E43 - Seattle School Closures, Past and Present

This is a video! See the video here!

In 2005, Seattle Public Schools was projecting falling enrollment, and over the ensuing years, 11 schools were closed. But it turned out that the projections were wrong, and SPS needed to reopen most of the buildings. New Seattle Hall Pass contributor Dawson Nichols spoke to four people who were there - Kay Smith-Blum, Leslie Harris, Sue Peters, and Dora Taylor. 

Note that these interviews were recorded before the June 10 school board meeting had been moved to June 26.

See our very extensive Show Notes for lots more information.

Disclaimer: Seattle Hall Pass features a variety of voices. Each person’s opinions are their own. 

Contact us: Send corrections, suggestions, and comments to hello@seattlehallpass.org or speak.seattlehallpass.org. 

Transcript

Seattle School Closures, Past and Present

Produced by Dawson Nichols for Seattle Hall Pass

See our very extensive Show Notes for lots more information

Disclaimer: Seattle Hall Pass features a variety of voices. Each person’s opinions are their own. 

Contact us: Send corrections, suggestions, and comments to hello@seattlehallpass.org or speak.seattlehallpass.org. 

[00:00:00] Introduction

[00:00:00] Leslie Harris: In Seattle, it's $1.3 billion, with a B, operating budget. That's serious stuff. And you're dealing with people's kids. 

[00:00:23] Kay Smith-Blum: You know, but these are public schools, and the public should be their partner. 

[00:00:29] Sue Peters: But if Seattle Public Schools goes ahead with these closures, it's going to be like the largest public school closures in the nation in like 10, 20 years. It's huge. It's a huge amount percentage-wise. And so no one else is really doing that. And so what does that say? 

[00:00:47] Leslie Harris: $105 million this year and $129 next year. Our problems aren't solved. 

[00:00:53] Dora Taylor: I would demand to see the numbers. And I would demand to know what schools will be closed. It's just not fair to the community. 

[00:01:02] Leslie Harris: If we were a business, we'd be bankrupt.

[00:01:08] Podcast Framing and Host Introduction

[00:01:08] Dawson Nichols: Okay, I hope you will forgive me if I jump in here at the beginning and rudely interrupt, but I think that this podcast will benefit from some framing. My name is Dawson Nichols. I work in early childhood education, so, mainly with children zero to five. Mainly, I do trainings for the office of Head Start, but I have been an admirer of Hall Pass for some time, and I have been in touch with Christie and Jane, and when the Seattle Public Schools announced recently that they were going to shutter 20 elementary schools in the 2025 2026 school year, the three of us got together and thought that it would be helpful if people revisited the previous school closures, which happened about 15 years ago.

So, we rounded up some people who are very well informed, who were involved at the time, who have been on the school board, and I interviewed them. And that is what you're going to see in this podcast. Well, that is what you're going to hear in this podcast. There's also a video, so you can go to the Hall Pass website, and you will find a link to the video of all of these interviews as well.

[00:02:26] Meet the Interviewees

[00:02:26] Dawson Nichols: The interviewees are Kay Smith-Blum, who was on the board from 2009 to 2013. She's also an entrepreneur, by the way, and an SPS parent, whose children were affected by those previous closures. 

Leslie Harris was on the Seattle School Board for eight years, and she just ended her term in 2023. She was the president for a while, the vice president for a while, and of course, she is also an SPS parent.

Sue Peters was inspired to become an activist because of those previous school closures, which affected her children, and then she became a school board member from 2013 to 2017. 

And her fellow activist, who also became an activist during that previous round of school closures, Dora Taylor, she also went on to become an education journalist, and she has published in the Huffington Post, the Progressive Magazine, and other outlets as well. 

So these are people with deep, deep knowledge of not only what happened, but the workings of the Seattle Public Schools system, that I think can really inform not only what happened then, but what's going on now. And I think that these were really rich and insightful interviews. I hope you'll find that to be the case as well. 

I do want to mention that the interview conditions were not always ideal. I was traveling for work and conducted some of these interviews from hotel rooms, so the sound is a little less than optimal. But we're here for the content, hopefully not the quality of the sound. 

Both of my own children were in the Seattle Public Schools during that previous round of school closures. But I began these interviews by giving my understanding of what had happened at that time, and then inviting each of these very well-informed people to expand on that or correct me where I had something that wasn't quite right. 

