(Community Matters 197) First Home First Teacher Brings Stability To Early Educators

Kathy Szenda Wilson from Pulse talks about First Home First Teacher, a Battle Creek pilot program that provides free housing plus ongoing support for early childhood educators who are struggling to keep a roof over their heads. 

Episode Resources

Pulse Roadmap Website

ABOUT COMMUNITY MATTERS
Former WBCK Morning Show host Richard Piet (2014-2017) returns to host Community Matters, an interview program focused on community leaders and newsmakers in and around Battle Creek. Community Matters is heard Saturdays, 8:00 AM Eastern on WBCK-FM (95.3) and anytime at battlecreekpodcast.com.

Community Matters is sponsored by Lakeview Ford Lincoln and produced by Livemic Communications.

Transcript

Welcome And First Home First Teacher

Richard Piet 0:02

Community Matters is a Saturday get together at 95.3 on the FM dial. So if you're hearing us there, thanks for that. But uh you don't have to wait till Saturday if you don't want to. Battlecreekpodcast.com. You'll find our episodes there anytime you want, and more that you have not heard on the radio. So come on by at Battle Creekpodcast.com or where you get podcasts, just search Community Matters, Calhoun County, and you can subscribe. All made possible by Lakeview Ford Lincoln. There's been a certain amount of coverage about something called first home first teacher. Maybe you heard about it. It's pretty innovative. The idea that early career educators of young children are not being paid well. And the biggest expense for them are their living arrangements. And an organization called Pulse, which is a unit, you might say, a project of the W.E. Upjohn Institute in Kalamazoo, has come up with a solution, and it is called First Home First Teacher. Kathy Szenda Wilson is the founder and co-executive director, and she's here to explain it today. Hello, Kathy.

Kathy Szenda Wilson 1:18

Good morning, Richard. How are you?

Richard Piet 1:20

Very well. Thank you. Thanks for this uh opportunity. You know, when I first read about First Home First Teacher, I had a a little bit of a bell ring in my head that was similar to when I first heard about the Kalamazoo promise or the or the Bear Cat Advantage. You know, the uh the notion that removing a financial barrier that you don't hear gets taken away much opens a bunch of doors. That's similar in this case, isn't it?

Kathy Szenda Wilson 1:53

It is. And I I want to start by letting you know that the inspiration actually came from folks in New Haven, Connecticut. We are not the first to do this.

The New Haven Blueprint

Kathy Szenda Wilson 2:03

And when we learned through a CBS News morning show about the New Haven model, and we picked up the phone and called Alex Shivoni, who is the president and CEO of the Friend Center for Children in New Haven. We said, we need to learn more about this. How are you providing free housing for your teachers? And she said, Well, why don't you come on out here and see us October 5th or whatever the date was a couple of years ago? And we managed to find a way to get ourselves there. And it was inspiring. It was magical. It was like you felt the love of community in that space. You're like, this is what it's about. People who were just really feeling like they were seen. They were no longer invisible or part of the economic wallpaper, right? Like things you just need to get to work. Like these were people that were actually feeling they were valued. And so we brought the idea and the inspiration back to Battle Creek and thought, what would it look like here? And so we started talking to people. We started bringing people in rooms. We brought Alex to town and we said we talked to people and let them know what this could look like for us. And she said, we want this to spread. We'd love this to be a movement, but we know that every community is different. And so Battle Creek, I mean, to its credit, can get very innovative. And so the folks we had in the room were like, we don't have a single childcare center or business that's big enough to take something like this on itself. So we knew it was going to have to be about the sector. We again, we have been doing this work around childcare for a long time. So we understood all the challenges. We had relationships, deep relationships with our childcare entrepreneurs, our child care leaders. And we're like, what would it take for us to pull this off? Right. And so, in the course of all those conversations, partners started to emerge. Part of the um core tenets of first home, first teacher is that you don't just get a house, you get support. And so there is fiscal mentorship that goes along with it. There's emotional well-being support. And so community action stepped up and said, we think we could provide those kinds of supports. So they started training their staff around it to get us ready to be able to receive new resident tenants. And it was pretty magical. There was a lot more detail. Obviously, anything that, you know, has to get created uh creates a lot more work. But I was so pleased, we at Pulse were so pleased with how well it was received. And because that's what that was the first step, right?

