On the future of education policy. Introductory remarks now underway and this is live on cspan2. The president of the Largest Labor union in the country, the National Education association. She is the first ever latino elected to leave the and a a and is students are heading back to school. It is also a time when efforts are underway to further privatize Public Education and rollback protections. The nea reprimands 3 million teachers who work in k12 schools, colleges and universities. The union has been a critic of the trump administrations proposals for education. Last spring she said the Administration Proposed budget was a wrecking ball aimed at our nations Public Schools. She went on to say the budget quote shows how dangerously illinformed they are about what works for students and Public Education and they are reckless and irresponsible budget would smash the aspirations of students, crush their dreams and make it difficult for them to go to college and get ahead. We would be interested to hear how she expands on these criticisms and some ideas she has to improve Public Education and the united states. She has a long career in education that began by working as a server in a school lunchroom. Within a year she found a job as an aid to a special ed teacher and from there a fulltime teaching job. Later, she would be named utahs teacher of the year. She is a graduate of the university of utah, graduating magna kalon a in elementary education. She later earned her masters degree in instructional technology. Please, join me in welcoming the selfdescribed lunch lady turned president of the National Education association, lily garcia. [applause] [speaking in native tongue] it is an honor to be here in the hallowed halls of the National Press club. I am also proud sit up here with some of my colleagues that came to support me, educators, incredible educators but i want to give a special shout out to a student who came to support me. Axel ramos is an exceptional student at duke university. He was born in honduras and he came with his family to america as a child he is a proud documented dreamer and activist and i would ask you to show him some love so that he knows he has some friends. [applause] i am trying very hard to concentrate on the message i want to bring to you today but that is difficult because i have colleagues and their students of the storm in the path in there cleaning a party and if the lights were still on that they would be watching so just in case i wanted to send them our love and our thoughts. I was looking at the Facebook Page that was up that several of our and ea staff posted pictures of their own boys and girls and sons and daughters going off on the first day of school and it was so beautiful. You had all these shiny faces smiling, new tennis shoes, backpacks and this time of year is like christmas for us. I am a teacher there new tennis shoes and backpacks and teachers and support staff all over the country right now because our kids are coming. Its like santa claus is here. It is amazing. I have this urge to break into a Public School and put up a bulletin board. I was arranging desks and id be practicing our class song which was always dont stick your fingers up your nose because your nose knows its not its placed your goals. We sing it with dignity and here i am. Here i am instead of in the classroom and im at the National Press club. It is actually very fitting. This is maybe poetic justice that i am here because i always for 20 years in the classroom i started every day with current immense. Every morning kids could get extra credit if they reported on an article that they read in this thing called a newspaper. Remember paper . [laughter] remembered news . The times. Yes, they had to summarize it. They had to explain. They had to give an opinion. They had to know what the article was about and then the other kids got to ask them questions about it and in my class you got a jellybean if you had a good answer. And you had a two jellybeans if you had a good question. In all my kids had cavities. I want thats on my evaluation. My kids knew how they could get three jellybeans. Sooner or later they figured it out and someone would ask. Are we supposed to do something about it . About whatever the issue was. There was a blood shortage in Salt Lake City so maybe we could put on a blood drive. Yes. So, a senator thanks we should all wear uniforms. Should we write to him and tell him he doesnt know what we want . Yes. In good handwriting and be nice. Cars are parked illegally in the handicap parking space. Should we take those illegally parked spaces . No. Sometimes the answer is no but mostly the answer is yes. Yes, we should do something about it. I think at this point in my presentation its only fair to tell you because i thank you only hinted at it but i am a fabulous teacher. Im really, really good. You would want your kid in my class. I am holding back. Im totally full of myself because i know right down to my underwear how important my work is. How important my teaching work is and i have the honor of representing 3 million National Education associates educators, teachers, adjunct faculty, bus drivers, custodians and the lunch lady and the counselors in the library is and if you work in american Public School college or university if your student teacher or retired educator, you can belong to the nea. We are so full of the importance of our work that we wake up every day saying what am i supposed to do about making sure that my kids have everything they need to make their lives everything they should be. Our work is the future of everything. Our work is so important we cant hold it inside a classroom. Our work happens inside and outside and thousands of people across this country this week took to the streets to protest this administrations cruel, senseless, unnecessary ending of daca. Many of them were our nea members supporting our students and those same educators ended up going right back into the classroom and they were there for their kids giving them hugs and homework and we have to be both in this world. We