[00:04:22] Closures and Reopenings of 2005-2011

[00:04:22] Dawson Nichols: So the highest altitude is just - in 2005, enrollment was lowering, there were some budgetary problems, the superintendent at that time put together a committee to give a recommendation. The recommendation was to close seven schools, which the superintendent enacted the following year. And it took several years for that to take place, through like 2009, I think. But at the same time, enrollment started increasing again, so just as they finished closing the schools, they had to reopen the schools at great cost to the district. 

So what was meant to be a cost savings ended up not only disrupting communities and schools and children's lives and education, but also costing a lot of money. Is that essentially what happened? 

[00:05:12] Leslie Harris: That's essentially what happened. And I'm not sure that the dates matter so much, but the process and the lack, the lack of respect for the community was... 

[00:05:22] Sue Peters: You're right. Back in 2005, under superintendent Raj Manhas, was when some closures were proposed. And I think some did go through. I think that's when they famously closed Viewlands Elementary. And then the poor school got vandalized. That's when all the copper wiring got pulled out of the school, when it was mothballed. And there was a couple other things I think they did. I think they wanted to do something with Daniel Bagley, but I think people fought back. And then he had a longer list of schools he wanted to close, but there was a lot of pushback, and so he shelved that list, and then he left the district. 

And then, um, Maria Goodloe-Johnson became the superintendent next. And I think she basically inherited the same list, because it was very, very similar to what he had, and she pushed it through. There were some tweaks that happened, but she did push forward the the closures that Raj did not end up pushing through, and that's where people like Dora and I got involved, because at that point we were parents in the district, and our children's schools were on that list. 

[00:06:26] Community Impact and Response

[00:06:26] Dawson Nichols: So you moved to that area specifically for that school. Only to find out quickly thereafter that that school was closed. 

[00:06:36] Dora Taylor: Yes, exactly. There was a $34 million shortfall, apparently. And, but the school closures only saved the $5 million to later on have to reopen five of the schools for a total of, um, $47.8 million. 

But there there were a lot of things happening behind the scenes. Yes, there was apparently a shortfall in terms of the cash needed. But at the same time, the superintendent, Dr. Johnson, hired an additional layer of upper management, providing them with 6 figure salaries. And they're still there, by the way. But between that, and the fact that she had been brought in by what is called the Broad foundation, and they were pursuing the installation of charter schools around the country. And her agenda, besides saving money, was to, uh, to bring in the charter schools. 

[00:07:59] Sue Peters: Well, first of all, I think back when these closures were first conjured up, enrollment may well have been stagnant. But by the time we got to 2008, enrollment was trending up. And the district did not adjust for that. And so the reason for closing schools in terms of capacity management, and that was the term they used back then, was capacity management, didn't really ring true.

And there was a parent named Meg Diaz, she was actually at the same school as my son, she had a child, and she was an analyst professionally. And she took a look at enrollment numbers and projections, and she said, “you know what, enrollment's going up; it does not make sense to close schools”. And so she put together a report.

Analyzing all of this and those of us who created basically this resistance movement against the closures, we used her analysis to create a petition saying, “Hey, don't do this.” We said to the district, “the numbers don't add up”. And we also made pleas to the district. We had a rally and protests of the closures.

[00:09:01] Leslie Harris: You had parent after parent after parent going up to the lectern and saying, “Hey, in my neighborhood, I can count 15 cranes. I can count 25 new starts for homes. We are not losing students. We're growing. We're growing at this incredible pace.” 

[00:09:22] Sue Peters: But the district did not pay attention to Meg Diaz's numbers. They insisted that there was a reason to close these schools. 

[00:09:30] Kay Smith-Blum: I mean, I specifically remember, in 2010, when all of a sudden it was like, “hold on what's happening”. And we had 500 more kindergartners that the staff had not even come close to projecting we would have. And the next year it was over a thousand more kindergartners. And that was the Delta and the birth rate that they had missed.

[00:09:51] Dawson Nichols: Right. Were there people prior to that that had been saying in 2009, 2008, “Hey, hang on, look at the preschool populations”.

[00:09:59] Kay Smith-Blum: Yeah. 

[00:10:00] Dawson Nichols: “They're going to be coming to school.“

[00:10:01] Kay Smith-Blum: Kellie, Kellie LaRue, she was kind of leading the charge. And she was so bright, and she had all the numbers, and spreadsheet after spreadsheet, and it didn't take her long to convince me that her numbers were valid. And I believe where the disconnect was with staff is they weren't looking at county immigration and out-migration rates. And that was the problem. 