Richard Piet 4:29

Yeah, I should say uh Pulse, of course, is focused on, and these are your words, bridging the gaps in early childhood education, childcare access, and workforce support across Michigan. And we've teased it, but the real story is uh you set out based on the New Haven model to see to it that some teachers are receiving free housing in order to remove that financial barrier that they're facing. And so, as you said, uh there's supports with this. I want to understand that, of course, but talk about the housing first of all. I mean, did you just go buy a house? I mean, how how did you how'd you do it?

Kathy Szenda Wilson 5:15

Well, it was interesting. I am um the type of person who believes that you um you jump and the net will appear, right? And I am partnered with somebody who who isn't always that oriented, right? So we ground each other. And so in the course of these conversations, one of the partners in the room with us was

Building The Battle Creek Pilot

Kathy Szenda Wilson 5:35

Neighborhoods Incorporated of Battle Creek. And as Whitney Wardell, their um their CEO, was listening to this and and understanding, catching the vision, if you will, of what it meant to actually do this for a very particular set of of our workforce. She said, We have a rental unit that I would love to have used for this purpose, right? They would retain ownership. So we would not own it outright, but it would be provided to us as a support to pilot this project. So people, I mean, often people need to see something before they believe it's actually possible, right? And so this idea of us starting small and starting with something that was available to us was very appealing and intentional. And so we started working with Neighborhoods Incorporated maybe eight, nine months ago. We said, all right, here's this duplex on Calhoun Street. You can get it ready for us and how much time? Like it took longer than we expected, but that's the way it goes, right? Yep, right. Um, and it allowed us the time to develop the process for selection. Like, how are we going to select the teachers that will go in it? We needed to put together a selection committee of community partners. We wanted transparency. We had to develop an application that had to go through several iterations. We had to not train a selection committee, but we had to get them all on the same page about what we were trying to do and what they would need to make good decisions. And we wanted to make sure that there was no zero conflict of interest. So we had no child care businesses on that selection committee, nobody from community action, nobody from Pulse with voting ability. It was just community partners who saw the value in this and said, let us be a part of this. There were some demographic questions about their standing, how long they've been in the industry or in the sector. But there were also like evaluative questions that were almost essay-like. Think about a college application, right? Like, tell us what this will mean for you. Tell us what this will mean for the childcare sector. And those questions are really where the richness came for our selection committee. It was like being able to hear from these folks, these applicants, like, wow, like they are doing what they love and they struggle every single day. Because when you put those two questions together, there's this intense passion for what they do about brain building and creating these empathetic little souls that are walking around us all the time so that they've got a really good, solid foundation going into the world. And then there's the reality of their own lives where they're struggling. They don't know if they're going to be able to pay rent next month. They can barely make let their children play soccer or take a vacation or have new winter coats. Like it's the things that you think these two things should not exist simultaneously, right? And if you've got a solution to that to at least try and alleviate some of that pressure. And I should also mention, Richard, that this is not the first time we have done something around housing for our childcare workers. So for the last three and a half years, Community Action, Pulse, Neighborhoods Incorporated, and the Calhoun Intermediate School District have been coming together around. We also done a selection committee for a rental assistance program that was run by Community Action. And that was money that was allocated by the Battle Creek City Commission through its ARPA investments to start it, but was matched with Kellogg dollars that allowed us to actually do to do that program for over three years. And it it provided a little bit of relief for some people. And so interestingly enough, we meet Alex and she said, I've read about programs that give temporary relief to childcare workers. And I consider that, and she's a gardener, she said, I consider that like planting annuals, right? You're going to appreciate it while you have it, but we need more perennials. And so she sees first home, first teacher as perennials. And that's actually what helped us, I think, with people catching the vision, right? Like, no, you're right. Like we can give a little bit of help here and there, but it's not going to change the trajectory of their lives. And we want to help them build wealth and build assets for themselves and build confidence. And what they have found in New Haven after doing this for a lot longer than we have is that these teachers are going back to school, furthering their education. They're doubling down on their commitment to their own family and they're feeling more stable as parents themselves, which is going to definitely benefit. And as a master certified trainer in the ACE study or adverse childhood experiences, I know the impact feeling of the toxic stress, what it does on our brains.

How Residents Are Selected

Kathy Szenda Wilson 10:12

And if our early childhood educators are experiencing that level of stress every single month, their ability, despite their desire, their ability to actually be fully present as teachers is minimized. And so if we could take that away and help them improve their professional standing, great, right?

