$12 Billion Wasted: Baltimore Public Schools Fail Kids | Failure Factory Ep. 166

 How are kids graduating without being able to read in one of the most well-funded school systems in America?

 Investigative reporter Christopher Papst helped expose how Baltimore City Public Schools received billions in funding but students were leaving without mastering the basics. In this episode, he shares shocking details of how the school system has failed its students and the community — including why kids are pushed to the next grade after missing most of the school year and how policies like the “50% rule” make it easier to pass than to learn.

 Join our conversation to learn who's responsible, where the money has actually gone, and what we can do to improve our school systems beyond Baltimore.

 Learn more about what the full investigation uncovered in Chris’s book, Failure Factory: How Baltimore City Public Schools Deprive Taxpayers and Students of a Future:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FNDQQY1T/

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This episode was post produced by Podcast Boutique https://podcastboutique.com/

Transcript

Setup And Guest Introduction

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the Truman Charities Podcast. I am Jamie Truman, your host. What if I told you that one of the most well-funded public school systems in America is also one of the lowest performing, and that this has been going on for years in plain sight? Today's episode is one of the most eye-opening conversations I have had in years. I'm joined by Chris Paps, an investigative reporter and author of Failure Factory How Baltimore City Public Schools Deprive Taxpayers and Students of a Future. Chris is the lead reporter behind Project Baltimore, an eight-year investigation that exposed how billions of dollars flow into public education while students are quietly pushed through the system, many unable to read, write, or do basic math. We talk about the shocking reality of schools where not one single student tested proficient in any subject, why kids are passed to the next grade after missing most of the school year, and how policies like the 50% rule prioritize passing over learning. Chris also breaks down how discipline was removed from classrooms, how violence is underreported, why teachers are leaving in droves, and where millions of education dollars are actually going. This isn't just a Baltimore story. It's a warning to the rest of the country. If you care about education, accountability, or the future of our kids and our community, you're going to want to hear this. Now let's welcome Chris to Truman Charities. All right, Chris, thanks for so much for coming on and talking with us today.

SPEAKER_01 1:36

Yeah, thank you for having me. I appreciate it.

Birth Of Project Baltimore

SPEAKER_00 1:38

So I just finished. I read Failure Factory, how Baltimore City Public Schools deprive taxpayers and students of a future. And as you can see, I have all these post-its and uh kind of highlighting all over it. I found it extremely fascinating to read and actually a very easy read for someone that doesn't know much about the public school education system. So I really did enjoy that. So you were the lead investigative reporter for Project Baltimore, which you talk about in the book, which is Fox 45 news ongoing investigation on the Maryland public education system, particularly Baltimore. So tell me a little bit about how that came about. How did Project Baltimore come about?

SPEAKER_01 2:20

So in 2017, in January of 2017, I was working as an investigative reporter for the ABC News affiliate in Washington, D.C. And I got a call from my company. I'm owned by a company called Sinclair Broadcast Group, and they said, hey, we got this idea for something called Project Baltimore. Do you want to pursue this? And what the idea was, and this again, January 2017, was it's a team of five. There's two photographer editors, two producers, and myself. And we focus on one topic. And the idea was that we were going to do a long-term investigation into one topic. And the first topic that we chose was public education. And we started in Baltimore City, and since then, we have branched out into the suburbs of Baltimore, Maryland. And then I wrote this book, Failure Factory, because what's happening here is certainly happening throughout the country. And the reason that we picked public education, the reason that we picked Baltimore is that we could see in 2017, according to federal data, that Baltimore City Schools was one of the most funded large school systems in the country. At the time it was number three. And it and nine years later, it's still about number three. But also in 2017, we could see that it was one of the lowest performing large school systems in the country. Again, federal data, which it still is today. So we could see through federal data that this is one of the most funded, most expensive large school systems, but year after year, one of the lowest performing. So what Project Baltimore set out to do was to simply answer the question: why? How is this allowed to happen? Why is it tolerated that so much money is going into public education, but our kids are receiving such a poor education? And I wrote Failure Factory after doing this for eight years because I think that we have the answer now.

SPEAKER_00 4:08

So let's talk about your first viral story, which was in 2017, which I found absolutely fascinating, that six schools didn't have one student that was proficient in any state tested subject.