[00:10:26] Leslie Harris: And we're a “data-driven district”. Air quotes, snark intended. 

[00:10:32] Dawson Nichols: Right. I mean, I have great sympathy for somebody who's trying to project numbers like that because there are so many different variables that run into it, but it does seem like a pretty big oversight.

[00:10:42] Kay Smith-Blum: It was. It was. 

[00:10:45] Dawson Nichols: Now, how responsive would you say the district was to correcting that oversight? 

[00:10:50] Kay Smith-Blum: Well, we turned around and opened every school that had been closed, literally. Except for Martin Luther King, which we actually needed again, but we had sold it.

[00:11:01] Leslie Harris: Did you know that Seattle contracts out its demographic information? We used to have a demographer, but we contract out? 

[00:11:13] Sue Peters: First of all, it was devastating. It was devastating to suddenly find out that your child's school is going to be closed. And the announcement came out the weekend or the day before Thanksgiving weekend. And this was in November of 2008. So it was a classic Seattle Public Schools maneuver where they would drop a bombshell right before a holiday, so families would not be around to respond or do anything about it, at least immediately. And so that was our devastating Thanksgiving, was grappling with that information.

Also, the reasons the district gave to a lot of us did not make sense. And so there was a certain heartlessness to all of it. And it was never made clear by the district what this was really accomplishing financially, and definitely not for the education of these kids and the well-being of these kids.

And so I am seeing that again now with these closures where parents are saying, explain to us. How is this going to help? Show us the numbers. Are you accounting for the disruption to all these kids and the pain it's going to cause? I mean, there's... I don't even know that you can put a financial value to that. But it's hugely disruptive to close a school. 

As most people will tell you, a school is not just a building, it is a community center. It is the heart of the community. You close a school, you create a sinkhole, like a psychological sinkhole there. 

And the district has done that in the past. I mean, there were parts of the district where they had closed schools. University Heights, they closed. I think Phinney Ridge, they closed. West Seattle Elementary, West Queen Anne Elementary, Queen Anne High School, they closed and sold for under market value. 

[00:12:54] Kay Smith-Blum: I mean, if there's one decision that's been regretted by the entire Seattle School District, both staff and community, for decades, it was the fact that they sold Queen Anne High School.

[00:13:05] Sue Peters: And it created deserts, and they had to compensate for that later. And it created, in the case of Queen Anne High School, it created a domino effect, where local kids had no local high school.

[00:13:18] Leslie Harris: So it was unnecessarily ugly. Part of that was because folks didn't listen. On the other hand, what the district did right then, that they're not doing right now, is they appointed a committee of really impressive people to hold outreach meetings. And those were, in fact, two-way communications. And they delivered reports. And they're very extensive reports; they're very well-written reports. I probably know over half of the folks that were on those committees, most of them not at all involved with the school district any longer. 

So, fast forward to 2022, 2023, 2024...

[00:14:06] Current School Closure Plans and Concerns

[00:14:06] Leslie Harris: In November 2023, we were supposed to have a list, a list of tenantative school closures. That didn't happen in November. Then you get a new board in.

There's also another parallel theme here, where we've changed the way the board does business. We used to have very in-depth committees - Operations, Student Services, Curriculum and Instructions, Audit and Finance. Those, everything except for the legally required Finance Audit Committee, has been stripped away under the moniker of Student Outcomes Focused Governance.

Student Outcomes Focused Governance, Council of Great City Schools, hired a gentleman named A. J. Crabill, who has written a book. It's an impressive book. It's an honest book. But I fundamentally disagree with his concept that school board directors should not be doing constituency work. Part of Student Outcomes Focused Governance is you all are wasting your time getting in the weeds. You're not junior legislators. 

[00:15:25] Dawson Nichols: When you were on the board, there were several standing committees that the board took part in, and those have been shuttered. 

[00:15:33] Sue Peters: Yes, and I can't believe that that has happened. I mean, they're a very important part of the process of developing policy, transparency, and oversight. But the last couple boards since I left have not been interested in that. And I don't know whether they think the job is too complicated for them. But I mean, the Audit and Finance Committee, I was on that. Crucial. I was on the Curriculum and Instruction Committee. Very crucial. You know, there's the Operations Committee that dealt with buildings. And in fact, this would come under Ops - closing schools. 

