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- [00:02]
A
You're listening to ASBO International's School Business Insider. I'm your host, John Brucato. Each week on School Business Insider, I sit down with school business officials and industry experts from around the world to share their stories and explore the topics that matter most to you. Find out what it means to be a school business official and get your insider pass on all things school business. Hi, everyone, and welcome back to School Business Insider. Today's episode takes us inside the national center on School Infrastructure, or nixi, a new and growing initiative created to support safe, healthy and equitable learning environments across the country. From data dashboards to technical assistance, the center is quickly becoming a national hub for school facilities leadership. Joining me today are Joanne Armstrong, who serves both as a chief financial and Operations officer at Belvedere CUSD 100 in Illinois and as a member of Niechi's advisory committee, and Dr. Jeff Vincent, the center's principal investigator and director. Together, they'll highlight how NIECH is helping districts expand their capacity, plan strategically, and modernize infrastructure for the future. Jeff and Joanne, welcome to School Business Insider. I'm happy to have you today.
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B
Thank you.
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C
Nice to be here with you.
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A
All right, so Jeff, can you tell us about your background in school infrastructure and what really led to the creation of nixi?
- [01:35]
C
Yeah, it's an interesting story, John. I mean, I'm a planner, city and regional planner by trade, and I'd worked for both school districts and cities, and I was just really struck by the kind of siloed nature of those government entities, you know, and like, I'm a planner, so city regional planners kind of deal with everything in communities, whether it's roads, parks, buildings, et cetera, except for one thing, the schools. There's sort of the fiefdom of the school districts. And I just always thought that was really interesting from a community planning perspective. And in the early 2000s, I, with some colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley, started the center for Cities and Schools to really kind of talk about these issues from both education policy perspective as well as a urban planning perspective. Try to provide some real time guidance to folks in the field, in school districts and in cities trying to serve the same communities and work together. I got really interested in how you create opportunity rich environments for young people, both inside schools and outside schools. In that work, I really started looking at and observing the differences from one school to the next in terms of the physical qualities, the attributes, the conditions of those spaces. And what you tend to see across America is schools in lower income communities or already disadvantaged Neighborhoods, for one reason or another, tend to have schools that are also aging and in disrepair and don't have the science labs, the other things in schools that every parent and every child and every teacher wants. And so that really led me to sort of asking why and kind of looking at how investment and planning goes into those schools. So that's how I got into looking at this issue.
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B
Great, great.
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A
And Joanne, you're really coming from the school of business official side of things. So both as an SBO and an advisory committee member, what got you involved with this work and really what excites you about being part of Nixie?
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B
Well, being the csbo, both in Wisconsin and in Illinois during my career, there really was a lack of consistent information on what's best practice, what research study shows for what a school should look like, even as far as what size plots they should be on and what is appropriate at certain levels. And the more pressing is energy, and how do you deal with the energy cost rising and other alternative options. So when Nixie reached out about the possibility of being on this advisory, it was like an answer to a question I didn't even know I had. And being able to see the website and the portals and the data coming together, it truly is a resource that a CSBO probably doesn't even know is out there. And so I continue to try to promote that as much as I can to take advantage of it, because had I known something like this existed, which it didn't prior to this, but had I known it and now that I do, as we're doing capital planning and we're looking at a facility master plan, this is the perfect resource that I can pull the data I need to support with my board and my community. That's great.
- [05:14]
A
Jeff. You talked a little bit, obviously about your background in the creation of the organization, but tell me a little bit more about its mission and why it's so urgently needed right now. You had mentioned a lot of the time lower income districts have aging infrastructure and can't meet that need. I'm sure that's one of them. But what else is out there? Why is Nixie so needed in this current environment?
