Season 2 episode 2: Dr. Katy Anthes, former Colorado education commissioner

Transcript

Alexis Menocal Harrigan 0:08

welcome back everyone. Today we are joined by someone who needs very little introduction in the Colorado education community. Katie Anthes having served as Commissioner of Education in Colorado from 2016 to 2023, Dr. Katie Anthes is widely respected for her commitment to listen to diverse perspectives and her legacy of developing solutions that are focused on productive middle ground. Continuously keeping students' best interest as her top priority. She focuses on providing high quality expertise and support to policymakers, districts, and educators working to enhance student achievement. As Commissioner Katie worked with the Colorado State Board of Education, the legislature, and the governor to craft and implement a vision of education of Colorado. She led the Colorado Department of Education, an$8 billion agency dedicated to helping districts achieve greater things for students. Prior to serving as commissioner, she had an impressive career focused on strategy, policy, research, and leadership effectiveness. On a personal note, there are times I will just say I feel exhausted or cynical about the state of education, especially recently. And I had the privilege to hear one of Katie's talks recently, and it left me in others in the room feeling inspired to continue engaging in this space even when it is messy or uncomfortable. I think our listeners are in for a real treat with this interview, so welcome Katie. Thank you so much. I'm excited to be here. Jumping in just for our listeners who followed your work especially when you were commissioner, what have you been up to since you left that role and how are you spending your time now? What's energizing you?

Katy Anthes 1:38

Yeah, I stepped down from being commissioner after the COVID crisis subsided. And really that was a personal choice on my end just from sheer exhaustion of being commissioner seven years and then the last three years being commissioner. So you basically working around the clock. I did a little bit of reflection when I stepped down and thought, where do I wanna contribute next? And it really. In the moment we're in our history of polarization and political debate and discussion that can go off the rails, shall we say. I really wanted to lend my expertise and some support and some skill building to educators, both school board members, superintendents. Teachers how do we navigate this world? How do we navigate this world of political polarization? I had to do that a little bit as commissioner. Because as our state board is politically elected from around the state, which just by nature means that we have conservative members and liberal members of the board. And so for, really 10 years, even though I was commissioner for seven, I was a staff person for three years prior to that and was working with the board then. I had to figure out a way to listen, navigate, make sure people felt heard, and try to find a middle ground that's unpopular right now. Finding a middle ground. But that's what I felt was needed for Colorado students and for stability in our state. And as I moved out of being commissioner, I wanted to do more of that work, so I started an initiative called Forward from Polarization to Progress, not polarization to perfection, but polarization to progress. How do we make progress in moments of political polarization? And I've been developing that and working with that and doing workshops and keynotes around the country to help people navigate this challenging time we're in.

Alan Gottlieb 3:42

Yeah. I find that really interesting in part because even since you stepped down as commissioner, arguably with the reelection of Donald Trump and everything, things are even more polarized than they maybe were even back then. So how has that affected as you un unravel this work and do this work, ha has it become even more challenging, and how do you deal with that?

Katy Anthes 4:00

Yes and no. Yes, it's become more challenging in that I think the rhetoric is even harder to deal with. And so people often say to me Katie, how do you how do you stay true to your values or your beliefs when the other side is so opposite to you or whatever? And so I try to say there are ways. To do that there and there are red lines that you can say, no, I'm still gonna fight for these things, but you can still fight for things in a way that doesn't dehumanize another. And so how do you do that? So it has gotten harder because I think the examples are even harder. But I will also say, just to link back to Alexis's question around what energizes me. Is that people are tired of this. The majority of people are tired of this, and it's easy to lose sight of that because when we go home and we watch the news or we are on our social media channels, or we're looking at comments in articles that are written, somebody told me, never look at the comments because you'll lose faith in humanity. We can easily think that we all hate each other and that we all want to be this polarized and we all want to be this separate, but we actually don't. And so people come to my keynotes and people sometimes come up to me, professionals that have done really hard things come up to me and they're in tears saying, I really needed to hear that. And I really needed to. Just reconnect with the fact that like we are all humans and we can disagree and we can do it well, or do it far better than we're doing on the national scene right now. And so yes, it's harder and yes, there's actually more energy around it because it's harder.

