Connecting Home and School with PowerSchool (Part IV of PowerSchool Series)

Speaker A: Um,

Speaker B: I think when you invite parents positively and proactively to be partners in solutions, instead of kind of given the finger wag, I think that's when those walls start to come down. They feel like they're being empowered. They feel like they're being honored in their knowledge, in their efforts, and that helps to open those doors.

Speaker C: Foreign. Welcome to episode 40 of Education Excellence. I'm Michael Evan Epstein, the creator, producer and host of this podcast. For those of you who might be new to the podcast, Education Excellence is a safe, nonpartisan national forum for discussing complicated, cutting edge issues in education. We provide real life examples of solutions you can take to solve your problems that you face every day. Our last three episodes features guests from our fabulous collaborator and underwriter. And of course, I'm talking about PowerSchool. PowerSchool recently released a landmark study in 2024. It's its 2024 education focus report, which features insights from more than 1600 school district leaders, teachers, parents and students. In the first episode of this series, we heard from Ryan Imbriali and Chris Cirillo about student driven personalized learning. In the second episode, you heard from Richard Hughes and Tracy McCown on Bold Leadership and Data. In our third episode, we discussed how to build a modern education workforce with Richard Fernandez and Jeff Pelzel. Today, in our final installment of this excellent series, we will be discussing the connection between home and school with two more superb guests. So let's meet them right now. First up is Jesse Roy. Jesse is Director of education strategy at PowerSchool. He has been with the company for three years. His team works at the intersection of enablement, marketing and sales and aligns uh approaches to the goals and needs of K12 school staff and students. Prior to Power School, Jesse worked for the Vermont Agency of Education for five years and he has also worked in special education and for various school districts. Welcome to Education Excellence, Jesse.

Speaker A: Hi.

Speaker B: Uh, Michael, thanks for having us. Good to be here.

Speaker C: Glad you're here as well. So, also joining us today is Stephen Anderson. Stephen is director of solutions engineering at PowerSchool. Steven has been with the company since 2015. He is a former teacher and Director of Instructional technology and is recognized for his expertise in edtech integration and social media for learning. His experience also includes traveling to discuss social media in the classroom, presenting at conferences, and authoring three books. He also helped develop edchat and education discussion on X with, um, more than 500 weekly participants. Welcome to Education Excellence, Stephen.

Speaker A: Thanks, Michael. Thanks for having me.

Speaker C: Uh, let's start off with a question that I want to address to both of you, can you, uh, describe in a little more detail about your roles and responsibilities at PowerSchool? Let's start with Jesse.

Speaker B: Yeah, thanks, Michael. As you pointed out, um, I'm a director on PowerSchool's education strategy team. And at a really high level, our team is responsible for basically promoting alignment between the priorities and challenges of our partners in the K12 space. So that's namely schools and districts that we do work at both the state and national level in some instances, and the efforts of the company to support those partners. So really seeking to bridge what is top of mind for customers in the space and what we're up to here at PowerSchool. Um, our team's mostly comprised of former district and state ed leaders. Uh, as you said, I, for one, came to the company from the Vermont Agency of Education, where I led the state's federal grants team. And yeah, prior to that, I was a special ed teacher m for about 10 years in the classroom. In terms of kind of how that experience has shaped my role today, um, you know, I think a theme of the work that I've done in education has been really around closing gaps. And I know that's, that's part of what we're talking about today is closing those engagement gaps, closing those attendance gaps. Um, you know, so a lot of my work has been focused on things like gaps in learning gaps in social skill development, funding gaps when I was with the state agency and family engagement or communication gaps, um, and now at PowerSchool, really kind of those digital divides, um, because by no one person or group's fault, there are a lot of instances of haves and have nots in education. So in addition to setting high standards right now, a lot of schools and districts, their efforts and their resources are really focused on addressing these gaps. And I think education technology, done well, can play a pretty important role in supporting those efforts.

Speaker C: Okay, thank you for that. Um, so, Stephen, I want to move on to you. Could you talk a little bit about, uh, your role and responsibility at PowerSchool?

Speaker A: Yeah, so I have the fun part of what we do at PowerSchool. So I get to work with customers every single day, talking to them about individual products that can help fit a need or solve a problem that they might have. So, you know, whether it's, you know, showing them how our communication solution can help close some of those gaps that, um, that Jesse mentioned, or how, you know, several of our other solutions can help, you know, fit a need, that's what I get to do every day. In addition, um, getting to work at conferences and talk face to face with uh, customers, potential customers, users of the products to take that feedback and help shape the future of the products that PowerSchool puts out into the market. So I have the kind of, the fun stuff of what we do, getting my hands dirty in the products every day and uh, helping customers solve their problems.

