Interview with the Bedford County School Board - Steven Hill

Welcome in our special guest, Stephen Hill. He is in Bedford County Board of Supervit. No, I almost screwed that up Bedford Kenny school Board. I don't want to really don't want your parents yelling edgend for that. All right, tell us a little bit. I think for the most part we'll spend a little time talking with you about possibly. I don't want to say the word because it is a dirty word, the redistricting word. That's right, all right, dive into it. Tell us what we're doing. I got you. Well, I just want to kind of first introduce myself. My name Jehan Brown. How'd you choose to be on the school board all that? Oh, don't just jump right into district. Yeah, So I grew up in Bedford County. I went to New London Academy and I went to Forest Middle School to JF. Once I graduated, had a family moved back into Bedford County. My first year of my oldest child going to school was COVID And so we're starting to go kindergarten twenty twenty. The school board at the time told us, hey, no mask required for elementary students. We're all good. We're going in there a week before school begins. They changed their mind, so they so me and my wife had to make a decision at that time. And my wife grew up in private school, so she was always leaning towards sending our kids to private schools. So we were really that was a big deal to us, and so we kind of made the decision at the time of you know what, We're not going to give up. I'm not going to let you know, this group of people that I disagreed with, you know, run our county in a way that I don't think needs to be run. Sure, So then we kind of got involved. In twenty two twenty three, we kind of worked with the redistricting effort, working actually working against the re districting effort of to move my kids. You know, we built a house and good specifically to send my kids New London Academy, gotcha, and they were working to redistrict and out of there. At that time, I didn't support it, and I had a lot of a lot of arguments back and forth with the with the school board with that. And then in twenty five, the representative for District three, Dwayne Nelms, was moving out of the district. He found a house and he was moving his family uh to another location, and so he called me up and said, hey, you know all the complaining you've been doing, now it's time to So I interviewed for the physician, got appoint it, and then this past year and and last fall I got elected to serve a four year term on the on the school board there. So that's kind of how I got there. And you know, a lot of it's just about I want I'm passionate about keeping Bedford a place that we want to raise our kids in and I want my kids to want to be back here, sure, So a lot of that is is making sure we have great schools, making sure we have a place to put kids, as we're growing in certain areas of the county and as we're shrinking in others, being good sorts of our tax payer dollar, making sure that we're doing what's right not just for the students that are there now, but the students that are going to be there in the future. So to say all that kind of get into the meat of it. Bedford County has a not necessarily a unique problem, but we are growing as a as a population. Our population is growing, but it's not growing because of birth rates. If you want to pull over to the I pulled up a couple of slides here from our presentation last night we had from a consultant if you want to go to the Bedford County in brief, so this is our this is our our housing going back to nineteen hundred, as good of records as they could pull from going back there, and you see we kind of spiked up in the you know, in the nineteen nineties, in the two thousands, we're putting in you know, sixty three hundred new houses or new dwellings every year or ever exep me every decade. Well, you go to the twenty tens, and obviously that was affected by you know, we had a recession in eight slow growth, but in right now as we stand right now in the twenty twenties, we're looking to if the pattern continues to be about where we were at at the nineteen seventies. It's hard to grow a population if you don't have houses for them to go to. And if we're not replacing houses in such a rate that we can continue to grow, it's going to be a problem. And obviously there are areas where we're growing like in Forest and New London kind of coming out to good now in the areas of the county that's shrinking. And so when we talk about redistricting, we're really talking about how we can most efficiently use all the buildings we have in our inventory. We have twenty one schools that we currently run in Bedford County. The state says we need about nineteen of them. So we've already made the decision to close Stuartsville at this next academic year. That was a tough decision and you know, some of the numbers that we went through last night and our board meeting with our with our analysts was showing that that was that was probably right decision. But there still needs to be more that we talk about more balancing out. So we're using we're using our building and our staff to the best efficiency. Because if you're running a school, a school cost