Viral Revelation Of Zero Proficiency

SPEAKER_01 4:22

Stunning, right? So six entire schools and not one kid tested proficient in anything, math or reading. And it's when we did that story, I, you know, we had just started Project Baltimore, and I thought to myself, like, this is a mic drop moment already. And what else are we gonna do? Like, everyone's gonna be outraged, and there's gonna be so much energy in Baltimore City, and the public officials are gonna come out and they're gonna condemn the school system, and they're gonna say, this is embarrassing, this is outrageous, they're gonna fire everybody, and the school system is going to improve. And when we did that story, it went absolutely viral. Outside of Baltimore and outside of Maryland, there was outrage, but inside of the city, there were absolute crickets. And I remember I had gotten here, I was only here for a few months, never been in Baltimore before. And I'm like, what? Because I know, like, well, I'm from like this little town in southeastern Pennsylvania. And if a story like that came out in my little town, you know, there'd be pitchforks. Like there'd be people going to the school board meeting saying, okay, gotta go, superintendents gotta go, all the teachers gotta go, and this is unacceptable. But in Maryland, it was just, you know what? Okay, we're just gonna accept this and we're gonna move on. And that was really eye-opening for me. And it really started me down the path of even reinforcing that question of why is this being allowed to happen? Because even after we do a huge story like that, that is really, I mean, I don't know if alarming is the least that you can say it is, because this is hundreds of kids and none of them are getting a proper education. But there are crickets in Baltimore City.

SPEAKER_00 6:04

Well, I liked you have a lot of examples in your book, which I love because you're talking to the people that are in these schools, in the parents and students, and you had one mom, her last name was Ford, and her son failed all classes but one. He was late 147 days, but they still pushed him through to the fourth grade. You also have another example of a mother who had a son in high school, and he went from ninth grade all the way up until 12th grade. And then she found out that he had to go back to ninth grade because he was late 272 times. He had failed 22 classes, and yet there was only one time that a teacher asked to have a parent-teacher conference. So tell me a little bit about why you think that these kids are just getting pushed through, even though they're not learning how to read and to write or math or any of these subjects that are necessary to be productive in life.

Passing Without Learning And Parent Stories

SPEAKER_01 7:03

When I came to Baltimore from Washington, DC, I had already developed a fairly decent reputation as an investigative reporter. And I had people coming to me in the school system, outside of the school system, and they said, listen, Chris, if you're really going to investigate this, what you're going to find is that the public education system no longer prioritizes educating kids. It prioritizes the acquisition of funding and then using that funding to hire adults to grow the political power and influence of public education. And when I first heard that in 2017, I straight out rejected it. My dad was the public school teacher in Pennsylvania for 35 years in the teachers' union. I went to public schools K through 12, my brother did as well. So to hear somebody tell me that the purpose of public education is no longer to educate kids, it's simply to acquire funding, I didn't believe. And as the years started to tick by, my pendulum started over here and it just started to move. And as I interviewed parents like you're talking about, who are telling the school system, my kids are failing, hold them back, and the school system is passing them anyway. Or when we're talking to parents who had also gone to the same school system and were never taught how to read, and now their kids are in the school system, the same school system that failed them. When we interviewed one kid in the book who his senior year, he missed 120 days of school and still graduated. There's 180 days in a school year. He missed 120, but yet still graduated. And you start asking, you know, how can that happen? And, you know, the reason I wrote Failure Factory is because I do now believe that it's true. I believe that the public education system, not just in Baltimore, not just in Maryland, but throughout the country, it does not prioritize the educating of children. It prioritizes the acquisition of funding and then using that funding to hire adults to grow the power and influence of the public education sector. And I don't want people to take my word for it here. I want you to look at Failure Factory and I lay out the data and I'm showing you the data. And I think the data really makes it clear that where the school system is putting its money, where the school system is putting its energy, it's not to educate kids, it's to grow the school system.

SPEAKER_00 9:23

Now tell me a little bit about, because you mentioned this in the book, about is it called the 50%?

SPEAKER_01 9:29

Yeah. 50% rule. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:31

Yes. When did that come about and why do you think it did?