- [05:34]
C
Yeah, well, I think Joanne provided like a perfect explanation of that, and I'll just build off that because, you know, in 2023, the US Department of Education put out an RFP to establish a national center on school infrastructure. And we went for it based on that background work that we had been doing, particularly with the state of California and other states around the country on how to improve school facilities in their states. And so we were able to secure that grant. And it's really to create a clearinghouse or a hub of information that includes best practices and guidance and case studies, et cetera, of, you know, how folks in school districts do the things Joanne was describing, right? Like make investments to increase energy efficiency or save money or how to upgrade their facilities for modern education programming, et cetera, you know. And so Nixie of the national center on School Infrastructure is really set up to be a resource hub with a library. And I can talk about some of the material that we have in there, but and to also be a technical assistance center, right, to folks like Joanne or others in districts that want to see how have people done, how have people modernized 75 year old school to meet modern curriculum? Or how have folks structured educational facility master planning processes and done engagement with their communities around what the vision for those modernized facilities are? Or even looking at states, Joanne's point about there not being clear guidance on school design or what should exactly be in schools or how to modernize schools. And in some cases that can be the role of states. And so we're also doing work on kind of looking at the role of state recommendations or guidelines or best practices and those things so that schools have some inspiration to look for. So we established NIECHE to do all of those things. And we are almost two years in, so we're building all that work with folks like Joanne and others around the country. And then I should mention that NIECHI has lots of partnerships with different folks, state agencies in different states working on these issues, other associations and organizations around the country, and of course, a lot of school districts. But we have three consortium partners in the project, which is 21st Century School Fund, the National Council on School Facilities and Child Trends. And together we're trying to kind of lift up, you know, good work that's happening around the country, provide tools and guidance to school districts and folks like Joanne, you know, trying to make decisions, smart decisions for their community and for their students in real time.
- [08:23]
A
You mentioned the dashboards and all the data that you're curating. How does your organization go about really collecting all of that? Are you, are you scouring the web? Are you looking at news articles? Are you reaching out to people that have volunteered as part of the advisory committee to look at success stories? Tell me a little bit more of how you're sourcing all of this data. That obviously is very important. But being a nationwide organization, there's a lot to choose from and trying to drill down to some best practices and maybe standardize that international scale can be challenging. So tell me a little bit more about the data piece.
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C
Yeah, I mean, the answer is we're doing all of those things, but I think the trick is, of course, not to throw everything in the kitchen sink. Because when you're trying to make a decision in real time in your district or even in, say, a state agency, I mean, getting a list of 45 or 145 things to look at just is that really helpful? Nobody has the time to do that. And so what we have been trying to do is really carefully curate the best and most useful and applicable material for folks in the field so they can access. And so if you go to our site, you know, a key piece of what we're supposed to do and are doing is, is to have a, you know, a resource hub, a clearinghouse of information that's easily searchable and easily findable. And so if you go to our website, which I don't know, John, if we've even plugged it or not, but it's school-instrastructure.org which is.
- [09:56]
A
I'll make sure to put that in the show notes so people can.
- [09:59]
C
It's a mouth. I understand you can search by keyword. You can kind of ask it questions or whatnot. But the things that we've been doing is we have certainly, if you want to find research on what's the relationship between facility condition and student outcomes, or what's the relationship between facility condition and teacher satisfaction, or how does heat affect learning, or how to do master planning or capital planning decisions, you can certainly find all that. But a few of the other things that we have are we've built this interactive data dashboard on school facilities funding so you can explore that and look at. I mean, you can look up your own school district, in addition to looking at trends in your state, to see trends in maintenance and operations, spending, capital investment. And that's a way in part to, you know, help folks see kind of the investment, that public investment that's going into those assets. And we can kind of talk about the way in which that's used. But there's lots of best practices, case studies. We're trying to assemble tools and templates that people can use in the field, whether it's like a checklist on, you know, how to do conditions, assessments or, or guides for master planning. Because what we find is that guidance and requirements on these things are. They really vary from state to state. And I think, to your point, John Nixie's trying to sort of be a place to have conversations about what are the appropriate kind of levels of guidance and or requirements and how does that apply in different states and what are best practices in this field and sort of help contribute to that conversation nationally.