Alan Gottlieb 5:54

At the risk of going off on a tangent that I don't really want to do, but I think it's on my mind so much as a lot of people's right now, and this does circle back to education. Even though it, when I first start saying what I'm about to say, it won't sound like it is last week with that horrible ice shooting of the woman in Minneapolis. One of the things that was really disturbing to me and I heard David Brooks the New York Times columnist talking about this on the news hour. He said that people in his feed 100% based on their political ideology, either saw an innocent woman get shot by a guy who needed to shoot her, or a woman who was aggressively about to run an ice officer over who got what she deserved. And to me it's if people are living in such different realities, and this applies to education too, that they don't even see something the same way. How do you navigate that? Yeah,

Katy Anthes 6:41

It's one of the things we talk about that there are multiple versions of truth now, and that's being articulated by whatever political party you're in. So I, I talk about navigating that in two ways. Number one, it's really hard, so there's no magic bullet to that. But number two. It, at the risk of sounding Pollyanna-ish, it is about relationships and about building trust, one-on-one face-to-face with people you engage with. So this is much easier to do at the local level than at the national level where we are seeing something from multiple states away. And the only information we're getting is on the national feeds. It's much easier to do at the local level. So all we can do is build those relationships at the local level because then if we have the relationships first, we can have a more nuanced discussion about facts and truth. It's sad that we have to have that nuanced discussion because there used to be maybe not all the time, but there used to be a more agreed upon set of facts. So that is a challenge we're working on, but. It, this all comes down to relationship building and the reason I started this initiative is we've gotten so far away from that, especially after COVID, like everything is virtual, everything is online, and we need to actually say, we actually have to reconnect as humans. First before we can have meaningful disagreement. And my work is all about meaningful disagreement. That's important. It's an important thing to have, but how do we do it in a way where we don't just get completely paralyzed by us versus them?

Alexis Menocal Harrigan 8:27

That's a great point. And you know what I appreciate you saying is like you can still have your liveness and your red lines, how. How would you advise someone who is thinking about when do you compromise, when do you hold firm? When do you step away? And when do you just fight until you have no more fight left in? Like those are hard decisions that I think a lot of us wrestle with, especially thinking about the education leaders that are listening, whether they be principals or district administrators who, may be fighting internal battles, but also might be fighting like external forces that are out of their control as well.

Katy Anthes 9:02

Yeah, the first thing I say is don't try not to have kneejerk reactions. So this is one thing I had to learn as commissioner early on. I knew what I was getting into'cause I was a staff person at the Department of Ed, so I knew my divided board. I had been a part of those divisions and those difficult board meetings, so I knew exactly what I was facing. And it is very easy when you get angry or when something you disagree with something. To have a knee jerk reaction to say, that person is bad, I don't have to eng engage with them because of it. And they don't agree with me and so forget it. And walk away. I had to learn very quickly that I couldn't do that, my board chair was of a different political party than me at the beginning and then at the end, and so I. We had to talk, and if I wanted a job and I wanted to do something decent and good for Colorado, I had to listen. I had to stay. I had to not have those knee-jerk reactions. So sometimes you ha, the advice I give is, you gotta have the knee-jerk reaction like when you're at home alone and you're frustrated and you need to do that. And then you need to say, what question can I ask this person? You know where I get underneath the initial comment? Because sometimes we all do it, right? We all say things out of anger or out of frustration, or. For many reasons, and you have to ask, I, I call it, ask at least three questions, tell me why you said that. Can you help me understand where you're coming from? Can you help me understand the experiences you are building on that made you see it this way? Can we, and ask questions. The other thing I do say, and I did this I wrote what my leadership, I called it my leadership approach. When I was hired as commissioner, I wanted to make sure the board members knew I didn't call it my red lines, but I wanted to know. I wanted to make sure they knew where my values were and knew what I would fight for, and I always promised them I would fight for them respectfully, but that if things got too far off this. Realm. Sometimes you have to con compromise, but if it got too far off, then I wasn't the right person for them. And that would be fine with me. Like it's, that's, you have to be an adult and sometimes, leaders have to fit the boards that they're working for. But I did that reflection in that work before I got into the hard spaces so that I could, and I did look back at it.'cause sometimes those hard spaces can. Your brain can start, treading water and going, wait, where am I? What's happening? And I look back at my approach, my compass. Am I following my compass? Am I following what I need? And am I expressing myself so that people know where I'm coming from and they're not guessing? So you gotta do that as a leader these days. But I will say, don't always assume. This is like the John hit work on the coddling of the American mind. Don't always assume just because you're offended. That, like you shouldn't engage with that person. I've been en, I've been offended many times and I've still engaged, I've still asked those three questions. You know what, I, can you help me understand that? What did you mean by that? What experience do you have that I don't, that is leading you to that conclusion because I wanna learn, and I really do. I wanna know how different perspectives come to be. But I'll just say it's really hard to do. You have to practice practice. Did you