have to be activists and we have to be educators. In this speech today i have to do both. I have to talk about policy and politics but somehow i have to leave you with not just what is in our heads but what is in our hearts. The importance of the work that we do. We are facing a reckless, irresponsible administration. A trend that creates chaos and confusion which is bad. But he does something worse. He creates fear in children. That is unforgivable. The first time in our countrys history and i have talked to these teachers, we have had to comfort crying children because they are afraid of their president s. The Current Events about the muslim the and educators had to assure pride in children little girls who were he jobs and boys named mohammed that the president couldnt hurt them. There were Current Events about border walls and keeping out bad on race. Educators had to ensure bright childrens names like juanita and alfredo that the president couldnt hurt them. There were Current Events about humiliating transgender students who just wanted to go to the bathroom by removing protections against their discrimination, from the office of civil rights and educators had to assure these transgendered boys and girls who so often struggle to be accepted even in their own families because the president cannot hurt them. This week there was a Current Events that the president was stripping away protections from our dreamers. He truly said, dont worry, be happy, congress can fix it, no big deal. Donald trump is playing games with the lives of 800,000 young people. He himself risks nothing. These undocumented young people were brought here is children, they graduated from high school, they have no criminal record and they are young people who did not make the decision to come. They follow their parents. They applied and were granted protected status because of their special circumstances. Daca allowed them to get drivers license and to go to work and to go to college and to serve their country in the military. Daca is an unqualified success on every level and it is humane. It is just. It is pumping billions of dollars into our economy and to have educated hardworking enthusiastic young people paying taxes, buying homes, working, studying, starting their own businesses. Their students and we want to complete. It is so hard to tell the that the president cant hurt them. They know the truth. We have talked a while and so they know and we know the right questions to ask. What are we going to do about it. If this were business as usual we would naturally have turned to the department of education in business as usual is no matter what party the administration would have had me think about how i could reach out to betsy devos, a woman who had zero experience in Public Schools with the exception of using her billions of dollars in michigan to take Public School dollars away from Public School students to funnel it to private schools. She actually did ask me to meet and i asked her to take a standardized test. I made it very, very easy. The questions. Will you hold privately managed vouchers and Charter Schools to the same standards of fiscal transparency, conflicts of interest as Public Schools. Will you privatize programs like special education or title i and will you protect all of our students from discrimination, are students of scholar, our english English Learners in our immigrant students and art muslim students, our girls. Our lgbt students. I have never received a written answer. Her actions scream. On her watch protections for transgender students against the termination from the opposite civil rights of the department of ed was rescinded. This week she is supporting rolling back title ix protections for victims of Sexual Assault on college campuses. She halted loan forgiveness protections when students who had been defrauded by the growing scam for profit Higher Education industry, the trump divorce budget proposes 10 billion in cuts from programs like special education, title one, college workstudy and there was one thing that they added and there was one thing that they pumped millions of dollars into, a brandnew shiny multibilliondollar federal program for vouchers, for private schools. Instead of investing in improving the invest in schools where 90 of our students go she continues with the careers that she is made by birding spheres resources to fund private schools. So, no, we do not turn to the department of education, the nea and 3 million members will do something about it. We will fight this agenda to take resources away from our students, to frighten our students will not be ever be acceptable and that is probably obvious. What night might not be obvious is that for me this is not partisan. I am from utah. I have worked and played well with democrat and republican politicians all my life. I know how to find common ground. Regardless of party, in my experience most people are good people. They really do want Something Better for kids and families, better for their communities and we argue and argue and debate about what is a good idea and what is a bad idea but time and time again i have seen people of both parties come together when you can show them a plan and show them a way forward that makes sense. This administration is differe different. I do not trust them. And yet, i can say that and the next second say i am full of hope. I am full of the energy of hope. That confuses some of my friends and i talked to people who tell me but there is no hope that congress will get its act together in six months, that artificial timeline that donald trump set for congress to pass a law to protect our dreamers. They said when his last Time Congress got together and did a good thing for kids . Actually it was december 10th 2050. I watched it. I watched democrats and republicans who cannot agree on the time of day sit down and undo the toxic mandates of no child left untested. I watched president obama take a pen and sign away an old loft that judged human children on a standardized test score and replaced it with the every Student Succeeds act. Its a