- [11:50]
A
You had mentioned something earlier about your involvement at the state level. A lot of school districts are very much mandated by their, their state and how they can reconstruct and build and things like that. Are you finding that states are welcoming you with open arms and what you're looking to do, or is there resistance? What has been your experience so far at the state level? Because government is government, after all, isn't as nimble as we, we always hope so I'm just curious, is there an openness on average from states bringing in your expertise on maybe we could change something for the better?
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C
Yeah, I think that's an evolving question. And you know, I'd be curious to hear Joanne's perspective in Illinois. But what you find when you look nationally is that half or so states provide regular capital funding for grants or some mechanism to school districts for kind of major upgrades, whether that's like an addition or a big renovation or building a new school entirely. Right. And some states match that. 50, 50. They might have a sliding scale based on local ability to raise dollars as well. So every state is totally different and there's a third or so that don't provide those. And in those states it's really interesting to see like, oh wow, how are school districts raising those dollars to make those investments? But I think there is a growing awareness in states, among state legislatures, even governors, about how much aging and disrepair there tends to be in public school facilities. And I think it kind of, it doesn't get covered in the news a lot unless something happens like a pipe burst or there's an extreme weather event. I do think there's a growing interest because you've got the average public K12 school in this country is now 50 years old. Obviously we have some brand new ones and we also have some extremely old ones. And age doesn't necessarily mean that a building is bad or falling down or something, but it really depends how much upkeep has there been each year, how much cleaning and care is there done, and how much kind of renovation or replacing systems like H Vac or boilers or whatnot or roofs has there been done? And that really, I think that's a challenge that a lot of communities are really facing right now is how do you upgrade these buildings and not just to do so. They're functional, they're healthy. But also it's like, well, this school was designed and built in, let's say, the 1930s. Education delivery is a lot different now than it was in the 1930s. And we need different types of spaces. And I'm not even talking about technology and all that and plugs and all that kind of stuff and WI fi. I'm just talking about the arrangements of rooms and the way in which classes are organized and other things. So it's a really fascinating, interesting challenge. And I think there's more awareness at the state level for this across the country.
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B
Good.
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A
That's encouraging to hear. And Joanne, to Jeff's point, I mean, you have experience both in Illinois and Wisconsin. Are you, what are you seeing from a practitioner standpoint? Is there an appetite at the state level to kind of take a different look at how schools are funded from an infrastructure standpoint or what Nixie can do to maybe aid in improving the, the process for schools?
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B
Yeah, I, I would love to say that it's on the top of the list of every legislature out there, but I do not feel that is the case. You know, this is not something that's heavily funded in Illinois, for sure. It's up to districts to levy taxes for referendums for facilities. Our district has taken advantage of the one state opportunity, which is the school maintenance grant, and it's a hundred percent match, but it's only $50,000. And to speak to Jeff's point, my district in Belvedere, illinois, we have 11 school buildings and they range in age between 18 years and 127 years. Wow. So it. I have the whole gamut of what is two buildings that are new on this side and they're divided by town. So you've got the politics involved with fixing one side of town and not the other side of town, but $50,000, you know, for a total budget of $100,000 isn't going to help tremendously when I'm trying to look at putting in a new boiler in my high school or, you know, I'm still running Kiwani boilers that are from 1950 that are the size of an airplane in the basement of my high schools. And so to be more energy efficient and to be more aligned with healthy environments, they're not meeting the needs. So we continue to struggle. And I do think that I had same struggles in Wisconsin when I was working there. There are some unique aspects in Illinois. The district has been very fortunate that with the support of a couple of our legislatures, they have put in the Illinois budget direct allocations of $50,000 to the school district to expand some of our CTE programs. And that has allowed us to put in commercial kitchens that would teach our students in high school what an actual kitchen will look like when they go out into the workforce, versus having what looks like a home kitchen, which is traditional in your family and consumer science there. The other side of this, and the part that really gets me excited with the Nixie works, is there are resources and basis for play based learning and social emotional needs within a building. And how those are addressed not in just curriculum, but how you're building and how your layout and how we make our students feel and belong in that environment is critical. And I think you lose that in school sometimes when you're talking to school officials and legislatures on what does that actually look like and how does that translate to a maintenance plan, because they tend to think of it very unilaterally, that it is a building, a building is a building. Kids can go in and they can learn. Well, as Jeff alluded to, the way we deliver instruction is very different. And so this has been a primary focus in Belvedere for the last two years as we've expanded our early childhood offerings. We have now rolled some of those practices of play, waste learning and a social emotional curriculum to our kindergarten. And that has required us to outfit kindergarten classrooms with new furniture and new resources for the teachers and making sure we're making those on research proven successes. And so, as Jeff indicated, I can google all day long and say give me these things, but I don't necessarily have the time nor the expertise to weed out what is really reputable and reliable. And so having those resources there, I don't want people to think that just Nixie is only worried about the grounds and the brick and mortar and all of those things of what we need to do. They are taking a look at the school infrastructure and its totality and what that means on technology, energy, instruction, all of those aspects. So it is challenging to try to broaden the interpretation of what school infrastructure actually encompasses.