SPEAKER_01 9:34

Okay. So that that has been in Baltimore City schools for quite some time, about 20 years, that's been there. And what I do in the book, what I do in Failure Factory, is that I see this book as a warning for America. So as people are reading the book, I show people school board policies. And my point in doing this is that if you see this policy in your local school system, it's an indication that your school system's academics are falling and the school system is trying to get more kids to pass without necessarily better educating them. And the 50% rule is one of those things in a school board policy that you may look at as a parent and you think to yourself, eh, you just kind of glaze over it. But it is phenomenally important when it comes to what the school system's intents are. So what the 50% rule says is that a student cannot earn below a 50% in a semester or marking period grade, regardless of anything. So that the student may never even show up to class. The student doesn't take any tests, quizzes, hands in, no homework, but they will get a 50%. They will get half credit for everything that they do. Now, if you ask the school systems why they do this, the intent is pretty clear. They want to pass more kids. Because let's say that you miss the first 45 days of school. You just don't come. Of your own choice, you just don't come. You come on that 46 day, and mathematically, you would not be able to go from a zero to a 60 and pass that class. So the school system's like, hey, don't worry about it. We're going to start you at a 50. So what that's doing is that is not prioritizing learning, it's prioritizing passing. That's what the school systems care about. Pass the kids, matriculate them, and get them to the next grade, eventually get them a high school diploma, and it doesn't matter if they learn. And things like the 50% rule are blatant examples of why that's the case.

SPEAKER_00 11:31

Now, do you think that that's because they get a certain amount of money per student that's in each grade?

The 50 Percent Rule Explained

SPEAKER_01 11:37

All of the decisions that a school system makes is based on funding. And funding is based on enrollment. So what the school systems are doing is everything they can to keep a child enrolled, because that's how they get their money. And as soon as a child leaves a school system, the school system loses that money. So a lot of people listening to this may ask, you know, why would you pass a kid to the next grade if they failed, you know, every class but one in third grade? Because you would think that the kid's going to fall farther and farther behind, which they do. And the answer is simple. If you pass the student and the student knows that they're just going to get passed, they're more likely to stay enrolled. It doesn't matter if they learn, it matters that they pass. And that is how you can get kids that are graduating who can't read, which we document in the book is happening. We talk to teachers who tell us they've handed diplomas to kids that the student cannot even read because of the way the systems are now set up to pass kids, not educate kids.

SPEAKER_00 12:40

Now, what I found was interesting is that you do have a section on how the teachers are unable, have their kind of hands tied behind their back about what they're able to do in the classroom. And there's a section in your book where you're speaking to a local police officer. And I'm not exactly sure what this was called, the program was called, but they started to make it so low-level crimes within the school, they don't call the police or they don't make an incident report. So can you tell me a little bit about that? Because the numbers in your book were really like staggering about, you know, how many. I think in one point you said there was over 3,000 incidents. And out of those 3,000, only 18 arrests out of that. And these were possession of firearms. There was, you know, sexual assault. I wouldn't call those low-level crime incidents. So can you tell me a little bit about that program and why it was implemented?

Funding, Enrollment, And Perverse Incentives

SPEAKER_01 13:35

One of the big themes of Failure Factory is the manipulation of data. And when you look at the data of an education system, there's not really that much there that I would argue that you can really trust because there's a lot of data in a school that can easily be manipulated and can easily be twisted. And one of the big ones that is manipulated is school violence, what you just asked about. Because schools don't want to be seen as violent places. And the easiest way to make your school look less violent is to simply not report the violence. You don't arrest a kid for bringing a weapon into a school. You don't suspend kids for fights in the school, because all of that will be documented and make the school look bad. So there's, we'll talk about the arrest because you had mentioned that. What we did was we looked at a 10-year period from 2009 to 2019, the year before COVID. Because once COVID hit, you know, it kind of skewed numbers because kids weren't in school. So if you look at those 10 years, what you would see is that the school system went from about 900 arrests a year, 900 kids being arrested inside of schools a year, to 18. There was a 98% drop in the number of kids being arrested. And it's not because the kids weren't acting any differently, it's simply because the adults responded to it differently and they stopped arresting the kids. But as you read in the book, if you look at other data like bullying, for example, as soon as the schools started to not suspend and arrest kids, the amount of bullying complaints went up. And it makes sense because you're keeping violent, disruptive kids in the classroom to bully the other kids. And what makes this so important is it is really difficult if you're a teacher to teach in that environment. It's really difficult if you're a student who wants to learn to learn in that environment. And when the school systems, particularly those in the cities, decided to take this route of stopping the so-called school-to-prison pipeline, you really see academic progress drop off because the disruptive students were kept in the classroom to continue to disrupt the educational process. It's an enormous problem throughout our entire country.

