what are central office leaders doing to create those conditions for care?

Sheldon:

Okay.

Kate Kennedy:

And so I created this six point framework to think about the different ways in which they can impact and influence caring structures.

Sheldon:

Well, let's start with the first one. What's the first point in that framework?

Kate Kennedy:

Yeah. Well, the first point is really about school district care as being a holistic leadership approach. So I just want to start right there. The brain isn't divided between emotions and academics, and we know this from neuroscience and common sense. So I don't think about care as an individual silo. I think about the school district holistically. So I want to start right there. So the first point is about having a caring vision.

Sheldon:

Okay.

Kate Kennedy:

Now this sounds simple, but my analysis of mission statements, they're often very general or focused solely on academics. And in a few places I've found they do include attention to emotions, care, whole child, but not very often. Then you go into strategic plans. This is another place where we see the vision articulated for schools and districts. And we're so comfortable with clearly articulating academic goals. You go into any strategic plan or any mission statement on any of the 13,000 school districts in the United States and you're going to see, we're focused on language arts and we're growing our readers or our math students by 10 percentile points this year, and we've got objectives. I'm not saying they're always followed to the letter, but I do believe what gets measured gets done. And what we put out there happens.

               And so we've gotten really comfortable with clearly articulating a vision for academic growth. But then you go to the softer side or the caring side of the whole child side of the strategic plan, and it's often sort of lacking specificity. It's lacking attention to cultural relevance, affirmation, and particular care for minoritized students. Another thing I hear more often... And Sheldon, last time we talked was at the very beginning of the pandemic. Do you remember this? It was March 2020.

Sheldon:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yep. Yep. Yep. I remember that.

Kate Kennedy:

We weren't even Zooming. We were just having a plain old phone call. So the world has changed in two years. We've got George Floyd, Black Lives Matter, a tremendous rise in anti-trans legislation. So I'm going to argue that because of the tremendous changes in our society, we need to see tremendous changes in our strategic visions. It's not enough anymore to say, our district is going to care for all students and we're going to issue a culture and climate survey. I think we need to be, in particular, affirming our LGBTQ students because of the rise in anti-gay Legislation around the country that's really murdering the souls of many of our students, as well as affirm and lift up black and brown bodies in our schools. And I don't see that specificity in visions and strategic plans. So that's the first thing is what's in your vision and who's included in it?

Sheldon:

And that's based off of, so let me ask you this, based off your research and kind of putting the framework together, so it sounds like it's changed because of the pandemic?

Kate Kennedy:

Yeah. I mean, my work has always centered equity when thinking about care, that's been very important to me. And part of that was filling a gap when I did a scan of the current research years ago on social-emotional leadership. I saw a real lack of looking at equity. I saw it sort of generalized and hegemonic and steeped in whiteness. So I've been working in this space for a while. But I would argue that because of the rise in political tension and in particular, anti-trans legislation, that should trigger an increased attention at the district level to take care of the mental health and wellbeing of our, for example, trans students. I want to see that baked into caring visions. I think it matters. And we know that. I mean, we've got a ton of research on the mental health of LGBTQ students, for example, and how one caring adult who affirms them can make such a difference in attendance and academic outcomes.

Sheldon:

Yep. Yep. I just did a speech not too long ago and I had the statistic in front of me. I don't have it now. But just the fact that just teachers listening to a trans student and following up with them as well, not just that one time having that conversation, but I actually checking in, how it had tremendously has helped reduce the feelings of bullying and other challenges that they're having in school.

Kate Kennedy:

Yeah. And here's the best part, Sheldon. That is a free intervention. It costs you nothing, putting queer affirmations into your strategic plans, visions and statements.

Sheldon:

Yeah. Yeah.

Kate Kennedy:

I'm not asking for a particular curriculum. In fact, I think we lose sight often. People ask me what curriculum should I purchase. And I think the money is in some of the things that we're going to talk about today, which are essentially using the people that you have, but saying things in, maybe in a different way.

Sheldon:

Okay. Well, let's do it. Let's move on. Let's go on to number two.