- [20:09]
A
Are you looking for ways to save your district time and money on purchases while ensuring full compliance with state and federal procurement laws? The association of Educational Purchasing Agencies, or aepa, connects schools with competitively bid contracts across the nation. From technology and facilities to classroom essentials and services, AEPA helps you stretch your budget further and simplify the buying process. Trusted by schools across the country, AEPA brings the power of cooperative purchasing to your district. Find your local state agency and learn more@aepacoop.org that's great. Well, that's a wonderful segue, Joanne. I wanted to kind of move on from the why to the what, specifically the resources that are available. So the center's built expanding resource library. Jeff, what kinds of materials are included there and you know, how are they meant to help districts when they come and visit your website?
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C
Yeah, and I appreciate Joanne's comments on that because all those things, you know, we're trying to do, but and as Joanne knows, like I want us to in the near future get more into some of that design stuff and some of the nuances of design at different age levels. It's really, you know, it's really fascinating. But you know, in terms of what we have now across a number, you know, many topics, you know, best practices, guidance, reports, research, socials and templates. Like I mentioned, we're doing a lot of what we call voices from the field. But you know, folks like Joanne and in other districts really telling their story about how they're tackling, you know, how they're dealing with having 18 year old schools on one side of town and you know, 100 year old schools on the other side of town and everything else in the middle and how they're doing that. And so we've got, you know, a steady stream of those voices profiles coming out of individuals and actually we have one of Joanne, you know, going deeper on the work she's been doing. But you know, we're hoping that that's a point of inspiration for someone else sitting in a seat like Joanne's who's trying to make these decisions, you know, in a different. But also provide some example and guidance. Like I said, we have the interactive data dashboard on the state policy stuff that you were asking about earlier, John. We've been doing detailed state profiles of what's on the books in terms of state laws and regulations that govern school investment, school facility investment, school design, et cetera in all the states. So if you're curious about that, you can go and look up an individual state or you can compare how multiple states look at something like master planning or design for early ed or something like that. So we're working on building that out as a resource, both as a resource for local school districts, but also for a resource for state leaders that might want to think about improving their state guidance or their state policies on a specific thing. They can get some inspiration from other states. We keep a very regular calendar of events that other organizations around the country are doing because there are a variety of organizations already doing work in this area. Whether it's someone like the center for Green Schools doing on energy efficiency related work, or someone like a 4LE, which is really more on the architecture design side and others. And then we are doing a webinar series this fall, which I should probably plug, if that's okay. John Absolutely. We've got three webinars coming up this fall. And the first one, actually, Joanne, I'm really taking a lot of Joanne's time here because I invited her to be on that one and she graciously agreed. But it's on September 30th, and it is how and why school facilities matter for student success. And we're going to go over what that evidence is from the research side and what's been found, but then really have a conversation of, okay, how do you make that knowledge actionable? And in particular, how do you make the case to your communities, to your school boards, or say to your state legislatures about why they should invest in school facilities, why they should vote yes on the school bond, why they should vote yes to allocate funds out of the general fund of the state towards school facilities, those kinds of things. We're going to have a conversation about that. And then the other two webinars this fall are. The second one, which will be in October, and I'm working on setting the date for that now, will be on facility conditions assessments. These are really when people walk buildings, usually engineers or someone trained, and they're looking at the roof, they're looking at the boiler, they're looking at the paint, and they're taking a detailed notation and, you know, collecting data on the conditions so that you could say, oh, that school over there is the one that needs the most attention. Let's focus on that one. And then the third one is on school district educational facility master planning, you know, which would take FCA data, look at it, prioritize it, have some investment goals around improving school facilities, and obviously also engage your community and your stakeholders in making those decisions. So we're hoping those provide a nice overview of some of the best practice in this area for folks. So those will all be recorded and on our website, of course, for viewing later. But the first One is on September 30th, and I want to say I should have this in front of me. I think it's at 10am Pacific, I think.