Richard Piet 10:30

This is all spinning around in my mind here as I listen to all that. But yes, just imagine removing the pressure, the financial pressure of the roof over your head, particularly when your income level is stressed by that. I mean, whose isn't? But I mean the the notion that it's excessively so, I think is is maybe the phrasing you would probably phrase it better. But uh, this is what you were looking for. Talk about what you ended up with as a framework for who would qualify for this.

Kathy Szenda Wilson 11:01

Yeah. So we wanted to look at people who were committed to the field, right? That they had been there a while. So they had some way of proving that like this isn't just a job for me, you know, I've been doing it for six months. So they had to have some level of longevity. They needed to be in good standing with their employer. So we wanted folks who, you know, not only had longevity, but had a way to say, other people see me and the value I'm bringing to this work. So that was an important part of it. There's also, if we even just think logistically, Richard, like you have to be able to move. Like, are you not committed to a lease at the time that you're gonna move? Does the unit that we have available work for your size family? Like there are a lot of other things that have to go into the decision-making process that everything kind of had to align. So, our vision for this was that we would invest in the people who are investing in our kids. And so you can prove that by showing us how long have you been in the field? What are your plans moving forward? Like, how will you use this as a way to be a launching pad for becoming uh if you're an assistant teacher, becoming a teacher, or becoming a center director? Like, is there a trajectory for you here in this field? Because one of the other things that we struggle with in early childhood and childcare spaces specifically is a leadership pipeline. It is pretty thankless work for very low pay. And so this idea of it being very appealing to folks, it would probably be a stretch. So if we can look at this as a way of kind of priming that that pipeline, right? Of getting folks to say, this is a sector that is invested in me, so I want to invest in it. Maybe we don't see that for the first two years, but we maybe we see it in five or 10 years.

Richard Piet 12:45

Yeah. I presume you had more qualifiers than you had space.

Kathy Szenda Wilson 12:50

We did.

Richard Piet 12:51

Yeah.

Kathy Szenda Wilson 12:52

Which is heartbreaking, right? You wish you could help everyone. The good news is that community action is trying to build this support team so that they could provide support to people outside of those receiving housing. So we're acknowledging that at the very least we could do is support folks to be able to understand how to improve their credit if they want to do that. What's it look like if I want to be a homeowner? How do I get connected to some of the things that Neighborhoods Incorporated does around home ownership classes? Is Habitat for Humanities program work for me? How do I partner with Goodwill's Financial Opportunity Center to learn more about how I can build a budget? If that's something that I've never learned, right? Like we don't want to just leave people alone. We want to make sure that if they're asking for help, if they genuinely are saying, you know, what's out there for me so that I can make things better, even if we can't increase the level of salary that they have, if we're not uh able to provide free housing right now, um, there's something for them. So we're not just leaving them out completely.

Richard Piet 13:53

Yeah, this is an interesting precursor. You mentioned the notion of habitat for humanity. This could be the path that eventuates in home ownership for them later.

Kathy Szenda Wilson 14:06

Yeah.

Richard Piet 14:06

Yeah. And the goal is to help them become more financially stable, and then they could do that if they wanted to.

Kathy Szenda Wilson 14:13

Yeah. So their fiscal mentor who meets with them monthly will help them set goals for themselves. And so what Alex found in in New Haven was that she made some assumptions, or her team did, that that home ownership would be the ultimate goal for most. That isn't always the case, right? And in New Haven is a vastly different place than Battle Creek as well. I mean, even just the amount of it costs you to buy a house there is ridiculously much higher. But what you start with is like, I don't have a reliable vehicle. My first financial goal is going to be that I can, you know, improve my credits that I can get a car that's actually going to work for me. Right. And then it's like some that came in, and this is the New Haven experience. Some of them that came in and said, I think I want to buy a house, realized how far off that still was for them. So they were able to

Mentorship And Life Stability

Kathy Szenda Wilson 15:05

set more incremental goals. That didn't come off the their vision board, if you will. It was just that they were more realistic about what it would take to actually get there.

Richard Piet 15:14

Yeah.