about a million dollars a year to run once you remove all of the teachers. I'm just talking building, maintenance, administrative counselor secretaries. If you've got a building open, if you've got four kids in this building, you've still got to have those uh, those people there. So in order for us to be able to say, hey, we're most we're being efficient with the money that we're provided. We've got to make make some really tough decisions in order to do that. We, like I said, we've already chose to consolidate one school. We're looking now forward to all right, how are we going to be more efficient with the rest of our schools and kind of seeing what On September tenth, our advisor is going to come back and give us scenarios and then we're going to start hosting town halls to get feedback from the community before we vote to make this final. But the if you want to pull up the two thousand aid structure you see back in two thousand. So I'm gonna get a little dorky with some of these graphs here. So this is the pyramid graph. It's showing our population based on age. The ideal shape that you're gonna want to have with this is a pyramid. You want to have the most amount of people in your zero to four range and the least amount in your eighty five plus as we are, and obviously this one back in two thousand was closer to that. You know, have the little airhead look to it, but you know, you still have more younger people than you had older people if you look now into twenty twenty four, and the two thousand data was based on our was based on the census. Twenty four is on projections. So you have a couple of anomalies in there, but it's starting to become an inverted pyramid, which is you know, in Bedford County we have an aging population. We have more people in the in the fifty five plus category than we do below it, and it's typically those people aren't having a whole lot of kids to put in our elementary schools, and so as our cohorts get smaller, we've got to now plan for the future of all right, Well, we have areas that are growing because of net break migration. We have areas that are shrinking. If you go over to the components of population change, this is this is how Betford County is growing. It's it's migration. If you see that that blue line there, that is our that is our migration, that's our net migration people moving to Bedford County. Don't you think a lot of that has to do because your school systems are good? Like That's what I've always felt is development. People follow because they want their kids to go into good schools. I absolutely think that's part of it. I think that's you know, Bedford County is not all just our school system. We have a lot of great things that are going on. We have a fantastic parks and rec Department. We have really good, I consider a really good community environment. But I think schools are a big part of that, which is great and I want to keep on attracting people here. But in saying that, so we have all these population concerns that we have now, we also on the other side of things, which is really kind of motivating everything that we do in the school board right now, is we have what's called the reversion coming up in twenty eight twenty nine. Back in about fifteen years ago, I believe in twenty thirteen twenty twelve, the Town of Bedford excuse me, the City of Bedford became the Town of Bedford. We had an agreement that to do that, we locked in the Town of Bedford's Local Composite Index the LCI number, and the LCI number is how we get funded from this state. So right now we're at a point three to one. That's the number, So that means sixty nine percent of our funding comes from the state. Well here, when the reversion happens here in just a couple of years, it's going to change to we're projecting right now about a point four to five. So really what that means is about eleven million dollars that we're not going to be getting from the state anymore. So we've got to be more efficient with our buildings in order to soften that blow. It's going to be a blow regardless. Yeah, and we're either going to have to make cuts or the sports supervisors are going to have to make tough decisions on uh, finding more revenue for us. And I don't envy them on that side because that's never fun either. Nope. But so we've got the big push. Now, how big a budget do you have? I'm sorry to so. We're about one hundred and thirty million dollar budd Wow, good grief. And that budget you know, it's it's it's big. So you're about to lose ten percent of your budget, right, yes, sir, Yeah, yeah, And and you know we've been planning for this for years. It's not like the board supervisors and the school board have not been planning for this right now, we're looking We've set aside about eight million dollars, but in doing that, we've also got I want to be able to, for I go to the board supervisors and say, hey, I need more money from you guys. I want to be able to say we are running the most efficient operation we can and you know, there's certain things that obviously you don't want to sacrifice. Really proud of Bedford County Schools. We are ranked thirty first in the state as far as the testing metrics go, and at the same time, we're