Kate Kennedy:

Yeah. The second thing that I think is really important to think about in cultivating caring systems at the district level is staffing and organizing for care. And so I'm an organizational theorist. I come from this space in sociology where we think about people and structures and how we put them together to either influence change or hinder change. And so something I've been looking at for the last couple of years is who's in your executive cabinet? Who's at those meetings and who's not? And so the question I'm always asking central office leaders is who's in charge of your caring programs? And that's a lot of things, Sheldon. And that's another thing is I would say we've got an alphabet soup right now of a caring umbrella. We've got MTSS, trauma informed practices, mental health counselors, partnerships with counties, PBIS. We could probably fill in the list and spend the whole hour just talking about that.

               But the question is who's in charge of those things and are they at the table? And related question, are they at the table with your equity director? Because that's another thing that's changed a lot in the last two years since you and I spoke, is districts are now hiring equity directors and staffing their executive cabinets with these people, which I think is fantastic. But I don't want those people to be performative and sort of just sit at the table. We want them to do the deeper equity work.

               Similarly, I wonder if the people in charge of caring programs are at those executive committee meetings and working in tandem with the equity work. And sometimes the answer is yes. It's my assistant soup of student services. And yes, they sit at the table and yes, we're aligning these silos. But often it's no. There might be a head counselor or a director of student services who's not at those crucial conversations. And so caring programs and initiatives, they take a backseat when really they should be intertwined with everything we do.

Sheldon:

Okay. And I totally agree with that. What about number three? What would you have listed as a third point?

Kate Kennedy:

Well, the third point that I think about a lot, and this came out of my early research, is resourcing for care. So of course, what comes up in my conversations with central office leaders all over the country is there's not enough money and there's not enough people. So increasingly districts are partnering or outsourcing, for example, counseling and mental health sessions, which is great because there's a rising need in mental health needs, and they're going and finding resources for their staff and students.

               However, we don't have a title for mental health, a title program. So people are cobbling together state money, county money, district money, and they're doing it in really interesting ways. And I think that's something, again, that's happening happenstance and ad hoc without a lot of intentionality. So for example, when I talk to budget people like your chief financial officer, your assistant superintendent in charge of resources, they're often not having conversations with our people in charge of caring structures and systems. And so I'm not sure we're staffing as strategically as we could. And so what I'm calling for in this framework is careful attention to how we're resourcing for care and tying those things together.

               And I'll give you an example. I was talking to a wonderful district somewhere in the Midwest, and they shared with me this story where they thought they were doing a really nice job by going out and purchasing a social-emotional learning curriculum for all their elementary schools. So they buy the program. It gets shipped to the schools. Here we have this curriculum. Well, the social workers were upset because they wanted a different program and approach. And nobody had thought to tie those two groups of people together. There was money that needed to be spent. You know how this goes at the end of the year. We got to spend the money. We got the grant. And so it didn't end up getting used with fidelity as we might like.

               I found this in another district across the country in the west. Parents were pushing and pushing and pushing for social-emotional supports. This is a community where parents have a really active voice. And they said, our kids need social-emotional supports. We want counselors hired. Well, the school listened and you know what they did? They hired the kinds of counselors that will help you count your academic credits. But when the parents said, "I want counseling services for my students," they said, "Oh, we don't do that."

Sheldon:

So they got counselors, but they didn't get the mental health counselors.

Kate Kennedy:

Exactly. So even having that fundamental question of what are our needs? What are our parents and community members saying? And how are we going to sit at the table together and come up with some solutions? It's not happening. And I don't think it's not happening because we don't have really good, hardworking, caring folks in our district. These were good districts with good, hardworking people who really care about their students and staff and communities. But it's a question of being intentional with those resources. Everyone's busy and there's never enough time and money. But can we all sit at the same table and include our stakeholders, which includes people at the school level, social workers and teachers, but also our parents. And before making major decisions about caring programs, make sure everyone's on board and that we heard everyone correctly in the first place, because I think we've got more money than ever because of ESSER and COVID recovery funds flowing to the schools for the kinds of things that we're talking about today. But I'm not sure we always have the right voices in the room at the right time.

Sheldon:

Don't forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel where you can catch the weekly livestream, The Art of Advocacy. Each week we will have a special guest and we'll discuss various topics around equity and advocacy work.

               So okay. With the example, because you said the second district, they did listen to the parents. So I feel like the stakeholders were there. Where did the disconnect come from, I guess, is my question.