Alan Gottlieb 12:47

come up with those questions on your own, those three questions? Or is that something that you read somewhere that you just adopted? I'm curious about that.'cause those are great questions. I think,

Katy Anthes 12:56

I don't know that for sure, but I probably read it somewhere and was like, yeah, that's a good one. But I, I don't like, I can't pinpoint where I got them, but those are, the reason I like those questions is they're nonjudgmental. So they don't, sometimes you can ask a question and you have contempt, like dripping off your tongue, when you ask a question or you have condescension dripping off your tongue and people can read through that. And so those are very open questions that don't have judgment can you tell me more about that? Can you? Yeah. Can you tell me about your experience?'cause you have a different experience than I do.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan 13:31

There is so much to unpack there. And Alan, I feel like we have to take a lot of this advice too, because I'm just thinking about some of the times, especially early on in the podcast, when we would just go off the rails and about some of our frustrations with DPS or the state of the world. And I've, I have slowly been trying to move more towards this direction of. And easier said than done and horrible that I'm saying this, but like recognizing the humanity in people and not just say that person doesn't know what they're talking about, or they're dumb, or whatever. But we have to model like what? What we hope to see in the world. And I hope we can continue doing that on the board talk podcast. I agree with

Alan Gottlieb 14:10

all that. And there's a place for outrage when outrageous things happen. Yes. I guess I'll say that.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan 14:16

Yeah. There's a couple of just pieces I wanted to pull out of what you just said there, Katie. First, I love the advice of having a leadership document when you come into that new role to share with your board. I had the benefit of, in several jobs ago. A supervisor of mine did that actually. And he said, here's how I work. Here's what you should know about me. Here are my values. And then ended up doing the same thing when I eventually became a supervisor. And it's something that I've gotten positive feedback on when you enter a new role, giving that to your, either your your supervisor, but also if you are a people manager, giving it to your employees. Here's what you should know about me as you work with me as a new person. So that's one. Perfect. No, you're good. That was actually perfect'cause I was just talking over that time, so we'll stop on that and then I'll continue with my, basically I was just saying good job on the leadership document. Okay. Then the other piece that I wanted to just back up a little bit, and we probably should have done this at the beginning Katie, is we've got a feedback that sometimes we can get way too wonky on policy. This isn't policy, but can you just step back for a moment and explain to our listeners who may not be familiar. How does the state board of education, the commissioner and the like, can you explain the governing structure in Colorado for those who may not be aware and how and what people often I'm, I've realized, don't know. Not every state's the same. Yeah. So can you just spend like a minute or two. Explain the Colorado governance model.

Katy Anthes 15:37

Yeah, sure. Colorado is one of six states that has this model, so we're actually in the minority with this model. But we have a politically elected state board of education. They are elected by congressional district, which means that they represent the whole. State. And that is our governing body for education. The governor does not, this is the different part. The governor does not have any direct power over who the commissioner is, what the commissioner does who the board is, what the board does in many states. Governors either appoint the commissioner or they appoint the board who appoints the commissioner, which means they have a lot of power. In Colorado, they have soft power. They can influence, they can talk to the board members, they can express their desires. But it is the board, solely the board that makes that decision. Of course, the commissioner is. Bound by the laws of the state. So if the, if the governor signs bills into law, if the legislature do, does laws, the commissioner takes an oath of office to implement those laws. So they have direct power there.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan 16:55

And so because you're a separate agency, not under the governor's office, can you explain to folks how then does that, how does CDE show up, let's say in the budget process? How does CDE show up? In, in lobby or in advocacy discussions when they're trying, when the board may have, when the board may have their own agenda, for example.

Katy Anthes 17:17

Yeah how CDE shows up with the legislature and the governor is dictated by the board. The board. As commissioner, I would have to go to our board first many months before taking it to the JBC and I would have to say, here's my.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan 17:33

Sorry. The JBC is a joint budget committee for those who don't know, and they are the ones that listen to the different agencies. They present their proposals, and then the JBC ultimately creates that first budget before it goes to the legislation for full passage.