Kathy Szenda Wilson 15:14

And so this idea of having somebody you can talk through that with, right? A fiscal mentor who's been trained around these things, that you're connected to the resources that are out there, like Habitat for Humanity, for like neighborhoods incorporated, like what are my paths to figuring out housing that will be sustainable for me and for my family? I mean, the we have two single moms living in this first pilot duplex and it works for them right now, right? And will it work for them long term is up to them, right? There, there is no expiration date on their having to move out. As long as they're in good standing, they can stay in the unit. Now, it may not work for their life for that long, right? So my point is that they may move on before it's time for them to move on. And that's all worked out in the lease. So I one thing that we were able to really borrow the brilliance from New Haven around was like the language that needs to go into a lease. There's a home, what do they call it? A home mate, because it's not a housemate agreement, it's not a roommate agreement because they have separate units. But there are things they need to negotiate around, like make sure the front door is always locked, who's taking the garbage out to the curb, like those kind of things that you don't think about when you're having to share the building together, but not a house. So it's those things that it's the devil's in the details, right? It's like those things that we were able to learn from what Alex and her team put together and just bring it here and modify it for our purposes.

Richard Piet 16:44

So the rent pressure is off.

Kathy Szenda Wilson 16:47

Yes.

Richard Piet 16:48

Uh it's a landlord kind of situation. So your partner organizations are helping with, you know, if the uh air conditioner doesn't work or something, uh, they've got someone to call. So that takes off some of the additional pressure of a home situation. So that's helpful. I read, I saw a number in some of the reporting about this as it relates to the salaries of the folks who qualify. Talk about that, Kathy. We're talking about annual salaries that are terribly low.

Kathy Szenda Wilson 17:25

$28,000 to $35,000 a year on average. I mean, it's 98% of all other professions make more than childcare workers. I mean, there is one report that showed that people who are professional dog walkers make more money than people who work in childcare. And often they're doing it without any benefits. There's no health care, there's no retirement. Time off is really challenging because there are no substitutes in a lot of these childcare businesses. So it's just, it's a really tough profession to get into. So you don't do it unless you really want to do it, right? Like, and it should not be a volunteer job. And at this point, their own families are sacrificing so that other people's families can actually thrive. And there is something just very inequitable about that, very immoral,

Why Childcare Pay Stays Low

Kathy Szenda Wilson 18:12

in my own opinion, that we need to just we need to rectify. And I think it is a systemic issue back to the fact that this is a system that gets the outcomes that it's meant to get. So we need to be very loud about the fact that this is something that the childcare business sector itself is not going to fix this. It can't. The market will not fix it. This is going to recover public and private partnerships. It's going to require investments from both our public spaces and our private spaces. And families can't afford to pay more. If you ask anybody who's paid for childcare, they're like, they must be making a ton of money because I pay a lot in childcare. And that is true. This is the thing, as we say, families can't afford to pay and teachers can't afford to stay. And it's not because these childcare business owners are making so much money. They are not. There is such a slim margin from what they bring in to what they pay out because it is a high labor, it's a labor-intensive business. You want your children safe. So you need to have adults with them at a ratio that ensures their safety, right? And so you can't cut staff to save money. You need those people there. And so it's like something around 84% of your revenue as a childcare business goes to pay salaries. And that's not giving them benefits. That's not providing them any 401k. That's just their $14 to $15 an hour that you're paying them. And so we help people like make that very invisible math visible for folks. Because often people will be like, well, I think we just need to help these childcare businesses manage their money better because clearly they don't know what they're doing. Oh, we've heard that multiple times. And not in a vindictive mean way, but just like not an understanding way. So we bring the numbers to them and they're like, Oh, I would never start this business. That's crazy. It's like, yeah, you're right. And so you're welcome because our economy depends on these folks doing this work. And so the louder we can get about that, I'm really grateful that you're asking because that's really what needs to be spotlighted here is that we can do all these things to help alleviate some of their pressure, but ultimately we're gonna have to get more money into the sector.

Richard Piet 20:28

Well, you're paving the way for what I was getting to, which is really this solution you're talking about is not the root problem, is it? You just alluded to what the root problem is, which is we don't pay our teachers enough.

Kathy Szenda Wilson 20:44

Correct.

Richard Piet 20:45

So, what has to change? How do we do that?