Speaker C: Yeah, thank you for that. I want to now kind of take a deeper dive into um, what we're talking about today, which is the school and home connection section that you've detailed in the Power School report. Can you start off, Stephen, by telling us a little bit more about this section of the report and maybe some of the key takeaways uh, that you have in that report?

Speaker A: Yeah, so this section is one of, is one that I work with on a daily basis, talking to customers about the challenges that they have with, uh, communicating and engaging with their parents. And so there were two really big takeaways from this section. So one is administrators and teachers are looking for a singular solution to help, to help all of their parents and to help all of their students essentially have one place to go in order to carry out day to day communications. Whether it's talking about grades or assignments or attendance or looking at, uh, you know, what's happening in the classroom or, you know, who do I reach out with this type of question? The, the reality is, in my previous role as a director of Instructional Technology, I was in a very large district in North Carolina. The sheer volume of applications that districts have, um, is really a barrier to this type of engagement. When you have multiple different places for parents to go, when you have multiple places that teachers are expecting parents to go, the reality is, and even myself as a parent face on a daily basis is where do I actually have to go? Um, I just wrote about today about how I have between my two daughters 16 different apps on my phone. Um, which means I have to remember which app goes with which teacher. Um, and that's, you know, the hallmark of this, of the first part of this section is that there, there's, there's this, this desire to have one place for everybody to go. Uh, on the other side of that is attendance. And this still, uh, the challenge that districts are having with getting students back in the classroom post Covid, um, we see that absenteeism rates, we would expect them to decline post Covid, but what we're seeing is still a number of districts facing the challenge of getting students back in the classroom. And some of that is related to this disengagement from the school. So I think in its totality, the section says, look, if we can get everyone engaged, if we can provide uh, uh, one set of tools that allows everybody to feel engaged, we can solve a lot of problems that school districts are facing with communications and engagement and absenteeism.

Speaker C: Okay, so Jesse, I want you to kind of follow up on that and add anything you can to this idea of greater engagement and maybe greater centralization. Is there anything you want to add to that?

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I would say I echo a lot of what Stephen just said. I think, you know, in all my stops in the K12 space as a, as an employee or a worker, um, from schools to the State, now at PowerSchool and as the parent of two elementary aged students, um, you know, and it's something we continue to hear regularly at PowerSchool, as illustrated in this report, that there is an overwhelming number of technology tools that we're asking not, not just our parents, but also our teachers and even our students to navigate. And I see the necessity of personalizing and streamlining these tools kind of through two lenses. And the first one is kind of that time and effort lens. And the second is really one of kind of digital acumen and access. Um, and it reminds me a lot of how the way we've watched television has kind of evolved over the years. Right. When I think about what TV looked like before streaming, the number of access points or the digital know how that you needed to watch TV, let's say in the early 2000s was, was really limited to turning on your TV and changing channels, um, and maybe consulting a paper TV guide. Now most of us subscribe to three, four, five streaming services, each with a different login, a different interface, different offerings to kind of keep track of which one was where. And while it's made for a much more individualized and robust viewing experience, it's also introduced new layers of complexity. Right. And that's the same for a busy family who's trying to keep up the date on their student's week or semester. Your option used to be to pick up the phone and schedule an in person meeting, let's say with the teacher or the principal. And there was only so much information that was going to be shared. Now there's so much more timely information that's collected, but it requires more effort and again, digital acumen and digital access to engage with. So if I'm a parent who's working a full time job and I'm also trying to keep my household chugging along Or I'm a teacher who needs to lesson plan and deal with assessments. Scoring for 30 students, five or six siloed digital tools to give or to get the full picture of how a student is doing becomes really burdensome. And that's doubly so for a household that doesn't have consistent access to WI fi or maybe a home computer, or is just not particularly tech savvy. We've got a lot of grandparents raising kids right now. You know, not to paint any generation with too broad a brush, but so in that way, kind of back to my earlier comment, it feels like modern education has created a bit of a new dimension of haves and have nots, which is problematic when you consider the research around how important it is that families are involved, how much family involvement promotes student outcomes ranging from early literacy all the way to things like, you know, post secondary outcomes and college and career readiness. And at the end of the day, the parents and the families, they know their students best, right? So if they're not able to communicate easily with the school or they aren't receiving updates about their students regularly or with full transparency, we're really cutting a pretty crucial partner out of our efforts to serve every student to the best of our ability. Fortunately, and Steven can probably speak to this better than I can, districts and advocacy groups and ed tech companies get it. And they've been actively working, including us here at PowerSchool, to create what we're calling kind of a single pane of glass solution. Um, specifically in our case, our solution, which is called my Power Hub, that basically becomes a repository in a single dashboard for all sorts of information about a student collected in different places, brought together for a more unifying experience.