about one hundred and eighteenth in the local funding. So to me, that's a great As a businessman, that's a great ROI and I'm proud of that, and I'm proud of that number. A lot of it has due to we have fantastic teachers and staff and counselors. We have great parents in our organization. I think outside of of just the teachers, the parents are by more. They're the ones that make stand apart. If we didn't have parents that were engaged and involved, we're not going to see the results that we're seeing. How big how many are total in the state, you said one hundred and eighteenth and fun hundred and thirty one. So we're we're almost at the bottom and funding. We're we're there, And I'm not necessarily complaining about that. Yeah, I'm you know, I'm politically probably closer to a libertarian. So yeah, I'm not saying that we need to be the most well funded. And I don't think you see the top fund at schools, they're not necessarily the best school. Yeah, that's right, But I do think that, you know, it's something to take into account. Our teachers, you know, were ranked about one hundred and twelve, and teacher pay, that's something that you know, I really want to focus on making sure that we do better at that. But I say all that to say, this is why we're really looking at redistricting. It's been on the table for thirteen years now. The first proposal that I could find back in our board docs was thirteen years ago to redistrict, and every school board has, for good reason, bad reasons, indifferent, have decided that that was not the right time for me. We've come to a head now to where we have places like Stortsville Elementary at under fifty percent capacity. You have Otter River, which is just above fifty percent capacity, where at the same time you have Forest Elementary School which is closing in on one hundred percent capacity. You have New London Academy which is closing in on ninety five percent capacity. We've got issues and we've got to figure out a way to balance those out in order to protect the organization for the future. I agree. Is a hard decision and the reason spent thirteen years technically, just like you were in that camp, you didn't want to You don't want to have la kids going to Otto River. Am I saying that the right way? So that was a proposal back in twenty three where we had a good amount of kids switching over there. And it's hard. Yeah, it's you know, no, no, And it's one of those things of you know, you get your friend, you get your kids that have friends there, you decide on where you want to move because I went to New London Academy. I went to some my kids in New London Academy. Sure, and so there are a lot of real world where you know, it's easy to sit here and look at demographics. Oh man, I can switch all these these roads around. This is easy. But when you start factoring in the human cost of it. The human cost has got to bear in something. So our goal is and what we what we told our consultant last night when we were he's going to be designing the maps on September tenth presenting it to us, is you know, we're wanting to balance the human costs we understand, I understand, and make it efficient. I didn't need a hire a consultant to make it efficient. What and he's done a fantastic job and laying out data that I didn't even know existed, but being able to sit there and go balancing all that out, understanding the transportation costs, You're not going to want to send a kid you know that's zoned right now for Forcelllementary School to Big Island. That might be the quickest route, just popping right over for Charlemont, but you don't want to send them that way. So is it one of those things where you and I have had this discussion too in the past about once you go to a school, you finish at that school and the new kids would go somewhere else. Or if you were in the third grade, now you in the fourth grade, you might be going somewhere else. So that's something that we've got to determine. We were talking about that last night, is do we grandfather kids in, do we let them finish out their their school career at that school and then move on, or do we go ahead and say we've got to do it right now. Because there's some schools where, to be honest, we have to do it right now, like Forest Elementary, we've got to we're bumping right up against you know, having to add extra units to those schools. Yeah, yeah, I mean so when you listen to it, the argument makes a lot of sense with what you're saying. With you know, you've got a school like New London, you want your kids to continue to go there. But like the kids that we're going to Stewart, Stuartsville, good View, whatever it's called, what is called Stuartsville, you know, their option was closing. That's right, right, that's a tough one to swallow. Absolutely, And we've closed Faxton now Stars Body Camp, Body Camp, Body Camp. So I mean, those those kids didn't they had a choice, but they really didn't. I mean, it closed. So you got to go somewhere else, yes, sir. And so in this particular case, when you when you think about those They look at that argument and go, you're going at least you're going from you know, New London to Otto River, right, Yes, and so that's the other the