law that gives us the opportunity to deeply measure whether students have access and opportunity and how that impacts their achievement. States and local distance even as we speak are completing their plans, plans that must, by law, be developed educators who know those students so that we do something that makes sense and we can use the information to guide our instruction so that we can advocate for Real Solutions for our students. Having good information is actually a big part of our secret plan. We have a secret plan and you will want to write this down. Tell everyone about our secret plan, please. Our secret plan is we plan to make every Public School as good as our best Public School. Here is what i rarely read Current Events. Some of the best schools, bar none, on the planet are found amongst american Public Schools. Think of the best Public School in your state. Usually they are in really nice neighborhoods and that is where you know parents sold a connate because they wanted to afford a house next to that school because that is an amazing Public School. That is where the kids are succeeding and getting scholarships to ivy league colleges. That is where parents are excited and involved and that is where kids love their theater class in technology in sports. Those schools are not Successful Schools because of the test. It is not successful because of cutthroat petition and fear that some private charter is going to close them down. They are good because they have highly trained, career professionals and support staff who have a Collaborative Authority to be creative, to make instructional decisions for their students and they have technologies that works for they have books in their libraries may have afterschool programs and acquire and field trips in a debate team. Our plan is to use our best Public Schools as a living model. There should be no reason why every Public School doesnt look like our best Public School. What works with our most advantages students are district will work for every student. Equal access, equal opportunity. Equal respect for that child. The National Education association and our affiliates, like in marilyn, are just all up into the business of we are taking advantage and we are using their voice to develop the state plans and there is dashboards and multiple services and support indicators not just standardized tests and we are calling for an opportunity audit on each School Across the nation where we are organizing at the local levels to hold leaders accountable for all of those promises that they need to students and parents and educators. It is the letter of the law. It is exciting and it is not in. Our plan actually has to incorporate that and the spirit of the law, the spirit of the law that says every Student Succeeds at my school because i have a respected voice as the teacher. Every Student Succeeds at my school because i have a great idea and because i can bring people together because nobody is going to stop my school from doing what it can do without anyones permission. Did i mention how good i was . I am a great teacher. I was a teacher of the year and i really, really am quite full of myself but i need you to know it wasnt because of my kids test scores. I really remember what my kids test scores were. I made my kids work their little butts off and love it. My colleagues and i thought our reading basil was boring so without anyones permission we put it up on the shelf and out of our own pocket and our troll book bonus points we bought classroom sets of old yeller and charlottes web and bridge to terabithia and roll of thunder, hear my cry and kids got mad at me every single day when i said reading is over, time to closure books. No, i want to keep reading. I made them love reading and if you love reading you read a lot and you become a better reader. Rocket science right . So, yes, we have to worry about funding and policies and weve got to organize to make sure we have what we need to make every Public School look like our best Public School but in the meantime, country and nothing stops us today. Nothing stops us with whatever they gave us. We will create something amazing, something unique that works for our children. The Texas State Teachers Association asks me to come to san antonio so that i could walk through and talk to the students and the parents and the educators at their earliest College High Schools that are popping up all over and that there helping to organize. They are directly linked to Community Colleges so that kids in high school and graduate from high school having already earned an associate degree. They found a way of debtfree college for kids whose parents never dreamed they would be able to afford to send them to college. I went to last christmas, new mexico. Educators in our local affiliate there wanted to what kids wanted in their school and they interviewed them in the focus groups and they surveyed them and they wanted to show what kids were thinking that they were hungry and that they did have dinner or breakfast this morning and they were amazed at how many children lived on the edge of being hungry and so, they decided that they would change their name and now they are the Community Middle school and they partnered with the food bank and Healthcare Providers and afterschool programs in the arts and sports and leadership clubs in the chamber of commerce cut the ribbon at the Ribbon Cutting ceremony of the new school. Everybody is all in. Attendance is often homework completion is up and parents are showing up. In minnesota, our affiliate took me to some of their Community Schools and in some of the ones that were hard to get teachers to want to teach because they were so lacking in resources they were able to find training for every single one of those educators and the elite International Baccalaureate program. Now, they have educators lined up saying i want to be a part of that. In new jersey and in the most challenges committee teachers are being trained in ap physics instruction through a Program Sponsored by the new jersey education association. In tennessee they