Speaker C: Thank you for that. I have a couple of thoughts from what you said. First of all, totally agree with you in your analogy to streaming is excellent. Um, but that is something that Amazon is trying to position itself at, to be the central hub that you can go ahead and get all the other streaming services through Amazon. So it'd be very interesting to see if that works. Um, secondly, uh, you know, I'm sure you have seen this to be true in certain instances where, um, students at a rather young age are more adept at tech than their parents, certainly many times more adept than their grandparents. So I think that's an interesting thing I like to hear any thoughts either one of you have on that. And then lastly, and maybe most importantly, um, so, you know, I love the single hub concept that power schools had, but who owns that at this school level in Other words, is this something that has to be kind of centered with the district? Is it centered with the school? Does the principal own it? Does, um, does, is there, is there a um, tech kind of IT person that owns it? If you could take me a little bit into the dynamics of that. As you work with school districts and schools and teachers, how do you position PowerSchool in terms of the single hub?

Speaker A: Yeah, so I'm happy to answer that. So I'll jump. Let me talk about my, about kids and digital natives and you know that whole notion of, of digital uh, natives was debunked a long time ago is that, you know there's. Yeah, the kids do know how to use technology. I have two, like I said, two daughters. My, my 11 year old could run circles around me when she makes TikToks. I don't know how she does it, but she does it, she does it really well. One of the things I like to talk about is effective use of technology. And when we think about, we think about what my power hub can be, it is truly an effective use. It's what technology should be. It's an interface that allows for the parent, the guardian, whoever they are, whatever their level of skill is with technology, if they can type an email address and they can type a password, they now have instantaneous access to everything they could possibly want to know about their students learning journey. Not just their grades, not just their attendance, not just what's happening in the classroom with the newsfeed, but to be able to schedule a parent teacher conference or RSVP to a, to an event or who, you know, ask AI, who do I talk to for uh, for this question or what is the dress code all in one place, um, in one screen and one, one place for them to go really who owns it? And that, that really comes down to the district. Right. So it is a, it's a district owned solution and where it resides depends on the district. So just using myself as an example, I was in a large district with 86 uh, and 65,000 students. And pretty much if it was technology, it came under my umbrella regardless of what it was. Um, and so that's where it sat in my district. In other places where you have smaller districts where uh, you have folks doing multiple different roles, the communications person might also be responsible for technology or the technology person might also be responsible for accountability. But ultimately it is a, it's a, it's a district consensus bringing in all of those stakeholders and bringing in and showing parents and showing teachers and showing you Know, even students, too, because students could. Should be using a platform like this to be able to track their grades and, you know, with integrations with, you know, college and career and life readiness applications, like with naviance, like what PowerSchool has, being able to see where they are on that journey to, uh, college or career, uh, being able to see how they're doing on their latest assignments or their latest assessment. You know, students can be involved in this conversation as well. It ultimately needs to be a group decision. And part of the problem that we have with parent engagement and communications, just in general, is it's usually made by one. It's usually a decision that's made by one person who thinks that they're acting in the best interests of all of those. All of those folks, even all the way down into the classroom. The teacher, as Jesse said, the teacher is trying to do the best that they can. And as I was a T, I was a teacher too. I taught middle school. And so I was doing the best that I could for my students and trying to do best by them and trying to select applications or trying to select tools that, hey, I think this is what's going to work best for my parents. But they do that oftentimes in isolation. And so when we think about that, ultimately, who suffers from all of these, all of these siloed, isolated, uh, decisions is the parent or is the student? Because now we're asking them, hey, this teacher needs you to go over here, and this teacher needs you to go over here, and this, this school needs you to go over here, and the district needs you to go over here. It, uh, ultimately, why wouldn't a parent disengage? I don't have time for that. Like Jesse said, I'm trying to run my household. I'm trying to, you know, look for a new job. I'm trying to manage all these other things in my life. I want to be involved in my kid's life. Please make it easier for me. That's what. When I go out and meet with districts, that's what parents are telling me all the time. Please help my district make this easier for me. And that's ultimately what my power hub is doing in a very innovative way. Because it's not just bringing in, you know, the typical things from the classroom or even grades. It's a whole spectrum of other education technology tools that exist in a district that can all be Under1Unrella. 1login, 1Password for anyone to be able to manage and see and interact with