I don't know why they got rid of all of those. I mean, they are... this is a whole other discussion. They are under the influence of the Council of Great City Schools and a fellow named Crabill, who's teaching them something about Student Centered Governance, and somehow that leads to telling the school board that it should be hands-off and not be very involved in some oversight issues and should hand over lots of decisions to staff and the superintendent. 

From what I can see, the balance is way off now, and the school board is not involved enough; it's not exercising enough oversight. For example, a proposal of the closed schools should be running through committees, and the board should be able to ask lots of questions, and the community should be able to sit in on these meetings. None of that is available right now. 

[00:16:50] Kay Smith-Blum: If you get community involved, it's usually very good for the system, because they're the ones who know, right? Because they're on site all the time. 

[00:17:00] Dawson Nichols: It's what makes it so, um, I'll use the word curious, that community involvement is not being more invited. 

[00:17:10] Kay Smith-Blum: I think it has everything to do with leadership. Leadership either wants you involved or they don't. Leadership either knows how to involve people or they don't. 

[00:17:22] Dawson Nichols: Now, we're being told now that these closures will not happen in the 24/25 year, but the following year. But it sounds to me like you were getting at least more specific information closer to the time of the closures than we're getting now.

[00:17:39] Sue Peters: That's true. We were given a list. We were given a list pretty early on. And this time around, they're holding their cards a lot closer to their chest. They're not naming the schools, and I don't know... none of us believe they have no idea which schools. We all believe they have some idea, but they haven't said which ones.

And I don't know enough about the inner workings of the district right now to tell you why they're holding back on listing schools, other than the fact that it will create major pain, and it starts to pit communities against each other, and things can get really ugly once people find out that their school is being closed, but their neighbor's school is not that sort of thing.

[00:18:22] Dawson Nichols: Right? But as you just outlined, there is also an opportunity at that point for a community to get engaged and to perhaps give some information to the school district that they don't already have, that might actually help them make a better decision about which schools to close, if they need to close any. It strikes me as very odd that they wouldn't want to tap that great resource of knowledge that is the community they serve.

[00:18:50] Sue Peters: You make an excellent point, and that is how it should go, but now it's... you're making me think, maybe they looked back at the closures of 2008, 2009, and looked back at the pushback they got from all of us. And we were a very big coalition that, that traversed the whole district, multiple schools, multiple communities, multiple backgrounds. We united and pushed back. Maybe they don't want that again. You know, so maybe they're holding off on this list so the people can't come to them, the Meg Diaz's of this time, and say, “Hey, I can show you why you shouldn't close my school”. Maybe they don't want to hear that, because then it becomes too complicated.

[00:19:27] Leslie Harris: "Well don't worry about it. We have to have hearings. And once we put this list out on June 10th or whatever the heck date it is, then you all can talk to us." You've got graduations, you've got summer, you've got the start of school. That is not the time to be doing community outreach. 

[00:19:47] Kay Smith-Blum: But I am suspicious of the timing, because the summer is the worst possible time to try to organize. And they have made these, uh, announcements right before the school year's ending. And that makes me very sad 

[00:20:07] Dora Taylor: Well, it's just the same old thing. 

[00:20:10] Leslie Harris: That to me just builds distrust. You know, the Seattle Times has not ever been kind of Seattle Public Schools. I'm not a fan of the Seattle Times. They've been wailing on us recently for the lack of transparency. The legislature has been wailing on us for the lack of transparency.

And you know, this affects kids. This is going to affect you - every family that has a kid in a K-5 or K-8 in Seattle, because the boundaries will change. But because there has been no list put out there for the community’s input to tell you why this works or it doesn't work. And hey, have you thought about real conversations, not sit and get in big meetings, where instead of lining people up at the microphone, you're putting it on the little white guards, right? Well, we'll put that all on the website. Well, needless to say, we'll be doing public disclosure requests, but we won't get those answers probably until next February, and it just is a very sad fact that we're doing business this way.

And remember, 85 percent of our budget are staff. So if you brought your career to Seattle, and now you're being blamed for the budget deficits because of the last collective bargaining agreement, which were COLAs (Cost of Living Adjustments) for the most part, right? Yeah, rate of inflation, very expensive city. You don't feel respected. You won't feel as though you have a career path that you feel good about. You'll keep, you'll keep teaching the kids, but it's like, y'all need to get out of my way so I can teach the kids. 

[00:22:03] Dawson Nichols: Yeah. And you will be looking for opportunities in other districts that you think work... 

[00:22:09] Leslie Harris: ...that either pay better or have a lot less expensive standard of living.