other side of the argument. But it all makes sense. There's no sense in keeping the school open that's at half capacity or less, right, I mean, that's absolutely and the smart decision to make. And you know, and they came up with this in twenty twenty four. This was voted, they got voted down. It may have you know, I don't know that they had the They didn't have the backing behind them to really have the data, right, which I would, you know. And I actually fought against hiring a consultant because again I've got libertarian tendencies. Yeah, I don't like spending money, especially taxpayer money because I'm a tax payer. But I will I will give it to our consultant here. He did a fantastic job in laying out So now I cannot just go of, hey, me over here in district three. I'm going to change someone else's district out there in one and it's not gonna affect my my constituents at all. We have actual hard data that says, hey, this is this is why this exists. This is why we're doing it this way. How are your other board members? How's that going along? There's seven of you right, yes, sir, how's that going along? With what they heard last night and what you're about to get into. I haven't had a lot of conversations with the board murdersons last night, but I will tell you, you know, just from the questions that were answered during the public hearings, it's it went really well as far as we were all extraordinarily impressed with the level and I brought just a few slides here. I think he had like forty five slides that we went through last night. I would encourage everyone if you get a chance, whether you have students or not, this affects your property. You know, if you are in Bedford County, the property value may change. Be aware. We're begging for people to give us feedback because we don't know what we don't know, and so we have all of this analytics, and analytics is great and I can make a decision based off analytics, but it's hard for me to make a decision based off of the human costs without understanding that. So I'm just curious tough question. But you previously had stated that you were against redistricting. Yes, sir, So would this data have changed your mind when you were against it? I think it would. I think it would have at least given me a And that was what I argue previously. I went to the board and I argued, and the data that makes sense. The gentleman that was there, that was presenting the data, he's no longer with the school system, but he he didn't have the data make sense. Now he was an employee of our school system. He didn't do this for a living. But the data didn't make sense. The data was going off of potential trending that may or may not happen. Sure, well, now I have the Hey, these are the permits that have been pulled. This is how we're looking, going all the way back to the nineteen hundreds. I didn't know we could go back to the nineteen hundreds. But the man did a great job. And I honestly I would say that. You know, as a businessman, I always say I'm going to make the decision based off of the data. Ship So I think there's still you know, there's still room for the human costs. But at the end of the day, the data is what the data is. And I appreciate how Brian approached that. This is a good way to say it. So these are tougher quest Ussians and you and you and I discussed this that you wanted to be on an air on air where you could have long form discussion. We're not up against commercials. That's not sound bites. Yep. Sure, and we're too dumb guys that just ask the questions. But when you say, I think it was sixty nine percent comes from the state of your your budget. Is the other thirty percent coming from the Board of supervisors? Are they? Where do you get your other. So about twenty five twenty six come from the Board of Supervisors, and then about four or five percent comes from the from the federal government. So another tough decision that could be made that might help you all set the eleven million that you're losing, is the board of supervisors raise taxes or attribute more money, send more money to the school. And that's why I'm glad I'm on the board of supervisors. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that is a that's you know, raising revenue. Fortunately, as a school board member, I got nothing to do with revenue. Yeah. Yeah, all I can do is ask for more. Yeah, and you're a steward of the taxes. I mean it's obviously you hear. That, absolutely, but I think I think that's some thing to be looked at. I, you know, personally, have a real hard time with you know, raising taxes and better. I think that's part of what makes bet For great is our low tax rate. But to account of that is if we want to continue to offer great services and continue our net migration increase, schools are part of that. And you know we've we've spent and the Board Supervisors has done fantastic. We just renovated the auditorium at Stanton River and Liberty High School, and man, those state of the art facilities. Yeah, like those are those are amazing facilities. I'm really excited for what they're going to be able to do there. But that costs money. It's got to come from somewhere, and you know, we were very fortunate that