Katy Anthes 17:46

Yes,

Alexis Menocal Harrigan 17:47

thank

Katy Anthes 17:47

you. And so I have to, as commissioner, I would have to navigate that with the board and get their agreement and their desires and their priorities first. Then I would, and in most cases the board chair and vice chair came with me to the joint budget committee and we would. Prepare and present our budget. And then the joint budget committee would take that into consideration. The governor's office always had a chance to weigh in. But the, it was the board that decided whether, they wanted to take that weigh in from the governor's office or not? In some cases we did, and in some cases we didn't.

Alan Gottlieb 18:27

Taking a half step back because I think this is really interesting having been the commissioner for several years, and I don't know if you've ever worked in another state another state's education department, I don't think you have, but what did you see as the advantages of that autonomy from the governor? And what possible disadvantages were that are in that structure?

Katy Anthes 18:45

Yeah, I, here's what I'll say about governance structures. There is no perfect one. Like it, it was funny, many years ago I worked for the Education Commission of the States, and we always had a, we always had an element of governance and what is the right governance model? And now that I have been in. Governance models, and I now work with other state agencies, not as a staff person, but I see their governance model and the struggles they have, there is no perfect one. So it all goes back to that relationship building again. How do you build relationships? How can you have influence no matter who's in power, no matter who's in official charge? And so the pros of it are. I think sometimes you I do I know that you can have more moderated proposals. I know that's a bad word to have, moderation, but I actually still believe in moderation. So because I worked for progressive and conservative, more members of the board, we had to compromise on stuff and our budget reflected that compromise. Sometimes if you get a governor on one side or the other, and they don't have that moderating. Or it's just their way or the highway. So we have more people that are involved, which means more perspectives are involved, which is a good thing. And it can also be a challenging thing because you may not get everything you want because you have to moderate your opinions and your desires in, in as reflected in the budget,

Alan Gottlieb 20:18

right? Okay, thanks. Shifting gears a little bit the state is obviously in this period that could go on for a while of declining enrollment and budget challenges both connected to that and for other reasons. Meanwhile, like there are some other districts like Aurora that are gonna be seeing growth in the coming years. What do you think the impacts of this are and how should districts be preparing for this and how can the state prepare for this going forward?

Katy Anthes 20:46

Yeah. I mean it's I hate to say, but it is what it is and I think it is. It does. Mean that we have to get better at having hard conversations. Because districts that are seeing declining enrollment, they're, they're gonna have to make hard decisions, which oftentimes includes closing schools, and those are the hardest. Community conversation to have by far because schools are emotionally connected to the community. Students are emotionally connected to their teachers and their folks, and so no matter what the technical right answer is. The emotional answer is always much more difficult. And so it even begs us to get better at having these hard conversations because, demographics are showing, and this is across the country too, despite having some communities that are growing because of cost or because of cost, the ability to have a better, quality of life because things are less costly in those communities. Across our country, we're gonna have to reckon with this declining enrollment, we're just not having as many kids as a country. So that means we have to have, get really good at having hard conversations about, how are we going to. Spend the limited resources we have, how are we gonna do that in a way that can still support students? And how are we gonna get creative about that and get thoughtful about that, and not just be in our own sacred cow, ideological place to say you can't ever close a school because that's, against,'cause that's bad for the community. And it's yes. And. We have to close schools. Yeah. It just based on the economics of it.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan 22:43

Yeah. Thank you. So as we think about students entering school, imagining a kindergartner, ENT entering school this coming fall. Today a demo, excuse me, a Colorado public school. What gives you the most hope and worry as you think about the next 10 to 15 years? At that point, you know that kindergartner will have entered high school and ideally will have graduated and gone onto some sort of post-secondary, either going into the workforce or going in to college alt alternative pathway. What are your biggest hopes and your biggest fears for the state of education? Over that time,