are using social Emotional Learning is a way to support students who come to school with trauma from the violence that they have personally experienced in their own little lives. Everywhere in this great country, educators and their unions and their parents and advocates in Community Leaders are embracing that Public School and powerful human creative, loving, transformative ways big ways to make headlines and lots and lots of small ways that you will never hear about. One year my kids read a newspaper article about a school in our district called the heart dixon school for multiple severely, disabled students and a hand went up because jason wanted three jellybeans and he said what if we are penthouse with the heart dixon kids are smart we are penthouse of everybody so what if birkenfeld with the heart dixon kids are smart i went down to that school and talked to their teacher and she explained to me that most of my kids cant write their own name and some of my kids cant hold a pencil but some of them can drop picture and we have High School Kids that volunteered and maybe they could write some of the letters and we made it happen. We wrote to them in a row back. I am adam and i like snow. Write me back. I am karen. I am beautiful. Everybody loves me. My kids fell in love with their penpals. Then they said ms. Lily, can we have a party, we want to invite our penpals to a party. Now, if theres anything is utahs same as for is that we like to party. Work with me, people. [laughter] i was a little worried because nothing in these letters that we were receiving really would have prepared my students for the reality of the life of these beautiful little boys and girls. Most of them wore diapers and some of them couldnt speak. Most of them were furnaces to hold them up straight in their wheelchairs. We are utah and we dont get out much and we were going to have a party. We decorated the multipurpose room and we had balloons and we had white sugar cookies and red koolaid and we had the hokey pokey on the stereo because that is what we have on every utah party and then the bus pulled up and we stood on the sidewalk waiting for our penthouse and the bus ramp lowered the aware chairs one by one. They had big nametags. I told the kids dont hug because it might frighten some of these kids. Put your hand out and maybe they will shake and if they dont, just wave at them. As one little boy came down in his name tag said adam and jason said that one is mine. He runs over and he throws his arms around adam and adam hugs him back and everybody came over and said that one is mine and he said hi and they started to meet their penpals. They hunt and shook hands and we waved in a controlled and we rolled everybody into the party and we danced the hokey pokey 472 times. We were bad. I wanted to take a Group Picture so i get everybody together in a ready to snap in the one little guy goes walking away and we herded him back over and got everyone together and im ready to snap in this little girl turns around and hug the person behind me and im ready to stand and jason says wait a minute, he runs over to the cookie table and he grabs a napkin and comes back and says hey buddy, you want to look at the picture and wiped the drool off his chin. For the life of me i cannot remember jasons ranking of the standard achievement is that your but i will never forget that that tough, little boy wiped the drool of his penpals chin. I will tell you this. There are very few things in this world apply to me but i have the site in this last year. Ive been frightened by attacks on the crown jewels of our democracy. Attacks on the free press, attacks on elections and i have been frightened by people who dont know jason, dont know my kids and dont understand the importance of what i do, dont understand what it is to teach and what it is to learn. People who dont know what they are talking about will destroy the brightest jewel in the crown. They will destroy that Public School. Our plan is to do something about that. Our plan is to fight for a Public School that is worthy of our children and in the same breath our plan is to dedicate ourselves as professionals so that we are worthy of them. There is no reason to think that joy is on the agenda of this administration we are educators and finding joy is our location. Our plan is to inspire, to include, to teach our students what it means to be a critical questioning citizen of this beautiful, diverse, interdependent world, to be creative problem solvers and compassionate human beings. We know what our reward will be because it is a perk of our profession that we so often become better people because of the lessons we learned from our students. They teach us how to teach them and they teach us to serve the whole happy child and the reward is that we get a whole and happy adult and that changes everything. That is the most important work and that is the future of everything and we dont intend to let anything stand in our way. [speaking in native tongue] thank you mac. [applause] thank you. Very nice, lily. Anyone have questions make sure to pass them up. I will start with this first question. Do you have any hope for a legislative solution that daca, in congress over the next six months . I dont want to be flippant and just say yes but i do have hope. As i explained, i believe that essa was a model for bringing people together. Senator alexander and senator murray who probably have never agreed on anything said we can do this and we know that there are republicans out there that want to help students like axel, that want to help our dreamers so that will be job one for us. The clock is ticking. I am from grand rapids, michigan, betsy devos is also from west michigan and shes been influential in education in michigan. What are your impressions of what has gone on in michigan . If you google michigan, charter in the word chaos you will get thousands of hits which means they have put those three words in the same article that many times. A lot of people who actually support Charter Schools were not supportive of betsy devos because she is the