the Board Supervisors you know, set aside those funds and let us go after that. Well, one other formula in the variable, or one other variable in the formula, is to increase the number of people that are getting taxed and that is density. Yeah, and we have a board. Member and I know that you don't have to hear this, but I'm a muscat box a little. But we have a board member out there trying to make it sound like we don't need any growth. Obviously we do. And the way to do that is to do the migration that you see here is attract people. Sure. Yeah, And I've always felt like, and we had this discussion a little bit last night, but when you have great schools, you attract people. When you attract people, you attract development. You attract good parents, right that come in when I have their kids go to good schools. So you get smart kids, and you get good schools because you got smart kids leaving those schools. It's a beautiful cycle that works as long as all those things keep happening. So yeah, and you got to stay on top of it. Absolutely. Actually you set me up perfectly. Yeah. Can you move over to the enrollment forecasting. This is what scares me. So. Yes, we get our funding from the state, from locality, and from federal government, but really our numbers are tied. Our funding numbers are tied to the students that we have in our schools and that's continuing to go down. You know, in two thousand and six, two thousand and seven, we're sitting there at eleven thousand students. This year, we're probably gonna be around eighty five hundred, and it's you know, looking at it, there's a real good chance that it's continuing to decrease. And a lot of that is birth rate that we just can't help. That is a national trend, international trend really of decreasing in population. You know, I was talking to the advisor last night and he was saying something that shocked me. Here, in the next ten to fifteen years, Nigeria is going to be the third most populated country in the world. And so because we're trending the opposite direction, I think we're at one point seven on a birth rate. And I don't know if y'all realize this, but it takes two people to make a kid, So if you're producing under two point one, it's going to be you know, we're going to continue this decline and enrollment. You know, there is a portion Bedford County has a great homeschool community, so there's a portion of our population that goes there. We have great private schools at both ends at Liberty Christian Timberlake. Well, they're also dropping. I mean it's a national trend. It's a national trend. And so what I want to also talk about is we've got to find more way to bring more people to Bedford, to bring more students to Bedford. And we have the school board. A year ago we even dropped our tuition for out of county residents to come in to attempt to continue to fight those not sure because I think again, I think Bedford has a great product. I think we are we are top notch. I mean it shows by the testing we're thirty one out of one hundred and thirty one. We're doing great. We could always do better. There's always room for improvement. But the only way that we're going to continue with that is to continue to get population. So here's here's my tough question. Yeah, because you're the business you got your business at on, Yes, sir, So if you see a trend where you're steadily losing enrollment as your what's the word staff hiring, how's your staff hiring gone with that? So what we've done is our big thing is we want to have small class sizes. So even though our population has dropped about eleven percent in the last ten years. We have hired four percent more teachers in the last ten years, but in doing that, we've also dropped our central office stuff. Our central office has decreased by about five percent in that same time. Can you decrease it by fifty So that's my soapbox absolutely. So. The example that I give is when I went to school, your your central office made up of about eight people, and it was pretty much they had. It was your superintendent, a secretary, your bus maintenance, you know, and then I think one or two others and that was it. So Betford Kenny, that is something that and I will give all the credit to our previous board Marcus Hill did a great job at starting work. To trend to trim that down. Okay, the state says, so we have what's called SQ Standards of Quality. The state says that we should have eighty two eighty two point five people in our central office. We have twenty six less than that in our central office somewhere in the sixties, and we're going to continue to make that more efficient. The problem is is the difference between when you went to school and when I went to school is we've taken a lot of society's problems that we have and we've thrown it on the school. Oh, I don't disagree with it. So we've got you know, in the summer and during COVID and we've still got to support our students nutrition. That's on us. Yeah, that you know, that's we're educators. That's not something that we should be having, but it's on us. So we've got to keep that running. We've got, you know, all these mental health services we we you know, a lot of our a lot of our central office