[00:22:16] Kay Smith-Blum: There's been a huge turnover in senior staff in the past 10 years, and with their departures, you lose so much institutional knowledge. Leslie Harris was the last one on the board that has so much wonderful knowledge. 

[00:22:33] Leslie Harris: These really are well-meaning people, but that doesn't excuse what's happened. Doesn't it distress you that there was no public meeting for the SE quadrant of the city? Where by far the majority of the kids furthest from educational justice live? How dare y'all. I mean, well, we just ran out of time. No, you didn't. You could have done this in November. You didn't run out of time at all. Not okay. 

The staff surveys were never made public, and not to the board. Wow. There's been a real crackdown on whether staff can talk to board members. There have been principals who have been found guilty of insubordination for talking to a board member without permission.

We didn't get the guiding principles until about a week ago, by the way, for this whole exercise. But the guiding principles in 2006 that aren't incorporated in this year's guiding principles have four salient differences:

1. minimize disruption to students, families and staff, 
2. engage the community in finding solutions, 
3. family satisfaction, 
4. effective connections with community

[00:24:13] Dawson Nichols: Wait, now you're saying that those were in the previous mix, and they are not in this mix. 

[00:24:19] Leslie Harris: Yes. That's what I'm saying. 

1. minimize disruption to students, families and staff, 
2. engage the community in finding solutions, 
3. family satisfaction, 
4. effective connections with community

[00:24:31] Dawson Nichols: ...were in the previous mix, and they are not in this mix.

[00:24:36] Leslie Harris: That's what I'm saying. And that's really telling. And my gut told me that it was missing, but until you do the deep dive and the Way Back Machine and archive.org and dig this information out, you know, it's just a gut. But there's a, I'm going to use the word paranoia. Not cool. 

[00:25:00] Dawson Nichols: Is it your understanding that we'll find the list on the 10th? We will be given the list on the 10th? 

[00:25:04] Leslie Harris: Well, we thought that in November, so I don't know. 

[00:25:08] Dawson Nichols: Yes. 

[00:25:09] Leslie Harris: I don't know. I honestly do not know. I hope we are so we can get over this hump and start building back up trust to see what's been going on behind the curtain. 

[00:25:20] Kay Smith-Blum: So I think history has a tendency to repeat itself. My biggest fear, and it's a parallel, would be that we end up selling some of the schools that are being proposed to be closed. That's my biggest fear. 

[00:25:37] Leslie Harris: Alternative schools, K-8 schools. There is a very strong, very long-held perception that administration wants to do away with those two types of education in this city. There are those that have suggested that alternative education was a response to white flight, and I could not more fundamentally disagree. Alternative education is a recognition that kids are not widgets, and that they have different learning styles. 

Now. Are they too white? Some of them absolutely are. But what's your problem statement? If they're too white, what are we doing to increase that diversity as opposed to killing them? K-8s - there are so many children (and they ARE children at that age) that would not survive in a giant-sized middle school. And they need that smaller arena. And they're not that much more expensive.

Sometimes I wish I could just go out there and debate them. 

[00:26:48] Sue Peters: So, and the fact that the district has not been that supportive of our option schools, of any alternative programming, that it has targeted, like I mentioned, the Montessori schools, the gifted program, alternative schools, advanced learning, walk to math, all those sorts of things, one by one, the district has been targeting and getting rid of. Leaving people with more of a cookie-cutter, one-note option, the sort of things that keep us people, parents interested in the school district, this school district has been getting rid of. 

And so it would make sense that the end game could be - well, then what will people want? They'll want charters. And so there's this concern amongst some of us that that may well be the end game, or an end game to this. 

[00:27:36] Dawson Nichols: I've always found it to be curious that we value diversity in so many different areas. But not in terms of instruction, when it comes to things like alternative schools. And as you said, children are not widgets. And it just makes sense that you'd want to offer different kinds of school, different kinds of instruction, and not necessarily through charter schools, which are not public schools.

[00:28:03] Leslie Harris: Thank you. 

I was looking at numbers all day today and I see that so many of the K-8s and the alternative schools are less than 500. They're 450 plus, right? Between that bubble... Well, at 500, you get an assistant principal. 

[00:28:22] Dawson Nichols: Yeah. 

[00:28:23] Leslie Harris: So, if you're not moving the waitlist, again, a cynical person would say you're gaming the system.

[00:28:29] Sue Peters: Cynical, but now there is a law, that we do allow charters in Washington state. And there is in the law a clause that says that charter schools have the first right of refusal to any school building that is up for lease. 