Katy Anthes 23:21

My biggest hopes are always around progress. And though it may not seem like it sometimes when we get hooked into our own little issues. There actually is progress now COVID set us back and I know the NA scores are not good too. But there, there is progress. Before COVID hit, we were making baby steps in progress on achievement. We are. Seeing much more national focus on the science of reading, on focusing on that, on honing in on that, on making sure we're doing that. We haven't seen all the results of that work yet, but I do believe it's gonna show we are impatient with the policy cycle and the outcomes of that policy cycle. I am impatient too, however. My PhD is in public policy and policy cycles take a decade. From great point. From the idea of a policy to passing a policy, to implementing the policy, to letting the policy take seed to seeing the outcomes. That's 10 years sometimes. And then when you have a three year pandemic in the middle of it, it is gonna set us back more than one year. So it, it set us back a couple years and that's true, but I'm hopeful that we bounce forward. We're seeing the same conversations with math now, so that's good. I think there's both hope and fear with ai, right? My fear with AI as we get away from knowledge generation. We have to still generate knowledge within students' brains so that they can use AI and be, high quality human beings and be ethically thoughtful. And the other fear I have is just the continuing spiral of polarization. I very much worry that we are not modeling for our students how to have great discussions, debates, how to have disagreements, how to not hate each other just because we disagree. There used to be a time where you could disagree with stuff and you would still like that person and you would still be friends with that person. Now it's almost like. You have to cancel that person out of your life if they disagree. And I very much worry about that my hardest time as commissioner was when I would be in a board meeting or watching a board meeting where the adults weren't. Doing conflict and disagreement. When they weren't behaving well because kids were watching that and students were watching that. And modeling is a very contagious thing. Which is why I do the work I do now. Like, how can we model what we wanna see our students do? And if we're in sixth grade and we're doing a debate in sixth grade, how would we want them to act? That's how we need to be acting too.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan 26:29

Yeah, it's interesting you say that last part because yesterday when I was driving my sixth grader to school he, we were just talking about class and what he's learning right now, and he said. I feel like all my classes were talking about politics. Why do I have to know anything about politics? I'm too young for this. I can just learn about that stuff later. And I was just like, oh, this is my chance because he like has zero interest in what I do, has no clue, like and it was, one of those moments as a parent of I have to get this just right. And obviously I've stumbled through it and said, here's why this matters. And. Things that resonate with him that you don't think at that age? Like oftentimes if it's when it's appropriate, sometimes I'm like, oh shoot, he shouldn't listen to this. We listen to NPR on the way in or the daily, every morning. And more and more I'm just like, I have to turn this off. Like he can't be listening to some of this stuff. Yeah. So it all that to say as a parent of a middle school child who's now starting to just be more aware of their external world it's hard and more of a reason I think for us to mo, for me as a parent to model better behavior so that we don't just write people off and we disagree with them. Yeah. Yep. Thank you.

Alan Gottlieb 27:37

Because it's very current, I wanted to ask you about the new figures about graduation and dropout rates that came out yesterday that showed in improving graduation rates in a lot of places. I know Denver was touting theirs and reduce dropout rates, and I just am curious, like trying to put that in context because I don't always understand. Exactly like what should be celebrated there and what should beed with caution, because it doesn't necessarily tell the whole story. And I'd love your perspective because sat at the top of the CDE for a number of years about, obviously you wanna spin it positively, but are there things that you should also take with a grain of salt?

Katy Anthes 28:14

Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's a good thing for everything, right? We always need to think about about how the nuance of things. So yes the headline is great and I always think it's great that we have less kids dropping out. It being in school in any way, shape or form is better than the alternative. We know that from lots of different research. And having a high school diploma is. Great. And so that, that is something to be celebrated. Now the thing that everybody needs to know is in Colorado we have we have what we call graduation guidelines. And so it's not a hard and fast. Set of outcomes that every single student has across the state. Different districts can articulate their guidelines based on some standards that CDE sets based on the board direction. But there is, I would say there is wiggle room for, very rigorous graduations and a graduation, guy, expectations and, maybe expectations that are not as high as some of those, so there's always wiggle room, but I still believe that overall headline is really good news. And the more we can engage students in school and keep them in school and get them a diploma, the better.

Alan Gottlieb 29:38

I always wonder whether, following touting graduation rates, increasing is a good thing to do, and at the same time, it's important to look at things like remediation rates. And whether districts or schools are pushing kids through to make their numbers look better. And whether, it's important to somehow combine those two metrics to get a truer picture of what's going on.