cautionary tale of what happens when you have unregulated privatized charters with no accountability. There is no cap so that this would think about it this way. A Public School that has an Elementary School that serves 500 students cannot walk down the street and just Start Building another school because they feel like it. You have to make a case that that school is necessary that its an investment in the community and what you have in michigan in the way it says chaos so often is up to pop dozens of schools in that community and they can all fail because there is no rhyme or reason to why you would have that many schools. Some schools have ten or 50 or a hundred kids and no one has a Critical Mass to have a decent program so the Public School closes down, the privatized charters also are each others competition and no one has enough students to make a go and without regulation you also have a lot of scam schools. You have people with good intentions but they dont know what theyre doing and the schools fail. Michigan is what our country would head for if betsy devos has her way. What should educators say to dreamers in their schools . What theyre saying to them, right now, is we are here with you. We are fighting for you. You can go up to and nea websi website, nea justice. Org, i believe that is what it is, and you can see our plan and what we are doing right now to support our dreamers. Its an open website and you can click in your zip code and up will pop your senators and your member of the house. You can write from that website and let them know that you want our dreamers protected. You want them to pass a law. What we are telling our dreamers that were working for them and we have a plan and we are working with so Many Organizations from integrated in a way that is astounding because so many people have come forward and said we will make this happen for you. Theres no guarantees in this world but no one is going to make a false promise to these children. What we are saying is that we will take all of us and you have our hearts, we will be fighting for you. Our doctora daca the students ag adults know that they have a role in this to plate, as well. No one is sitting this out and hoping for the best. The hurricane is coming and we are going to batten down the hatches and we will protect the students and we will do whatever it takes to weather out the storm. The Education Department is in the process of reviewing estate plans under essa and have already approved a number of them. How do you think the department is handling this process . The few have been approved and we know there is a deadline looming and so far it has been moving along safely and we have great hope that plans will be approved that will be a small part of making every student succeed so now the work will begin implementing those plans. As i said, plans are really about what will we measure and what will we do those that are at the wrong end of those measurements. We dont want this to be about the bottom 5 of schools and what were doing there. We want this to be every Public School to look like our best Public School so we will have measurements now, depending on which state you live in, there will be different measurements looking at our most Successful Schools we can then go in and take an inventory of what are your programs, what are you doing for your students and why are you successful and that will be, our rallying cry. We will say that is our model school and i wouldnt take one thing away from the students. Our job is to say every school will use this as a standard and if they cant, if they dont, then they are letting the students down. We will have a very powerful tool in equity and inequality if we do our daca dashboard the way it should be done. Do you fear that dreamers will stop showing up at fear for fear of being pursued by immigration . Yes, i am always afraid that is afraid will hide. And it would be foolish of me to tell the students that they have nothing to fear and they have everything to fear. This is the time that we have to be fearless. Them staying home will not solve their problem. Hiding will not solve the problem. But i understand apparent that would say im worried and i understand a College Student who might say someone knows where i live now and someone knows where my family lives now and of course they will be right. We have to stand with the and we have to be arm in arm so that they know they are not alone. It has to be there decision in their familys decision but what ever they decide they will have to come through us first. What types of conversations have you had with lawmakers in regard to the fiscal year 2018 budget, particularly in the house . Are there any areas that are underfunded now that you are confident we will have more funding and final legislation . We are actually quite pleased that the trump devoss budget seems to be dead on arrival. Neither the house nor the senate has picked up on vouchers that we have the money to prioritize is funding private schools. It would be hard to say please to any education budget that still continues to underfunded special ed. We never lift up to half of our commitment on the federal level but we see movement and we see the senate bill is being more generous than the house bill but movement has to continue and we are meeting with our legislators for congressmen and senators even now because we have got to make the case for why education is the best investment on every level that we could be making. We were devastated during the fiscal crisis and a lot of programs were lost in a lot of services to services were lost and we need those back. Times have changed and we need those students to have their programs, their teachers, their librarians, their School Nurses and all of the people who were let go and now is the time to do it. If you are glad that the trump devoss budget is doa, does that mean you support the threemonth cr and would you see a longer one . That is a good question. I have to think about that. When you have been facing a budget where youre talking about 10 billion in essential