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B
Great.
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A
Do you have like a newsletter or anything on your website? So as things come up, can someone like myself subscribe to it? So I know when there's going to be a webinar?
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C
Yeah, yes, absolutely we do. And I would really invite folks to go to our website, school-instrastructure.org, sign up for the newsletter and you can also contact us and ask a question because we're really responsible and want to be responsive to the field. If you have a question, whether it's about energy efficiency, whether it's about master planning, anything related to school facilities, ask it. We will do our best to get back to you, but we will also say, oh, wow, a thousand people have asked us about playground upgrades. Let's do some more work on playground upgrades. Let's do a webinar on it. Let's assemble some examples and material. So we really need to hear from folks and we really do invite you to ask questions because you're not the only one dealing with that. That issue in the country.
- [26:42]
B
Right.
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A
You had mentioned the resource library. It covers many different things, including facilities, health stewardship, master planning, resilience. I'm curious, of all of those categories, what has really drawn the most attention from district leaders so far that are accessing your tools and these resources?
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C
Well, everyone wants money, John. Everyone's like, where's the money? Where's the funding? And that's a trick in and of itself and differs from community to community. But I think in terms of the most inquiry we've had over even the last year and a half or so has been around indoor air quality issues, and particularly as they relate to energy costs and energy expenditures. And I do think coming off of our experience with the COVID pandemic, there's much more appreciation for the need for cleaner indoor air in schools. And of course, as Joanne well knows, like, you know, getting clean indoor air requires some energy, right? You're moving air or you're cleaning air or, you know, or you're making hot air cooler so that, you know, someone can actually focus and study. You know, all of that does take some energy. So I think there's been really an explosion, thankfully, in good guidance on how to make investment decisions on a building or on a campus to improve indoor air quality while also balancing energy expenditures and the costs of energy. I don't know, Joanne, if you want to chime in on some of your all's experience on that, but I think that's an area where we get a lot of questions.
- [28:29]
B
Yeah, and I would agree completely. And that was a big touch point during the years that school districts across the nation got a lot of Esser funding from the feds on that. And we did focus a lot of energy and funding on that indoor Air quality, but we couldn't do it all. And so, you know, I can speak for the district I'm in now. When I arrived in 2022, they had not completed any expense, extensive air quality testing. So that was one of the first things that I did because our teachers are constantly saying, you know, I'm getting sick, the air is not good. And those can be really expensive to have them come in. But we went as far as having every room, every closet, every space in our schools analyzed and tested. And that report came back to us so that we could address those. And we made it very public. We shared it with our community. So when you talk about how do you let these things get known and how do you make sure people are aware of what's going on? The transparency is 100% the need and what is happening. Had I known and talk about 2022, if Niecy had existed, I could have probably started with some of these resources and checklists. But we did the air quality test and then we had someone come in and do a complete needs assessment, comprehensive of what my buildings needed. What's the priority? Because there was no tools readily accessible that were reliable on what to be looking for and how to do it. And so districts, when we talk about funding, there's a lot of things that we can save money on if we have the resources and the knowledge of where to start. And then have someone come in and do that fine tune of, okay, we're seeing a problem here. Can you dig into this and see what this actually will cost? And that again, is something that's been lacking for school business officials. And unfortunately, a lot of us are in the finance realm, where people think we definitely reside there. But operations is everything. It's facilities, it's transportation, food, service. So I'm looking at kitchens, I'm looking at buses, and do buses have air conditioning? And I know it's not on the topic of school infrastructure, but these things all contribute to our infrastructure and being able to have resources there. I would agree 100% that air quality, H vac, and the aging building, you know, how do we deal with an aging building are probably the ones that are most impacting CSBOs around the nation. Right now.