staff falls into that. And again I don't think that should go under the schools, but it does according to the State of Virginia, it does go under the schools. Sure, I think it's part of a whole education, and I think that is part of it. But I don't think we should have to staff this many full science psychologists, but we do. We're required to. And so if we're going to continue to throw more things on the schools, unfortunately, that means that our administration is going to have to increase Could you kind of have somebody to supervise that. Yeah, And that's what I didn't know is whether or not it was stated. There's some of that state and mandate some of that that, like I said, especially with teachers and instruction, we have added more on that. We have said, you know what, in Bedford, we're going to keep classifians is as small as we can. In Bedford, We're going to prioritize instructions. So we do have every just about every subject has its own instructional coordinator that that's what they do, is science, or they do math, or they do because we think that's important. I want to create a county that produces really smart kids that can go out, continue to get into the workforce, and then continue to thrive in Bedford, grow Bedford as a community. Yeah, d I warned him too. I tell him what your pet peeves usually are. But if he left here, you would think later and were like, tag, I forgot to ask about sports funding. Sports funding to me and it obviously you've got budget issues. I get it, But I honestly believe well I know. I mean, we've had coaches that were in the Bedford County School District that went on to coach college and the very first thing they will tell you is when they were recruiting the state of Virginia is by far the lowest paid when it comes to athletics. Yeah, it's atrociously different than other states. Yeah, and yet we are one of the highest recruited in athletics. So our kids are going to college through athletic scholarships, and yet we continually to do nothing to fund them. And when I say nothing, I mean it's very, very bare. Like most athletic directors will tell you, they start in a deficit from day one. They're already in a deficit just to write a check to officiating. Their whole budget's gone. And yet we somehow get through it. And it's like it's getting more and more difficult with the way things are. For me. I look at it because I coached for I don't know, fifteen years and you see the kids that if they don't have this avenue, they're absolutely not going to make it. And it to me, I watch school boards go through these processes of and I'm just using Chromebook as an example, the billions of dollars that are spent in that when I have a proven curriculum that has worked perfect for forty years in teaching you how to work as a team, something you're going to have to have at a job. You're going to have to learn how to show up on time, you got to work with It teaches you everything. And yet we don't fund it at all, you know, at a decent pace. Absolutely, And I think a lot of that is because a lot of our funding, like I said over, you know, sixty nine percent of our funding comes from the state. The state a lot of times dictates where those moneys go based on the SOQS. Sports is not not high on their priority list. And so I'm one hundred percent, you know, I'm big. The two things I'm passionate about are physical education with our children, and I would I would consider sports part of that. I wrestled, I played football, you know, I went through the whole FYA program when I was when I was a student. I think there's invaluable skills that I learned from that. But we've got to fund it. And right now we're having such a hard time with our funding in general, it's almost inconceivable to go, all right, we're going to add something else to that. And so a lot of the programs are you know, supplemented by boosters or parents or you know, some type of organization, and that really kind of and you see it across the state. It really. Advantages these schools that have a more affluent population. And so I agree that's the problem. I just don't know the solution. Yeah, and I don't know how to get that. I'd love to if someone has a solution, I'd love to get that, But we have so many other budget constraints and budget concerns and I hate to you know, it's our kids. There's no amount of money I wouldn't spend my own personal sure, but at the same day, I've got to balance this budget, and we've got to be efficient, and we got to be smart with it. And so I've said this plenty of times. We get a lot of proposals in the school system. You know, last year there was about fifteen that the superintendent brought to us. It said, hey, I'd love to fund all these and all of them are great things to fund, but we only have a finite amount of money, and so it's a it's a zero sum game. So whatever I take from one entity, I'm going to add to another. That entity loses. And so I think we've done a decent job. We've expanded our sports into middle school, which I think was very important. We did that, the previous board did that to where you know we have now organizational school is always going back to middle school. I'd like to continue that. I'd like