COMMUNICATIONS ZOOM CALL WITH DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION COMMUNICATIONS STAFF Zoom Call on 2/25/2021 With Communication Officials from the U.S. Department of Education Kelly Leon, Press Secretary, Office of Communications and Outreach Kelly Leon most recently served as communications officer at the Kresge Foundation where she supported the foundation's Education and American Cities grantmaking programs. She previously served as communications and advocacy officer at the Institute for Higher Education Policy. She also previously served as assistant press secretary in the Office of Communications and Outreach and as confidential assistant in the Office of Postsecondary Education at the U.S. Department of Education during the Obama-Biden administration. Prior to her work at the Department of Education, she served in strategic communications roles at the District of Columbia Public Schools system and George Washington University. Ben Halle, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Communications, Office of Communications and Outreach Ben Halle served as the Biden for President Communications Director in Michigan, where he led communications strategies and developed messaging for the President's winning campaign. Prior to that, Halle served in senior communications roles on campaigns and in the U.S. House of Representatives. Kelly- Wants to partner with all of the Council communication directors and learn how from a press point, and that is her role, she is the press secretary, how she can partner with each of you as soon as the Secretary of Education is confirmed and we go out and go to different cities, states and districts. I imagine there are many ways I can partner with each of you. Question- How we can help get your message out? Kelly- Following a release of a report from the Congressional Budget Office about CARES Act spending and how much has been allocated versus how much has been spent, we’ve been fielding questions from reporters about why is it on our website that we have this tracker where all of the monies that has been obligated to states, why has this not been spent down. We’ve been spending some time helping people notice that there is a bit of a sequence in how those monies are rewarded to states and how it is spent down and allocated by the state to the sub grantee, which is the district or the LEA. Understanding more about how our districts are planning for use of those funds and finding ways to lift those plans up to broader audiences. To the degree that we can we’d love to help amplify what we are learning from you, your thinking around the plans for those funds, so it’s both the planning for those funds and it’s also what you are spending it on. Is it the HVAC, human capital, the nitty gritty facilities type things, having some concrete anecdotes about how individual districts are doing those things would be supremely helpful to us as we prepare for the Secretary’s arrival. Having those examples from districts would be incredibly helpful. Roseann Canfora, Cleveland Metropolitan School District- One challenge we have is while we’ve lost learning for an entire year while our kids have been remote and we have scrambled to get devices and hotspots, we have lost time and time costs money. We all know that when we do gets funds they are earmarked and you can only spend it for certain things and I think that this opportunity to speak directly to you, I’m really hoping the secretary is going to be as open to meeting with big-city superintendents because there are so many supports we need to have in place. Will Jones, Denver Public Schools- One of the challenges we are having in Denver is getting wireless access to our families. The infrastructure is not in some of these low-income areas and wireless provider companies say it’s not profitable. Is that something you can put on your future boss’s radar? Infrastructure during this pandemic would be something that will not only help the community, but something that gives companies some positive publicity. Our families need this access, but we don’t have the infrastructure at this point. Kelly- Thank you for your candor. I do know that the next volume of our guidance to states and districts around reopening schools there will be some strategies articulated around addressing the digital divide. But you raise an excellent point and I do thank you for sharing this. Jeff Simering, Council’s Director of Legislation- I hope you will not only work with the media but challenge the media on some of their misunderstandings. The CARES Act was appropriated at the end of a school year and we operate on state fiscal years, so most of us operate with the close of the fiscal year which is June 30th. So we were immediately straddling two fiscal years so for people that were expecting immediate expenditures that just was not going to be the case. And for those that are somehow claiming that year end $54 billion in K-12 funding, I don’t know of one of our school districts that has actually received or had that application for that money approved. We have yet to see a dime of it. And in some instances, we haven’t even seen the application packet. So hopefully you can help with their understanding cause they glob on to a CBO report and then run with it and then try to paint us with a brush that is quite inaccurate. Kelly- I hear you. I’m not afraid to partner but also challenge the media on how things are characterized. I’ve already talked to two reporters to deepen their understanding of these issues particularly around the sequence of how the spending occurs but also the additional layer of your state’s specific spending plans. We want to ensure there is accuracy and thoughtfulness. We can’t control everything, but we will do our darndest, I promise you that. I would like to look toward a time when we are clear of the pandemic and even before then, I imagine the secretary will want to be out and about in states and districts to see things firsthand. So I can see this network and Tonya as a liaison in helping us to find where those places are and where he might want to be and it could be, a way for us to partner in that regard. Because the coverage of national reporters often drives local reporting so I would like to be able to connect a reporter to one of you. To say I heard about this going on Cleveland and you may want to talk to Roseanne because she will be able to give you the context about what the ground is like in Ohio. Those are the sorts of things I want to be able to do because oftentimes national reporters are looking for ways to localize these stories, so if we are aligned on what we know we want to communicate I’d be happy to try and make those connections so there’s a seamless handoff so to speak when I could be help a reporter accurately approach some of these issues. Patti Moon, Aurora Public Schools- The issue of learning loss. A lot of reporters think just in terms of summer school that is covered. Our district is very mindful of that framework and how we talk about learning loss. This really isn’t going to be just summer school, we are going to have to deal with this over the next 3 to 5 years. So, we want to be holistic in how we approach that. Also, just being mindful that there are tools and skills that families have built during the pandemic that we need to recognize in a different way than just focusing on the loss. And on the national level I think the conversation around that is going to be important moving forward. I’m sure our districts will have lots of compelling stories to tell about that in the next few years. Kelly- I like this thoughtfulness about learning loss being a longitudinal endeavor, that’s it’s not something that will solved in the next months or even a year. It will take us several years and that our districts are planning for this over the course of several years. That does underscore our point about the funding and why it’s needed. This thoughtfulness about what it takes to address six, nine months of learning loss and what that means over the next few years is an important point. As you plan for that how does your community get visibility? Are you broadcasting that to your local community and to local press? Patti- I’ll be frank, I think we are really in the beginning of what the framework looks like and creating a timeline. But when we talk about the opportunities to accelerate learning and move forward, the technical skills students have built throughout this pandemic and their adeptness through Google classroom and all of that. How do we utilize that as a force moving forward. These are things we need to mindful of and thinking about. Kathy Koch, Broward County Public Schools- A big issue in Broward is the equity that has been brought to the forefront in the past year, not just through technology, but where people live. We spend a lot of money on mental health, not only for people to help people but also for people to find missing students.