- [31:20]
A
I'd like to talk a little bit more about your work, specifically Joanne in Belvedere. I understand you convened a long range facilities committee and staged a 10 year plan. That's a huge feat. Can you tell me how that reflects the planning that the center wants to promote and how those kind of dovetail into one Another.
- [31:41]
B
Yeah, it's been a long process for sure. As I said when I arrived in 2022, the capital plans and the planning process was kept on an excel sheet, and it was just whatever whoever kept the sheet thought was a priority that year. We were faced with tremendous deferred maintenance. I won't even get into some of the things that we found in our buildings, but that really set the need for why we needed to do the comprehensive needs assessment to just see where we were. I couldn't make a plan if I didn't know where we were at this point. So making sure that our community, we wanted to hear what they wanted in their facilities and what their facilities look like, and also provide that education to the community, the teacher, you know, all of our stakeholders on what the vision might look like. And we convened that committee probably over about three or four months and really came up with a mission of what this facility master plan would look like. We have it all drawn out. Our board has approved the first three years for actual projects and funding for it. Right. We're continuing to look at years four through 10 as we go, but it constantly evolves. And I think that's the problem that you get into, is that when you're facing these needs with deferred maintenance and things, you can have a great plan and it's just like a personal budget. It can blow up in a heartbeat if something breaks or something happens to that. So that's a constant struggle. The tie in with Nyxi is, you know, I. I can't say it enough is just giving us resources and a place to find information, to know where to start. The resources I've used to help write RFPs so that I can see what is an industry norm or what is a preferred. So that when I'm writing those requests for proposals or looking for qualifications, I can pull the data easily from the Nixe site, know that it's been vetted, you know, for reliability, and include those components that most impact us in the Midwest with what we want to put in there for our looks. You know, I'm also struggle here in the Midwest. We're in not at the end of tornado alley, but Belvedere has a history of tornadoes, and we just had a significant storm rip through here the end of August. And so we are constantly looking at how do you repair, how do you do those things? And some of the resources on Nixie have already been using to kind of find what is the. You know, if I'm looking to replace a roof because it blew up, what, what are some. What are some standards? Do I replace it durable enough for solar panels to hit the efficiency or, you know, what is the growing trend in what we're doing in. In that structure? So it's something you don't necessarily always think about. It's like the question you didn't know you had that now that you know it's out there, you. I can't tell you how many times I go out to the site and start looking for things which I never had been able to do. So it's a huge plus. The struggle is letting people know where it is and getting the word out. So I appreciate you having this, this podcast with us to really share the awesome things that they're doing over at Dan.
- [35:13]
A
Well, it sounds like an incredible resource, specifically because it's something that you can use in real time. It's not a website full of theoreticals and, oh, you could do this, you could do that. It's. I need some answers now, and I need some best practices that's going to get me through this roof that got torn off by a tornado or a unit, ventilators leaking all over the library floor. Like, those are the kinds of things that, you know, you can. Sounds like you can get to this resource library and get some real actionable items, which is incredibly encouraging. So it's great. So what's next for Nixie as you look to expand your research, your resource library? What's the roadmap for you guys?