SPEAKER_00 15:57

Yeah, one of the examples that you had was uh this poor little eight-year-old girl in uh Dogwood Elementary, and she got an injury. She had to go head injury, had to go to the ER, and the incident was never reported at all. And you were saying that a lot of these things are happening, as you said, because they don't want to have this on their record of these types of incidents.

SPEAKER_01 16:16

Yeah. And what happened was, and where this really started to cripple American classrooms, was in January of 2014. And what happened was President Barack Obama came to Baltimore and he delivered a speech. And he said that his administration had looked into suspensions and arrests in public schools. And what they found were a disproportionate amount of students that were getting suspended or arrested were minority males, young black males. So President Obama came to the conclusion that the school systems must be discriminating against young minority males. So he sent guidance to all 50 states saying you better stop suspending and arresting young minority males. And that's what we're talking about here. This drastic drop in arrests, and there's also a drastic drop in suspensions. And what that did was it kept the disruptive kids in the classroom. And if you look at national test scores and you look at national data, you will see right around 2013, America peaked as far as educational outcomes. And then the outcomes started going down. And it almost exactly lines up with President Obama issuing that guidance because the school systems kept disruptive kids in the classroom and allowed them to disrupt the learning of every other kid. And the other thing I'll say about this is significantly important is that we also started losing teachers. And now there's a teacher shortage throughout America. Well, it's not because people don't care about kids or love kids or want to help kids. The teachers are leaving. And all the surveys say this because of the environment that has been created in public schools where the kids are not held accountable and the teachers do not have any power or any authority to discipline a child. And it all goes back to President Barack Obama in January of 2014 issuing that order.

Discipline Policies And Underreported Violence

SPEAKER_00 18:08

You know, that makes a lot of sense because if that's happening, trickling down. You also mentioned in your book, you have a couple examples of teachers that had to end up retiring early on disability because of injuries in the classroom from some of these students, and that it's impossible for them to teach if they have this disruptive child. And so I want to mention this one principal that you met. And she was uh Cecil Elementary. Uh, she's retired now. And I want you to mention kind of the way that she was running her elementary school that really had a positive impact and the impact that's happened since she's retired.

SPEAKER_01 18:44

There are shiny examples of public schools that are doing great things. And one of the chapters in Failure Factory is devoted to that to show people that it can happen. Public education can be really good. So one of the stories that we tell is Cecil Elementary. Roxanne Four was the principal there for many decades. And she was seeing incredible success. And when I say incredible, I mean she is getting the same per pupil funding as any other elementary school in Baltimore, traditional elementary school. She's pulling kids from the same impoverished and crime-ridden neighborhoods, but she is seeing proficiency rates that are literally nine and 10 times better than the neighboring elementary school. So I called her up and I went to her school, and I'm like, listen, you're doing something different here, and I'm interested in knowing what it is. So we went there and we spent a day with her. And one of the things that she had done was the thing that you see in a lot of schools, where the kids are held to a higher standard. And she's not dumbing down public education. She's not saying, listen, I understand that you live in poverty or you live in an area that has a lot of crime. She's like, I'm trying to get you out of that. So I'm not going to allow you to use that as an excuse. I'm going to hold you to this standard here. And this is the standard I want you to get to. And if you have kids, you understand that kids will achieve the level that the adults set for them. And I know with my kids, if I tell my daughter to do 10 jumping jacks, she'll do 10. If I tell her to do one, she'll do one. But in too many of our public schools, we're having our kids do one. And the other thing that you see that a lot of these principals are doing that are achieving success is what we just talked about. They're holding their kids accountable. They're saying, no, you are not going to act out at lunch. No, you are going to be quiet in the hallways and you're going to walk in a single file line. You know, we're going to have this order in the classroom. And one of the things that's frustrating for me as a journalist is that I go to these schools and I do these stories, and Baltimore City Schools seize them. And they certainly know of the success at schools like Cecil Elementary, but yet it's not replicated. And that's really one of these things that is really difficult for me to understand. And as I've been doing this for eight or nine years, and as I explained in Failure Factory, the only explanation you can really give is that the status quo is very profitable. And the people that are running the school systems make a lot of money. They're making big six-figure salaries. And they don't want the system to change because there's too much money coming into the system and they're just simply making too much money.