Kathy Szenda Wilson 20:48

I think you have to have the political and public will to understand the shared benefit of this sector, right? Like people can't go to work if they don't have childcare. And we want childcare that's safe, that's quality, where these children have the ability to thrive, right? Like, because that actually is our future. We know the return on investment here, right? If we can get to kids those first five years, build a really strong foundation, their ability to thrive later it has increased. We are decreasing the amount of interventions that are required in elementary school, which are costly. We're decreasing the amount of interventions from a health perspective, because when you have a stronger foundation, your chances of making really good decisions in your life that keep you healthy are better. I mean, we have all the data that suggests this. So if we can get our political and public will to align with what the research tells us, to align with what the economists are telling us and what, you know, not just people who are like, this is nice to do because it's the right thing to do, but this is actually the right thing for our economy. When we have people, we work with employers all over the state, Richard. Who have are investing in childcare for their workforce and realizing that they also need to invest in the ecosystem because there's just not enough of it out there and they understand why now, right? And they're like, they over and over again will tell us when we provide this benefit, even those who don't have children benefit because they have more stable uh teammates. They can come to work and know that somebody's there with some confidence and some feeling of safety that their children are taken care of so that they can be there and be fully present. And so everybody benefits when this happens. So if we have business owners who who get it and invest, and we have to find ways for them to invest, right? We can't just say give us money. There's gotta be a way to do that. So we're working on that right now. We need to have political leaders with the mindset that they understand that this is economic infrastructure. It is public infrastructure, just like our roads and our hospitals and our schools. And if we can look view it that way, then we need to fund it that way. So, how are we looking at how we're building budgets and ensuring that more money is flowing to the sector so

Fixing The System And Scaling Up

Kathy Szenda Wilson 23:05

that it can stabilize? Because we will lose folks, and we've got some political decisions being made in the state right now that are that will lead to us losing more childcare businesses and we already don't have enough. And if you're not in this space, it's really hard. You just it's like a blip on the radio, you might hear, and you're like, well, that's nice. But if you go from attendance-based reimbursement from the state to enrollment-based, so think about this childcare businesses have to report attendance daily to get reimbursed by the state if they get subsidies. If I'm a public school, I have two count days a year. That's the only time I'm required to really state what my attendance is. It's not daily. And so you're putting this burden on an already overburdened system. And for what reason? It's it's really challenging. So we have to understand the landscape here and what people are working with. And we have to know that our political decisions have implications that can be really detrimental because there'll be a ripple effect. There'll be people who can't go to work because they can't find care.

Richard Piet 24:06

That happens, I'm quite sure. And you said you have to be loud. Think about that. In the political landscape now, there's a lot of other noise. And in the Michigan legislature, you have elected officials who are not soon, not long, I should say, after they arrive in Lansing, are readying to run again. So that's a distraction. There's a lot of noise. So you're gonna have to be pretty loud. I guess we could spend the whole rest of the show talking about that that angle of it, couldn't we? But you get the picture, right? So $28,000 to $35,000 a year does not make it easy to keep housing. And I'm not telling people anything because uh they know it. Even if they make $135,000, the expenses have gone up, so and you see that. So, Kathy, can you do more of this? Is that the goal here? Find more properties and try to put your qualifiers in them.

Kathy Szenda Wilson 25:09

Thank you for asking. We are actually meeting with attorneys in two weeks to set up the first home for seacher housing trust, where we will have a governing board once this trust is in place that is positioned to attract and retain additional properties that would then become owned by that trust. So it would be a community asset that would help us generate this kind of asset building that we need. The houses would then again have a governing board. We would have to put in the infrastructure for maintenance, right? So who would be our partner around that? So all of those things are still getting worked out right now. And so we're pretty excited that we've found consultants who are willing to work with us to set up this trust. We found attorneys who will work pro bono for us. I mean, we really, my partner likes to call it stone soup. We are finding who has what and what are they bringing to the table because we're gonna use it to make this happen. Ultimately, we see this as a 20-year vision, right? In 20 years, we would love to have enough housing to have 30% of our workforce housed. Now that is a very lofty goal, but it you need to have a lofty goal to actually make progress. And so we're gonna start with what we have. The way this pilot house was set up is different intentionally, right? It will re the ownership will be retained by neighborhoods incorporated. But that worked for us to be able to show a proof of concept. People can go there, they can see it, they can read the articles, they can listen to your podcast. They're gonna say, Oh, now I get it. Before it was just like some one pager, one-dimensional thing that, like, I don't understand how any of this is gonna work. Yeah, and so our goal also is to really these two, our first two um residents are gonna help us understand does this work? Are these right? Like, tell us what goes on, be honest with us. And the two women that we have living in there, well, I don't have any problem being honest with us. And so we will make sure that we're closely following what's going on in their lives so that we can then tell the story. I used to work at the community foundation and we would have folks who are trying to develop their own trusts and their own estate planning. And they're like, I have a house, I don't have any kids, I don't know where it's gonna go when I'm gone. I've owned it's been in my family for three generations. I'd love for it to be used for something good. This is the perfect use for something like this, right? So I do want to mention that we've had some early investors. Lisc, Kalamazoo, has invested um, as well as the Battle Creek Community Foundation. And then United Way bought all new appliances for the this duplex. Like people showed up in big ways for us in this because they saw the value in it and they said we want to be a part of it. The Battle Creek Community Foundation, special shout out to them because they actually invested for 10 years, $15,000 a year. Not a ton of money, but enough for us to have a little bit in the bank to be able to do the things that we need to do to keep things moving forward. And that tells you something about how much they believe in it. Their board was willing to say, for 10 years, we want to be a part of this. So we're really proud of the community for stepping up. Our goal is to have additional properties, and I don't even profess to know how they'll come to us. Maybe somebody's gonna say, Hey, I've got an apartment building with 10 units, and we'd love to see it used for this purpose. Who knows? Right? Like anything is possible. I I gave up on assumptions a long time ago.