- [35:49]
C
Yeah, I hope it's long and doing all the things that Joanne just referenced, because there's just so much need around the country, I think, for learning from what folks are doing and sharing best practice and whatnot. And whether it's the example of RFPs, that's one that comes up a lot. Right. Because a lot of facility work is hired out. School districts hire out a lot of it. And so being able to speed up your RFP process on something so that you are getting the kinds of responses that you want is a little thing, but it's actually really useful, as Joanne alluded to. And we've been trying to find more of those and provide some guidance on that. But in terms of our next steps, I mean, our goal has always been, to me, certainly more than just a library. Right. And static is a really, really trying to help users and folks in local districts across country make sense of a lot of content. As we've kind of discussed, how do they find the latest and greatest that has been vetted in some way? And that's hopefully Something that we will continue to provide. But to that end, we are working on refining how the material is organized and presented. We're working on being very responsive to questions from the field. Right. You know, it makes no sense for an organization like ours, you know, funded by US Department of Education, to be focusing on topics that are not, like, the most important things districts tend to be grappling with. And so we really do want to hear from folks to help shape that. But I think it's really about how do we hear from the field, how do we be, you know, rapidly responsive in both sort of written form, in podcast form, which we are doing a podcast now called Stretch, which again, is interviews with district leaders, which I would invite folks to. It's on all. It's on our website, but you can find it on all podcast platforms. They're really telling the story. You know, you're hearing, I mean, like, Joanne talking about what they're wrestling with and what they've done, you know, and you get a deeper conversation with someone about what they've done in their district. I think the recent one is with the guy that runs North Dakota, Fargo, North Dakota schools. Really interesting, you know, FCA work and then master planning work. And they're in the implementation phases on that, you know, not on, like, what Joanne was describing. But I think there's a lot of lessons there. There's a lot of inspiration there and some technical details, of course, along the way. But I think us being responsive, us engaging more in the field and really engaging with organizations like ASBO more to both get the word out, but also hear from people in the field. What do you need?
- [38:33]
B
Need?
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C
What do you need? What answers or what questions do you have and what kind of answers do you want? And let's put together virtual roundtables and things to talk about those in particular. That's what we're aiming to do.
- [38:49]
A
And, well, to that question of what do you need, what can school business officials and district leaders listening to this podcast do to engage more with Niece and contribute to the ongoing work that you been doing for so many years?
- [39:05]
C
Yeah, well, you know, please visit our website. I hate to be such a marketer on here, John, but, you know, now's your chance, right? School-instrastructure.org you know, sign up for the newsletter, ask us a question. There's, you know, you'll see the buttons there to do so and, you know, that will really both help set our priorities, reach out to us. You know, if you are interested in helping lead something or be on a webinar or, you know, would you like, you know, is your district a really good example of having done something related to facilities or dealing with a struggle, and you think it'd be really useful and helpful for us to kind of profile that and do a little interview with you and profile that work or provide some examples of, you know, whether it's an rfp, whether it's an fca, whether it's a community engagement process on master planning, whether it's a redesign of a single classroom. You know, those are the things we're looking to highlight and profile because as Joanne said, it's really hard to find examples. You know, people are doing this stuff, but nobody's really, like, sharing it or writing it up. And so, you know, we're trying to do that so that, you know, someone can easily find an example and some images and, you know, and have some inspiration on that. So, you know, that's how I'd like folks to engage with us. Please reach out to us. And, you know, we're responsible for being responsive to you. So, you know, we can't do that unless you ask. So we really want to, you know, you want to hear from, from folks in the field at districts across the country.
- [40:37]
B
Great.
- [40:37]
A
Well, Jeff and Joanne, thank you both so much for joining me today and all the good work that you're doing with Nixie. And I wish you all the success in the, in the future and I'm sure you'll see on a future webinar.
- [40:47]
C
Yeah. Thank you so much, John and Joanne, it's great to be with you both.
- [40:51]
B
Thank you again. It is a pleasure to share this important information.
- [40:56]
A
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