Katy Anthes 29:57

Yeah. That would certainly be a way to do that, a way to get a truer picture. And I still believe that most folks are good actors and most districts are good actors. I think some of that can happen for sure, pushing folks through. But I do still believe that folks are doing good work trying to engage their students in school and trying to get them prepared for the future.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan 30:24

Before we start asking the last couple of questions here and start wrapping it up, I'm gonna just ask a totally out of left field question that I know is a controversial one. So I'll be very curious to see how you answer this, Katie, we have, I think a, I just Googled it, 178 or 179 school districts in Colorado. My question is, do we have too many school districts in the city? 64 counties?

Katy Anthes 30:46

Yeah. When I became commissioner, or even before I became commissioner, I learned very quickly that you never talk about consolidation. Yeah. Like

Alan Gottlieb 30:56

third rail.

Katy Anthes 30:57

Yeah. That's why you wanna lose your job quickly. That's the direction you would go.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan 31:02

And can you explain why that's such a controversial topic and I ask I know this too, but. I just think it's really interesting. I've had more of these conversations recently with friends, especially those in the legislature.

Katy Anthes 31:12

Yeah. It's controversial because what I said before, education is deeply emotional and deeply connected to your community. And in many communities, maybe not always in Denver or in the metro area where we have so many other things going on, but in rural communities, the school is the center of community. It is the center of entertainment, of engagement, of connection, of friendships, of learning, of everything. And so people do not wanna lose that connection, that identity. That's. Center of their world, and I totally get that. So I think when we talk about consolidation sometimes we talk about it's just a dollars and cents thing. I think we need to broaden our. Our discussion of what that means because that sense of community and connection is also very valuable and it's hard to put a cost on that or put a dollar figure on that. But that is important because that. That generates outcomes too. It's hard to make that causal, link from a data or a research perspective, but it is really important. So yes, while I think that there are some rural communities or some even urban communities that may have some benefits. From combining. I also know that would come with costs. And so that's a very, another very difficult question to have, but I don't think it's a easy thing to say yeah. Let's consolidate into, this number of districts and that will be best for our economy or our dollars and cents doesn't work like that in education. There's so many other factors and variables that are important to weigh. That

Alexis Menocal Harrigan 33:00

was one of the best answers I've ever heard on that question. Thank you.

Alan Gottlieb 33:03

Wanna wrap up, Alexis? I don't, yeah. So

Alexis Menocal Harrigan 33:05

one of my last questions is are there policy conversations you wish the public were having more Honestly, about schools right now?

Katy Anthes 33:16

Yeah. And this is, something I'm trying to. Talk a lot about, in my keynotes and in my workshops is can we be more intellectually humble? Not immediately because we're a Democrat or a Republican or a this or a that. Can we ask questions and be intellectually humble and actually. Be intellectually honest about the information we receive. And so one of those issues that I struggle with is the choice issue. School choice. I, I feel like Colorado used to be a little bit more independent on that. Question. I will acknowledge that school choice and the laws around school choice look very different across the country. And those have different outcomes across the country and they drive different behaviors across the country. But in Colorado, I think we have a pretty, some pretty good guardrails around school choice. But I think people have gotten into this thing of if you're a Democrat, all charters are bad or all choice is bad. And if you're a Republican, all choice is good and we've gotta do all that. And I don't think we're having an intellectually honest discussion about it anymore, and we're not. Connected to what parents and communities want. A lot of the data shows that school choice is happening whether we want it or not. And parents want it. Parent and why wouldn't you? Why wouldn't you as a parent want to make a. A thoughtful selection about what your child's needs are to what school they may attend. And so I've felt Colorado slipping a little bit away from their independent view of this and getting caught up into the national ideology about what that looks like. I push on that a little bit.

Alan Gottlieb 35:14

One thing I think happened after COVID here, as well as other places, and this just popped into my head, so it's not a full fully formed question, but it, and it may have to do with if people feel like choice. Choice options get too constrained. Is there is quite a growth in homeschooling and I think it's, I think that's a trend that's continued here in Colorado, that there's quite a bit of homeschooling going on. And I'm curious, what do you think are the potential benefits of that for the state and what are the potential pitfalls and dangers for the state of a growing homeschooled population?