to grow those organizations. I'm just running up against brick walls right now. Sure, No, I know, and it's it's very difficult. I mean I can understand because and I don't want to just say it's athletics, it's any extracurricular stuff that's like the investments that you're making in the auditoriums is important. I mean, those those kids dedicate. We've been to plays at JF and Liberty. I mean they're phenomenal the work that they do, and it it takes it goes past high school onto other stuff, and so I just I don't know how you get there either. I've never figured it out. I've tried, but yeah, it's just it's it's tough. I think our board is willing to work on those things. We're just I've not gotten someone that's come to me and said, hey, this is a this is where we can. Have a solution at ye. And I'm not an educator, yeah, I you know, I'm a businessman. I can you know I'm a father. I've got three small kids. I want to see that. I want to have them a place to play sports and to grow. I want to expand all of our ex curriculars. But that comes at a local cost. And if we if we want to, you know, we're not getting money from the state from that, We're not getting money nationally from that. So that's going to come locally. And we've got to really we've got to encourage the tax space to go, hey, we're okay paying more money for this. And I don't know about you, but I don't know many people that want to more taxes. Well can schools individually? And I'm curious. I don't know the answer to this, but a good example to me is Liberty High School has a phenomenal FFA program. Can they work directly with you know, tractor dealerships or things like that to get more funding for that? And it's excluding JF or Stanton River, whereas those those have their own. Yeah, and a lot of you know, a lot of ptas do that. You know. I'll just I'll talk about New London because my wife's the vice president of their PTA. Their big fundraiser is that fence outside of their property. They put advertisements on that thing, and we all run diet fifty times a day, that's right, And so they take that money and they put it towards I think last year they bought two big smart screens for teachers classes. I think this year they're raising money for playground equipment and ever every school has something like that, and those are obviously the public private partnerships are huge because the private sector wants to be part of the community. That's a great way to be part of the community is by supporting these public institutions. They do. But I get angry at the big businesses because a lot of their employment comes from our local high schools, and you don't see like if you go to a smaller community, like I went to Honeacre for a state semifinal game. You pull over and I don't know if you've ever been to Honaker, but when I say it's in the middle of nowhere, I mean you're going thirty miles before you get to a convenience store. So but when you pop over the hill, there's this gorgeous school, the turf fields, locker rooms, everything's immaculate. But everything has one name on it, and that is their manufacturing facility that pretty much employs the old town and they donate millions back because that is their employment. It comes from that school. And I would like to see our businesses do that here. Yeah, more of it. We have millions of dollars you know that should be pouring back into our local schools. Yeah. Absolutely, and you know I will a lot of times. You they've also have those programs. It's just you got to know where to look for it. Now, this is not a big thing, but last year in New London wrote a letter to Walmart and said, hey, we need new balls for our for our recess yard. And we got buckets of that kind of stuff and now they're good for years now. Sure, and so I think those those exist, but you got to find it. You got to work for it. And you know, I would love for more businesses to approach us instead of time to reach out to them. Yeah. I did see something in Tennessee I thought was a cool idea. I actually sent this to Marcus and Marcus was busy then he didn't. I bet Marcus probably replied to eighty percent of what I sent him. But it was really cool. In Tennessee, the school buses actually have ads on the side of them. They're like just a school board, you know, the along the chain link fence that you were talking about. Yeah, absolutely, this is kind of the cool thing they're driving around neighborhoods. It's a perfect billboard to put on the side of something. So it might be something to look into. Well, how I mean, like what Brian just said about trying to find local companies that hire local kids that come out of the school. Is there a liaison or is there anybody that does something like that that reaches out for the school board to local their businesses. Sir. So that's what we just created a position for you. That is what we do with the Minimum Club. We did separate than the Booster Club because we wanted we only go to those big businesses and they donate to our organization and then we of course give all the one hundred percent to the schools. But our whole philosophy was we want to make relationships with these type of businesses so that when we do capital improvement