SPEAKER_00 21:19

Right. Because I forget what her name is that you wrote in the book, but she is in charge of all of Baltimore City Public Schools. And even after you know, Project Baltimore came out, you had all of these viral stories. She still is employed. She's still employed now, or is it just those eight years?

National Policy Shift And Teacher Exodus

SPEAKER_01 21:38

Not only is she employed, but she is the reigning Maryland superintendent of the year. And she is a finalist for national superintendent of the year. Now, a couple things to point out here is Dr. Her name's Sonia Santelesis, and she has been the CEO of Baltimore City Schools since Project Baltimore began. She's been there for over Nine years. She she started like six months before we started. And she's been there the entire time. Now, Baltimore City schools in 2024, which is the most recent year for which we had data, had a$1.7 billion budget. 10% of the kids tested proficient in math. So 90% of the kids in Baltimore City are not proficient in math. You go back to her first school year, which was 2016-2017, the school system had a$1.3 billion budget and 11% of the kids were proficient in math. In 2017 and 2024, the school system had 70% of their kids graduate. So if you put all that together, between the eight school years of 2016, 2017, and then 2024, the school system got 400 million additional dollars a year, which is about a 30% increase in funding. But the graduation rate didn't change. It stayed flat at 70%. Math proficiencies went down. They went from 11 in 2017 to 10 in 2024. Okay? That's the Maryland superintendent of the year. That is a finalist for national superintendent of the year. And I'll say this: it all goes back to the original premise of the book, which is the public education systems do not prioritize education, they prioritize funding. Otherwise, you would not have somebody like that in Baltimore City schools who's your superintendent of the year, when the only metric that got better was funding.

SPEAKER_00 23:32

Yeah. I looked in your book, you mentioned that in 2021 uh they passed a large public education increase, the blueprint for Maryland's future.

SPEAKER_01 23:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:44

And so what do you think they're using all this extra funding for?

SPEAKER_01 23:49

Okay. Just a couple more numbers here. Because the number, the numbers are what's really important to prove the point. I don't want people to just believe me that the schools are about funding, not educating. The numbers will show you this. So the numbers are this. In 2017, with that$1.3 billion budget, Baltimore City schools had$5,142 teachers. Eight school years later, with$400 million additional dollars, the school system had$5,142 teachers, according to the Maryland State Department of Education. The exact same number of teachers. So the school system got a 30% increase in funding,$400 million a year, and didn't hire any teachers. So where did the money go? Well, the school system hired 1,300 additional employees with that money. They mostly were director level positions, C-suite level positions in central office, principals, assistant principals, assistant superintendents. They literally did not hire any teachers, which that's the type of data that you have to look at. And you have to say, if you were really focused on educating kids, why would you not take$400 million a year in additional monies and hire teachers? And you can see the outcomes as a result that what we just talked about. The graduation rate over eight school years didn't change. Math proficiencies went down. Why? Because they didn't hire any additional teachers.

A Model School’s High Standards

SPEAKER_00 25:19

So at the end of your book, I love your last sentence. And you talk about the$12 billion between 2017 and 2024 that has been spent on funding. And you say, who did that$12 billion actually benefit most? And so from what you're saying, the people that benefited most were the higher level employees in Baltimore. So what do we do to solve this issue? What are your thoughts?

Leadership, Budgets, And Stagnant Outcomes

SPEAKER_01 25:51

I think whenever I get that question, I break it up in there's there's two solutions here. There's the policy solution and the political solution. So, real quickly, the policy solution is pretty simple. You have to run more schools like Roxanne for. You have to expect more from the kids, you have to discipline those kids, and you have to make sure they understand that they are expected to achieve and they're not going to have excuses. It doesn't mean that you don't understand where these kids come from and you're not sympathetic to it. But if your job is to improve their life situation, you have to demand more. Okay. Hold them accountable, get the problematic kids out of the classroom. Doesn't cost any money, by the way. That is a free solution that doesn't cost any more money. So that's the policy side. On the political side, like we talked about earlier in this episode, that when we we did that story in 2017 about the six schools, and I thought it was a mic drop moment, and no public officials in Baltimore City said anything. And the school system is not going to improve unless the people who fund the school system, which is the politicians, demand that it improves. The CEO of Baltimore City Public Schools, her total compensation is half a million dollars a year. And 10% of her kids are proficient in math. And she's been there for nine years. This is her 10th year. Half a million dollars a year? I mean, I think most people listening to us right now would think that's a pretty healthy amount of money to make for such low levels of expectations and for such low levels of academic outcomes for the kids. So you have to have a populace that's going to vote for politicians that say, no, school system, if we're going to give you$400 million additional dollars a year, you need to give us better educated kids. If you live in Maryland, you said you're in Montgomery County, you've seen how much your taxes have gone up. You have seen how much your car registration and vehicle emission taxes and all these other things have gone up. A majority of that money is going to public education. But when the money goes to the public schools, there is no expectation that the schools deliver a better product, which is a better educated student. That is what has to change. They have to be held accountable.