Kate Kennedy:

Well, part of it was in translation. The parents were native speakers of another language and when translated, counselor sounds like counselor in English. But of course we know that in counseling, there are many times we've got social workers, we've got one-on-one counselors and we've got academic counselors. And so the district thought they were listening. And it was a good first move. But what they ended up having to do was, in addition to the academic counselors that the district put money into, they ended up having to contract back out for mental health support for their students.

Sheldon:

Okay.

Kate Kennedy:

Yeah.

Sheldon:

Well, lesson learned. And I'm glad you were able to share that with us as well. So that way we don't, again, best intentions, but sometimes little things get missed. Let's move on to number four. What do you have?

Kate Kennedy:

Yeah. Number four is a big one and one I feel particularly passionate about. And this is what I call data in the service of care. So, we've got a lot of data collection happening in schools from the state. We've got NAEP at the federal level and each district does its own set of reading and math assessments, whether it's MAP or something else to track student progress. And we've also got a growing number of social-emotional learning surveys or climate surveys, whatever you want to call them. And some states do these better than others. And some districts contract with companies to do it, or they do their own simple survey.

               But what I care about is how it's driving the caring work. And so very infrequently in my research have I found districts are surveying teachers, students, staff, and community members about issues related to care, for example, stress or resilience, relationship skills and the like and then applying that back to their executive level cabinet meetings where they make resource and strategic decisions. So I'm not saying people aren't doing surveys because they are. Almost everybody is doing some kind of data work. I'm not seeing it play out through the system. So we might have, in the social-emotional caring space, what we would call data rich, information poor.

               And I think this really matters because as we've talked about, there's sort of an alphabet soup of things you can focus on. You can put all of your money and resources into mental health, through social workers and mental health agencies, perhaps at the county level. You could also put a lot of money into social-emotional learning frameworks. And those look different between elementary, middle, and high schools. But whatever you do, we've got to measure it in some way. And so I'm not advocating for one particular type of data collection over the other. But I am advocating that, at the systems level, at the executive cabinet level, we should be regularly looking at data related to care and using that to make decisions. And the research bears this out and some of our work with outlier districts, that is districts that are serving black and students and particularly quite well in the area of social-emotional learning and we know this because we've been measuring it for years. They are using sophisticated data systems to measure outcomes and keep track of that.

               And the other thing that data does is it gives the sort of public accountability. So if your school board is looking at social-emotional learning indicators, that gives some credence and credibility to the work that a lot of people say we don't have time for or it's not the job of schools. When in fact, we know that there's a direct correlation between social-emotional learning programs and initiatives and academic outcomes. There's a strong relationship.

Sheldon:

Let me ask you this because someone asked me this once. Actually I've had this question a couple of times. How do you measure social-emotional learning? What are some examples what that looks like in measurement from a quantitative status?

Kate Kennedy:

Well, there's lots of ways. But I'll give you some examples. And so we're not looking only at measures of wellbeing, but in particular, how students might report on a sense of belonging. So let's talk about equity. Let's talk about our black, brown and queer students and newcomer students as well. Let's talk about those kids in particular.

               We know that on measures of climate, they tend, in some cases and in some states, and it depends on which data set, to show less belonging than their white counterparts or Asian counterparts depending on the context. We know from the research on care that students of color report feeling cared for less than their white peers. The research shows this. What I would love for the folks listening to think about, no matter which of the 13,000 school districts they're in is, do your students feel a sense of belonging? And can you tell me if your trans students feel connected to their school community? So that's what I care about. But I think school districts need to pick this for themselves.

               So let's look at the wide range, and you can Google this, there's a wide range of skill sets that we can focus on; resilience, emotional self-regulation, connectedness, passion for community and thinking about the whole. Those are things I care about as well. If that's what we want to focus on, let's start measuring that. Let's measure at the beginning, middle and the end of the year. And let's put some things in place. There's a lot of ways to get at this. I would pick a couple of discreet things that matter to my community. And I would figure that out by surveying them and starting a stakeholder group where I'm asking in empathy interviews, what matters to you and what's impacting your success in school and life? I would boil it down to a couple that I care about and I would ask people about them.

               And I think we could try a couple of interventions, whether that's an SEL curriculum or maybe just having an advisory where we're having listening sessions with students. No matter what it is, we pick a couple of things that we care about, such as belonging. We try an intervention or two, and then we see if the scores go up. And I think if we're not disaggregating, looking at race or ethnicity or sexual orientation, we're missing the boat.