projects, we can ask for a ten thousand dollars check and not a five hundred dollars check. And we've got currently we have eighteen businesses that pay us one thousand dollars a year to be part of the club. We've started at ten and now we're up to eighteen, and we'd love to have thirty because that's thirty grand starting from the start, just annually. They keep, you know, but it's to be able to develop. You can't walk into someone's office and say, hey, we're doing a locker or a new weight room that's costing one hundred and twenty five thousand, can you donate twenty five thousand. They're looking at you like you're stupid. Yeah, you've got a fifteen year relationship with them. It's a different story. And so that's what we've tried to do over the past eight years with a minimum club. Yeah, and I think a lot of those those local schools do a great job with that, but as a school board office, that's not something we've ever really pursued. I think we've allowed each individual school to do that. But it does benefit some schools more than others, depending on their organizational level. And we did get we did get money, you know, we sent out we did a what's it called a grant, you know, with Nick's Sporting Goods. We asked for ten thousand, they gave us three. Yeah, and we just asked, but I'm not a grant writer. And if you've ever filled out a grant, it's a process. Yeah, that's right, and so finding a grant writer would be phenomenal. And especially in our forest area, a lot of those grants they're not eligible for. My wife just tried to do a grant for I think it was Clorox and it was to provide hand washing stations in the school. Something very and she got to the last page after about fifteen pages, and it was like, you know what percentage of your school has is on the free lunch program? Right? What your average media? And then come and so then it go and then they just say, hey, thanks for setting that in, but we're not interesting and so you know, you run into a lot of that as well, which is neither good nor bad. But it is just the facts of being in Bedford and bring in a population that does have some influencies. Sure, what what what are some upcoming dates that if people are still tuning in after listening to Brian just kidding? What what do? What are some upcoming dates that that people can attend that you want them to. Know about So the next big important day to September the tenth, and that's when there our consultant demographics analyst advisors. They're going to come in and present different scenarios. We haven't given them a number, it's probably going to be four to six different scenarios that we can adopt, and then we as board members are going to be holding individual town halls throughout the month of October November to determine, you know, what the feedback is, what the community wants, what's their hard lines, what they definitely don't want, and you know, well, we get a lot of hey, this is great, and I think you need to do it, just not my house. Yeah uh, And so it's it's it's figuring out how to create those those scenarios where we are we are understanding that, yes, everyone doesn't want to be affected individually, but how do we do it in fact that is fair to all of Bedford County, is fair to every individual district. And so that's gonna be our challenge. And so we're gonna be having several of those town hall meetings. I know in District three, I'm gonna be having three different ones. I'm still waiting on the different locations to respond back to me on the act exact dates. If you follow my Facebook page Stephen Hill for Bedford County District three school Board. I post up regularly. I post up several times a day sometimes, and I am I have a commitment to where I will answer every email. My phone number is on there. Call me, text me, email me, I will answer you. One of one of the legends in my life. Most of influential people russel in balld, but I'd say Charlie Kirk. Oh, it was right in there. And Charlie Kirk says, you're going to change the country if you change the school boards. If you're on the school board and just your passion, you can hear it. And I'm so glad we have someone like you on that school board. Man, appreciate it. And you know, I've got three kids. I got a fifth grader, a third grader, and a kindergartener. So I'm I'm gonna be in it for a while. You got the question, Oh yeah, you can't get out without a question. All right, all right, So if you could spend twenty four hours with one person past future president, who would it be and where would you spend with them. Where you know, where would you go to spend your time with them? Brett Favre Duck Hunting, oh Man, Mississippi. I yes, there, that's that's awesome. It would be a fun time. I grew up in the nineties when you know, my dad was a bigger Packer fan from the sixties and so I kind of inherited and that was a it was a great. Time to be a Packer fan. Yeah, he might not have been the best quarterback to ever play the game, but he has to be one of the most fun quarterbacks to watch play again. Definitely, Well, we appreciate you, Steve from coming in again. Stephen Hill with the Bedford County school Board and this segment was brought to you by State Farm