programs that has to be stopped but the work that weve got to do right now is to make sure that people see education as that number one Priority Investments in this country. I think that will send a resounding message to the trump devoss administration, as to what republicans and democrats wanted to see. What are the three communication goals of the nea today, other than coming to the press club . I hope i made it clear that we have to be multifaceted. This isnt just about policy. This isnt just about passing a law or a budget. That is in service to our student. It is not in and of itself our goal to pass a law or even funding until we finish the sentence and say because it is important to what we are trying to achieve with our students we have spent 13 long horrible years under no child left untested. Some states even before that were doubling down on highstakes testing. If it doesnt show up on a test or, it is not important. We lost the arts and we lost sports and we lost Foreign Languages and we lost clubs and we lost everything that you couldnt measure on a standardized test. That includes things like science, social studies, civics and so now that weve got a chance to actually rethink what it is that children need we believe that folks can picture in their heads the best Public School in their state. I did have a reporter when i said that is our goal and whatever that looks like, not taking away from most kids, those parents were right. They fought for their kids to have everything they needed to get into an Ivy League School and this wonderful reporter said lily, that is nice to dream but we cant afford that but we did for that. I walked into the schools, so have you. They are gorgeous. We afforded it for the kids and they are usually wealthy kids. They are kids in the suburbs and they are usually kids who parents could subsidize piano lessons and ballet class. What we have is a system that systematically and institutionally disadvantages kids in zip codes and that is wrong. That is often racist and what we want to do is to say what you did for those who have the most you do for everyone. Where is that program and where is that funding and where is that change that we need to see . It is possible because it does exist and we now need it to exist everywhere. What you say to people who accuse teachers unions of only been interested in protecting the system as opposed to individual students . I can tell you the names of my individual students one by one, hundreds and hundreds of years and i have pictures of all of them. I would think that that is a set up question but my nea team says too bad you dont have pictures of that party and i have pictures of everything. These kids are a lot older now but these are my babies. I took these pictures. So whenever someone wants to denigrate teachers who actually organize themselves to have the collective power that we need to have our boys are and they say we dont care about the children i want to know if those folks can tell me the names of the children that they love that dont live in their house because i can and i am the president of the nea. I have the honor of serving with leaders like betty over here who talks about her kids like it was yesterday. These are people who do what they do. We do what we do because we love our students and we honor our profession and so, i would challenge anyone personally to me to be in the school [and talk to me about what i fought for all my life and what i thought for for my babies because they cant touch that. Congress has 22 days before the Childrens Health insurance Program Funding expires. Do you think congress can pack an extension . Do they have to. They have to. These are those kids that fall into i was around with the Childrens Program for started and i had kids i taught at a homeless shelter for a while. That was the best teaching gig ever because i had a team around me. We had a Health Clinic and we had a dentist that came in and we had social workers that worked with the families. We had the kitchen down the hall and that school was in a homeless shelter. I had all of the support that i needed as an educator to reach those parents and the students. There are kids that have enough and they get by just buying their parents Health Insurance from their work and kids who are in the depth of poverty have access hopefully to programs and then there are these kids in the middle who arent wealthy enough or poor enough to get their own Health Insurance and so i taught a lot of kids in the suburbs of Salt Lake City couldnt go to the doctor when they had a sore throat because i told their mom you should get that looked at and they would cry. I cant. I cant afford it. So that Childrens HealthInsurance Program is helping real kids in real time. Congress yes can do it and theyve done good things for and its time for them to do a good thing for students in so many ways. Thank you so much. We have about five minutes left so we have some housekeeping i would like to do. Coming up next week we have an event on how cities can better improve transportation and we also have the fda commissioner, doug gottlieb. Id like to present you with the honorary National Press club mug because we iran out of apples this morning left back. [applause] i do have one more question for you. Can you give me an example of some of the most fun youve had in your teaching career . Well, that is a lot of fun that ive had. I think the year we put on the blood drive. Be put on the blood drive because you have never i taught little kids and you have never seen children more excited about seeing their teachers bleed. [laughter] they had to donate their big brothers and parents and they had to made us all give us blood and they chased the principle around the multipurpose room dressed as vampires and so, yes, we had a halloween vampire volunteer blood drive. It was fabulous. Well, lily, id like to thank you again for coming to the press club. I dont like to think the National Press club Headliners Team and staff putting together todays luncheon and we are adjourned. [applause] [inaudible conversations]