Sheldon:

Got you. Okay. Thank you for going a little further in there for me because I get asked that question sometimes. Let's move on-

Kate Kennedy:

I mean, when we were looking at recovery data last year, this is [SERPI 00:23:16]. They looked at, I think, 500 districts. Only seven percent generally and maybe 15% of urban districts were looking at social-emotional learning indicators, which is surprising because there was a lot of conversation about stress and isolation last year. And we know how that's affecting students socially, emotionally, and academically. And yet I see we're getting back to business as usual. I would say there's maybe an increased need to focus on social-emotional, mental health indicators than ever.

Sheldon:

Good. Good. And I'm glad to hear that. What do we have for number five?

Kate Kennedy:

Number five in cultivating a caring system at the district level is thinking about community responsive equity oriented care.

Sheldon:

Okay.

Kate Kennedy:

And so this is where we're going to go from thinking about our vision and our staffing and our resources and our data to particularly contextualizing it to the place where we're in.

               This happens naturally in some places. If we've got a large set of indigenous students and we've got a lot of their voices in the system, of course, the way that you think about care is going to look different from the way you might look at it in Manhattan, for example. However, what's really interesting to me is that we still see a lot of places purchasing boiler plate curriculum and not thinking about whether it applies to their context or not. And I'm not knocking social-emotional learning curriculum. There's a lot of really good stuff out there. What I'm arguing is that it may not completely fill our needs in terms of a community-centric, equity-oriented lens. And we may need to supplement. And in some places, for example, where they found that their social-emotional learning curriculum choices were maybe not paying attention to notions of race or gender or sexual orientation, they're creating their own.

               Now, since we last spoke, Sheldon, there's been a lot of really great work come out on transformative social-emotional learning from CASEL, the Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning. They've changed their definition to be much more inclusive of holistic attention to equity. California, the state has adopted a set of transformational social-emotional learning standards that are much more about a humanizing community-centered definition of social-emotional learning. So there's been a lot of theoretical and conceptual work out there.

               In my piece, Jeff Walls at the University of Washington, and I just put out an article a couple months ago in the Phi Delta Kappan that you can get for free online. It's called How District Leaders Create Caring Organizations. And one of the things that we found in our research is that very infrequently were district leaders able to tie their equity work to their social-emotional learning work. As I discussed earlier in this podcast, there are often different directors sitting in different meetings, working with different teams, even at the school level. What I'm calling for is that you can't have equity work without attention to relationships and sense of belonging. And you can't have social-emotional work where you're thinking about caring for the whole student and focusing on belonging without thinking about race, gender, sexual orientation and ethnicity.

Sheldon:

Yes. Okay. And you... I'm sorry, go ahead.

Kate Kennedy:

No. So I was just going to say, in our article, if you pick it up or you find it online and I think we'll link it in the show notes probably.

Sheldon:

Yeah. We'll link it in.

Kate Kennedy:

Yeah. I've got a bunch of links in there on some great research that's come out and some resources for people that are free to kind of get us thinking more about systems that are attending to community-centric, equity-oriented care.

Sheldon:

Okay. And I believe there's a shout out to, I was going to add, I saw that you linked us in there as well.

Kate Kennedy:

Oh yes, I did. Yes, I did. That's your chapter that you wrote on culturally responsive, social-emotional learning, right?

Sheldon:

Yeah. Shout out to Dr. [inaudible 00:27:10] and Mr. David Adams, good friends of mine. So we wrote that chapter together.

Kate Kennedy:

Yep.

Sheldon:

All right. So I'm going to try to... Correct me if I'm wrong, but I try to write them down. So just to recap on so far we've gotten to five. But one, I have holistic leadership approach. Two is staffing and organizing for care. Three is resourcing for care. Four was data in the service of care. And five was community responsive equity-oriented care. Did I get those right?

Kate Kennedy:

That's right. You did. And that brings us to six.

Sheldon:

Okay. Go ahead.

Kate Kennedy:

Six is about caring leadership moves. And this is one that came directly out of my research, looking at central offices and how they organized for care. And it was a surprising finding I have to say. So we've got a data set of 50 central office leaders around the country, Jeff Walls and I at the University of Washington. And what we both found in all of our interviews is that central office leaders, superintendents, assistant superintendents and directors, are navigating the world of care in really interesting and definitely political ways. Now all of us who've worked in schools know that schooling is political. Who you know, how things get connected, but especially in a world that's, I would say, wildly under resourced, such as care. Again, there's no title money for care. People are cobbling together small grants, soft money, a little bit here, a little bit there.