SPEAKER_00 28:04

So I read your book, and I'll put the link on it to be able to get your book, and it's on Amazon and anywhere else, everywhere else? Barnes Noble is a very good thing.

SPEAKER_01 28:14

Anywhere books and Barnes and Noble, Goodreads, yeah, my distributors Ingram. It's every the book's everywhere. Anywhere you want to get it, it'll be there.

SPEAKER_00 28:20

Chris, is there anything that we haven't covered that you think someone should know?

SPEAKER_01 28:24

So you live in Montgomery County. I do. Do you go to Baltimore often?

SPEAKER_00 28:28

You know what's really funny is that I used to, I grew up in Annapolis. I lived in Baltimore for almost two years, and it was getting bad then. And I I try to avoid going to Baltimore.

SPEAKER_01 28:39

Yeah, exactly. The reason that you avoid going to Baltimore is because it's a struggling city.

SPEAKER_00 28:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:44

And every single year, it's one of the most deadly and one of the most crime-ridden cities, not just in America, but in the Western Hemisphere. The population is shrinking fast. It used to have nearly a million people. Now it's down to 550,000. Current trends, it'll be under 500,000 soon. You have 15,000 blighted structures that nobody lives in. 20 to 25% of the populace in the city lives in poverty. It's a really struggling place. And I make the point in Failure Factory that Baltimore City is really at the end stages of what happens to a society when there's a failing public education system. And I wrote this book because we can't allow this to happen in the rest of the country. There are just no economic opportunities in Baltimore, and people are getting out. And the people that are stuck there, it's extremely unfortunate that they have very few opportunities. And I hope that people read Failure Factory, they understand what's really happening inside of our public schools. Many of the things that we talked about today, you know, it's that's probably 25% of what the book is. And you look at the other 75%, and it's really eye-opening of what's happening. And we have to demand more. And even if you send your kids to private school or you homeschool your kids, I understand that people have to make the best decisions for their families, but just understand that 90% of the kids in America go to public school. And that means 90% of future voters and 90% of future taxpayers are in these public schools. We have to hold them accountable. We have to demand more. And we have to say if you're going to take our tax dollars, you need to do a better job of educating our kids. And that's the message of Failure Factory. And if people pick up a copy of the book and read it, you know, I'm very easy to get a hold of on social media. Just reach out to me and let's continue the conversation.

Where The Money Actually Went

SPEAKER_00 30:38

Chris, thank you so much for coming on. I picked up your book. I thought it would take me a week to finish, and it took me two days, maybe, but I couldn't put it down. It was really interesting. And so I encourage everyone to read it. I put it up on my social media. I know there's quite a few people that have purchased it just from my feedback of how much I really enjoyed it. So thank you for all the incredible work that you put in to telling these stories that a lot of people wouldn't know about otherwise. And so I'm going to have all of the information in the show notes and how you can follow Chris, you can get in contact with Chris, and then also, of course, how you can purchase Failure Factory. I want to thank everybody for tuning in to another episode of the Truman Charities podcast. Till next time. I hope that you enjoyed this episode as much as I did. And I really enjoyed reading Chris's book. So please make sure to get yourself a copy. We've touched on such a small surface of all the information that's in the book. So please make sure to pick up a copy. If you liked this episode, please make sure to rate and review the Truman Charities podcast. As you know, we are a hundred percent volunteer-based organization. So the reviews really do help introduce our podcast to new listeners. If you'd like to follow us, you can follow us on Facebook at Truman Charities, on Instagram at Jamie underscore Truman Charities, and you can follow me on LinkedIn at Jamie Truman. So you don't miss any of our future events or Bethesda's best happy hours, please go to Truman Charities.com and sign up for our newsletter. Thanks again for tuning in to another episode of the Truman Charities Podcast. Until next time.