Richard Piet 28:37

Yeah. Well, you just put it out there, so uh it may come back to you before you know it. I presume the trust example is the New Haven example. That's what they've done there. They've created the trust.

Kathy Szenda Wilson 28:47

They own all their properties as a business. I don't, I'm not even gonna pretend to know, but they are a single business that is doing this, and so their setup is very different. What they suggested to us was a trust, just so that it would be owned by the community, since we're doing a sector-wide approach. They're following us closely because they're learning from us as well.

Richard Piet 29:08

Yeah. So somebody's listening to this, and uh maybe they don't have a 10-unit apartment building, but they want to they want to help you somehow. What should they do?

Kathy Szenda Wilson 29:19

Yeah, well, they can reach out to us at pulserroadmap.org. There's contact information there. Um, and we can we're happy to answer any questions, figure out how you can get connected. If you want to volunteer, you have something to donate, you want to give money. Um, once this trust is set up, we're in this weird space right now. Like we do have a fund set up at community action because we were gathering donations for this initial house. I'm not sure that's the way we want to go right now, right? We're gonna be looking at how we need to have things structured moving forward. And so I'd imagine that in the next six months, we'll have that structure available to folks so that they can easily and it'll be obvious where they need to go and what they need to do. But for now, just reach out to us and we'll get you connected. So postroadmap.org is our website. We will um happily redirect you if it's not something we can help you with directly.

Richard Piet 30:09

All right, and we'll put the link in the show notes for this episode, too, at battlecreekpodcast.com. So you can just click through if uh that uh URL went by you quickly. And the focus then is on your structure. Maybe someone listening has some purview on that too. They could reach out. Maybe somebody uh is listening who thinks they might be a qualifier and they haven't applied yet. Are you still taking applications at this point?

Kathy Szenda Wilson 30:40

We do not have an open application process at this point. We we have this cycle that we go through. It's define, design, do learn. We're con we're in a constant state of learning, right? So we're even taking the initial application and getting feedback from multiple folks to see what else might we add to the application. So once we have this trust built, we'll have a new application process. What I don't want to have happen is that we have a bunch of applications in there that it just makes people feel like they're in this waiting space that has no end, right? And so I want to make sure that we've got something for them to respond to. And so um we will announce as loudly as we can and wherever we can. So if you can invite me back, once that's available, it would be great.

Richard Piet 31:22

Well, I was just gonna say keep us posted on what's happening and when there are developments, let us know, and we'll be happy to get the update.

Kathy Szenda Wilson 31:30

Awesome.

Richard Piet 31:31

Congratulations on this. Uh, it went from idea to fruition, and now it it really is uh continuing from that point. And uh, what an amazing thing. Kathy Szenda Wilson with Pulse. The program is called First Home, First Teacher. Putting child care workers in housing at no cost to help alleviate that big lift, that uphill slog, and uh keep them committed to a career in child care and education. We'll get the update soon, Kathy. Thank you.

Kathy Szenda Wilson 32:07

Thank you, Richard. It's been my pleasure.