               People at the central office are using their political connections to maneuver the world of care in really interesting ways. And the most interesting way that we've seen in the last year or two because of COVID is, again, engaging county and local agencies to provide mental health services for their students and now their staff. And this is something, Sheldon, last time we spoke, this wasn't even on my radar. But because of the incredible stress of the last couple of years on our educators and classified staff, district leaders are now looking for resources for the adults in their system. And I'd have to say central office leaders were already very busy. And now they've got this additional responsibility and they should have it of course, but for thinking about the caring, therapeutic relationships of the adults in their system and connecting them to resources.

               So this is something that I think we could help more with on a state and federal level in terms of funding, as well as creating partnerships that make sense. So some districts are creating consortia where they're partnering with one another and a local hospital, for example, to pool their resources and provide mental health services for students and staff. So that's been really exciting. And it is creating some inequities though. Again, 13,000 school districts, who's in your central office is driving what this work looks like. And so I think we haven't paid a lot attention to the way that the central office leaders have agency and are particularly using their political connections to provide for the care of students and staff. But it's happening in really interesting and varied ways.

               So I don't have an answer on this. But I will say it's something I think we need to pay more attention to and maybe shed some more light on and be a little more public about because it's happening behind the scenes and in ways that I think we don't quite recognize. And of course, anytime we have things that rely on relationships and political navigation, we have inequities.

Sheldon:

Yeah. And we'll continue to have inequities. And I think just having that awareness and just bringing these things to light can help with the progress that we're all trying to make. So I'm glad that you're doing this research. And so if you are in a central office, superintendents, assistant superintendents, district directors and things of that nature, I hope this information and the framework... Can you run those down one more time just to recap?

Kate Kennedy:

Yeah, absolutely. So the first is a caring vision that thinks holistically about care, staffing and organizing for care, resourcing for care, data and service of care, community responsive, equity-oriented care, and finally, caring leadership moves.

Sheldon:

Yes. Yes. And now you're currently working on this research, so it's not published as of yet?

Kate Kennedy:

The Phi Delta Kappan piece is out. That came out in February 2022. And we've got some other papers. I've got a paper in Teachers College Record looking at social-emotional learning indicators that came out in 2020. So pieces are starting to come out. And I'll have some more coming out later this year.

Sheldon:

Okay. I will definitely link the article from Phi Delta Kappan so folks can get their hands on that. Kate, is there any last, because I definitely consider you as providing a voice in equity. What is maybe a final word that you would like to provide to our listeners?

Kate Kennedy:

I think the final word would be that I think sometimes we get so busy with our work that we forget how much we matter. And I want the central office leaders and educators listening to know how much the central office matters. So in so many cases, when I met outstanding educators who were really doing equity-oriented, caring work, and I said, what empowers you or what keeps you going? They said, my superintendent. My superintendent had a vision for this. He pushed me or most importantly, he gave me, or she gave me autonomy and permission to do the work in the way that I thought we needed it to be done. So you've got every system, all 13,000 of them, they've got passionate, equity-oriented, connected and caring educators who can take their social-emotional learning initiatives to the next level.

               We just need to empower them and give them the resources and the space to do this work. We need to invite them to the executive level table. Okay. So if we're going to make room in our central office cabinet for somebody looking at finances and buildings and hiring, we also need to have someone at that table who's looking at care from an equity-oriented lens.

Sheldon:

I agree. Kate, if we have some folks that want to connect with you, what's the best way to reach you online?

Kate Kennedy:

I will drop my email and my website in for your listeners.

Sheldon:

Okay.

Kate Kennedy:

And I'd love to stay connected and hear about the good work that's going on, because it's going on. I've met tremendous folks out there who are thinking about care in radical, healing ways in this time of recovery. And I really think we're going in the right direction.

Sheldon:

Well, I'm glad to hear that. And I'll leave links in the show notes so folks can connect and, like I said, get their hands on your work as well. Kate, it's always a pleasure. Thank you so much for your time.

Kate Kennedy:

Thanks for having me, Sheldon.

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