Katy Anthes 35:46

Yeah that's a good question, and I don't know that I've fully thought that through. That would be one of those ones where I would wanna have more curiosity and I would wanna learn a little bit more because that is something Colorado Department of Ed didn't have a lot of control over. So we, the pitfall is we don't really know about those kids. We don't know how they're doing. We don't know if they're getting the skills they need. They may very well be. I just don't know. So that's, that one's harder for me to answer'cause I don't have a lot of good data around it. But for sure that is an option and people have been exercising it more, especially since COVID, so it's probably worthy of a deeper dive.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan 36:27

And then the other, going back to something you just said about, more of that independence and how we thinking, we're thinking about choice. I just wanted to highlight for folks if you're interested in learning more about this. I, just read a report. A friend who I think is a listener, also shared with this, and a shout out to that person who they know who they are, who shared with me the Wallace and the Fordham institute actually recently, like in October of last year, released a report. It was like one of the largest of its kind surveys of school boards, local school boards. And some of the findings were really interesting and it aligns with what you were saying, Katie is well. Local school boards. And this is what a lot of what board talk we talk about in the context of Denver. And we're trying to do more outside of Denver, local school boards are like one of the closest ways you can engage in the democratic process. And yet one, we don't see people engaged in them very much. Like especially in the off years, we have incredible low voter turnout, but then two. How parents and community interest differs from the boards that we actually elect in many cases, and how those boards, the demographics are not. Shifting to reflect the demographics of our local communities also. So anyway, that's something else Alan and I might talk about another time, like it's a meaty one and it'll take you a couple hours to read it. But if, for those policy wonks on, listen, highly recommend that read and maybe we can kudos, maybe we can have one of the authors on and come and do a readout on it, on, I don't know.

Katy Anthes 37:57

Yeah. Yeah. And that's also the reason I do a lot of my work on depolarization in education, because I do believe school boards are the beginning pipeline for engaging in democracy. And oftentimes school board members go on to become rep, state representatives, city council, men and women governor, international governor yeah. It is important that we're working at the local level to say, what does good governance look like? What does good disagreement look like? How do you stand firm in your beliefs, but also not dehumanize someone who may differ from you? Because that's like the foundation of our democracy and we need to be modeling it at the school level.

Alan Gottlieb 38:41

So I have one last question that just came into my head. It's a little outta left field, like Alexis's earlier question but the homeschooling question, and then what you just said this second Katie, made me think of it, which is. How worried are you because you saw this from a state perspective, especially given the national health regime we have now about declining vaccination rates and the potential impacts that's going to have on the health and. Not only of kids and adults, but of schools and school systems. I'm worried about it, which is why I'm asking. Wow.

Katy Anthes 39:12

I know you guys told me this would be softball, but I'm just kidding. You never told me that. I'll be transparent about that. This is one of my values. I am worried about that because I forget the author who wrote the book Nudge, you guys probably it's like a bestselling author. I just can't pick that person's name up. But

Alan Gottlieb 39:32

it sounds like Malcolm Gladwell, but I don't know if it's,

Katy Anthes 39:33

yeah, it's something like that. It's something like Malcolm Richard

Alexis Menocal Harrigan 39:35

Baller and Cass Sun Stein.

Katy Anthes 39:38

Yeah, probably. But anyway, I do think even though the health department is saying the national, the Federal Health Department is saying we're not taking away vaccines from anybody. But if you take away the, that nudge of when a new mother. Is, grappling with all the things she and her family are grappling with, and you take away that nudge to say, this is the recommended set of vaccines. You will have far fewer people that get those vaccines, not because they're making an active choice about it, but because. It's just not there for them. Here's your list of vaccines. Do you wanna get'em all? And most people say, yes, I wanna get'em all. And I get that people can make another choice and that's fine. But when we don't have that baseline I am expecting, and I'm. I'm not interested to know what happens in Florida, but I'm worried about what's gonna happen in Florida because they were the first state to take away the child vaccination requirement in schools. This does concern me because it puts others at risk that didn't make that same choice. So I am concerned about that.

Alan Gottlieb 40:51

Okay.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan 40:51

Thank you so much Katie, and thanks for indulging us in our very curious one-off questions. Is there anything else you'd like to say to our listeners before we sign off and say goodbye?

Katy Anthes 41:02

Just if we can all get a little better, if we can all have a little more intellectual humility. If we can all be curious a little bit more I do think we have to start where we're standing because we can get overwhelmed by the things that are happening in our country. And if we can just model it a little better, maybe we can make some baby steps and progress towards having it be better for our country. Thank you so much. That's a

Alan Gottlieb 41:32

great note to end it on. Katie, thank you so much for spending some time with us. Really appreciate it. And we will be back with another podcast episode soon.