[00:28:46] Leslie Harris: There's a state statute that says charter schools get first right of refusal. And folks in the district are saying, well, that's only if we say we're abandoning it. Well, you know, I'm sorry, but I guarantee you a lawsuit on that one. And the charter school people have nothing but money to spend. We don't. Yeah. 

[00:29:09] Sue Peters: Now, there are some specifics related to that, like it has to be a charter that's already in the district. But the fact of the matter is, we do have some charters in the district, and they would have first chance to lease any buildings that the Seattle School District might close and offer up for lease. 

[00:29:26] Dawson Nichols: Something I've never quite understood... I have heard about this, can we say, animosity toward alternative schools. At least some suspicion of them. Something I've never understood, though, is why a charter school is to be preferred in some people's minds. Was that articulated at the time? 

[00:29:49] Dora Taylor: No, not at all. That was an agenda thing. We only discovered through a lot of research and a lot of communication among ourselves. Because we, we began to question the decisions that were being made. We had a lot of people in the research, including myself and many other people. And that's when we discovered exactly why the alternative schools were a target. 

[00:30:20] Dawson Nichols: And the district was not above board about this. 

[00:30:23] Dora Taylor: No, no, not at all. We weren't supposed to know anything. 

But we discovered not only was this happening in Seattle, this was happening around the country with a lot of what they termed “Broad superintendents”. So they were in Detroit, they were in Denver, they were in Florida, they were around the country - dispersed by the Broad Foundation through all their money and Eli Broad.

So we discovered that there was a pattern, and we were part of that pattern. 

[00:30:55] Advocacy Tips

[00:30:55] Dawson Nichols: If somebody is watching us talk right now, and they are a community member or a family member, a parent, and they want their voice to be heard, do you have any advice for them on how best they might be heard? 

[00:31:11] Kay Smith-Blum: Get organized. Get organized. And start talking loudly to everyone in the community. 

[00:31:19] Dora Taylor: So, you know, I don't think I can ever overemphasize how important it is to organize. Not only online, but in terms of meeting, getting together. The best thing, one of the things that we did was people I called people called the kitchen table meetings. They would all get together around my table in my home.

[00:31:43] Kay Smith-Blum: You know, we have very robust PTSA organizations. And I think you start with each school with the PTSA, and the PTSA discusses the issues and how is this going to affect their community. And again, since they don't know if their community is going to be closed or not...

[00:32:03] Dora Taylor: Continue communicating and get everyone involved. Everybody from state representatives, retired teachers, teachers, the teachers union, your neighbors who might not have children in school... because it's going to affect them. Small businesses, it's going to affect them. Just everyone, really, and start talking and getting organized and demanding. 

[00:32:30] Leslie Harris: But it's trust and verify. It's too important. 

[00:32:35] Kay Smith-Blum: Yeah, show your work. 

[00:32:37] Dora Taylor: We have to have a well-educated citizenry to have a democracy. 

[00:32:44] Kay Smith-Blum: I’d start showing up in the school board meetings and demanding the information. Yeah. What are you looking at and why? Give us exact, give us the details. 

[00:32:55] Sue Peters: I really hope the district will be more responsive than it was last time and really listen to people, because the people who know their schools the best are the people who are on the ground in them. Students, the parents, the teachers, you know, and it seems sometimes that the people at the John Stanford Center are so far removed from what's really going on on the ground, you know, the ground level, and a school which has however many hundreds of kids in it can seem just like a statistic rather than a community. And so I really hope they do a more good faith effort to listen to the community and do everything they can to avoid closures. That should always be the very, very last resort. 

[00:33:34] Final Thoughts

[00:33:34] Dawson Nichols: well, I can't thank you enough for agreeing to have this conversation. Again, I think it's really important that we all gather as much information as we can. And as you say perhaps get ready to organize. So I appreciate it. 

[00:33:46] Dora Taylor: Yes, definitely. You'll, you'll like it. 

[00:33:50] Leslie Harris: You'll have fun. Well, I hope it does some good, and I hope you don't make me look like a fruit head. 

[00:33:57] Dawson Nichols: No, you're a vegetable head. 

[00:33:59] Leslie Harris: There you go. Okay. Thanks for the opportunity. 

[00:34:03] Sue Peters: Okay. You're welcome, Dawson.

[00:34:04] Kay Smith-Blum: Thank you. Thank you for doing this work. I think it's great.