Speaker B: Michael, if I can just Piggyback off that. You know, the most valuable resource in a district is time.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: We know that we spend, in a typical public school district, 80 to 90% of our funds in any given year on personnel costs, salaries, and benefits. Basically, we're paying for time. And research shows that the effectiveness of the teacher, you know, the teacher spending their time on what we know our best practice is, that's what really moves the needle for kids more than anything else. So, to Stephen's point, if we can reclaim some of that time, if we can streamline and automate and simplify some of these processes, if we can do everything in a single place, or we can reduce some of these bottlenecks and give those hardworking teachers back the time they need to implement things like instructional best practices, you know, we're having cascading effects all across the district. Priorities.

Speaker C: I think that's a really, really great point. I'm glad you guys made it. And so now we want to take a quick break, um, to hear a word from our sponsor, but we'll be right back, so don't go anywhere.

Speaker A: Foreign.

Speaker C: School. In today's rapidly changing K through 12 landscape, careful decisions about technology investment are increasingly important, from addressing chronic absenteeism to making sure that there is more positive behavior among students in the classrooms. You're going to need an organization like powers School. Take PowerSchool Student Success Cloud, for example. That's an incredible resource that gives you the tools you need to meet students where they are. And it also helps to streamline data and insights to improve attendance and to enhance behavior outcomes. You can learn more about all this@powerschool.com that's powerschool.com. And we're back, and we're talking to Jesse Roy and Stephen Anderson from PowerSchool. And, Jesse, I'd like to begin with you after the break, and I want to kind of concentrate on the second finding from the section on school and home connection, and that's that, um, this connection is so important when it comes to the issue of dealing with absenteeism. And I'm hoping that you can tell us a little bit more about specific ways that PowerSchool can help deal, uh, with the issue of absenteeism.

Speaker B: Yeah, I appreciate it, Michael. So the report pointed to really what district and school leader perceptions were of why we're seeing just so much chronic absenteeism right now. And I think when we talk about chronic absenteeism, we recognize that there are so many root causes. And I think the old trope was these are disengaged students or these are disengaged parents. And that's really some of what we saw in the report. The perception is that a lot of our chronic absenteeism right now is due to disengagement. And undoubtedly that's true.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: But really, we can bucket root causes of chronic absenteeism or absenteeism m into kind of four different areas. So disengagement. That's exactly what it sounds like. You know, I don't want to be here. I don't see the value. Then we've got barriers which are literally things that prevent students from getting to school. Those are things like mental health, physical health, transportation needs, maybe obligations outside of school, like caring for a sibling or a family member, things like that. Then we've got aversions, you know, the reasons I don't want to be in school. I'm being bullied. I don't feel successful socially. Maybe I've got an undiagnosed learning disability, you know, that. That makes academics really challenging and frustrating and sometimes even embarrassing for me. And then finally, there's misconceptions, and these are just things like, I didn't realize attendance was so important. Um, an example is maybe young families sending a student to school for the first time. You know, not realizing that so much important early academics are being taught in kindergarten. You know, it's not just sandboxes and juice boxes. You know, these are important days for getting a kid ready to be reading at grade level by third grade, which is such a crucial kind of moment. And so there's an information exchange that needs to happen in. My point being in sharing all this and then coming back full circle to your question about how PowerSchool can help is again, bringing parents in, collecting data, understanding what those root causes are for an individual student by establishing those strong partnerships so that we can identify why a particular student is absent. We're not misidentifying it. We're not saying, oh, it must just be that this parent doesn't get it, when in fact, it's an inconsistent bus route. And then we are intervening in a way that is aligned to that specific root cause having the most effect, you know, for the time and resources that we're going to. That we're going to be spending and keeping that door open with that parent, you know, hey, we're working together as partners. You're helping me to understand what's going on with so and so, why they're not getting here every day. Let me help you improve this, you know, and really, in more of a systematic, data, informed way, understanding what's truly going on and addressing. That's one of the things that PowerSchool solution, our attendance solution specifically does. You know, it's really first and foremost in a lot of ways a, ah, homeschool communication system. Um, you know, it gives automated updates when students are absent. It sends automated messages to encourage attendance. It does a lot of positive proactive messaging. Hey, great job on getting here five days in a row or hey, we're really looking forward to seeing so and so. Because we know when you build that positive school climate, when you deliver those positive messages, that's when you really start to see buy in and again, engagement. And you create the sort of welcoming school environment that kids and families want to be involved with. And that's really at uh, the heart of what PowerSchool does with attendance. It's keeping those communication sort of two, uh, way pathways open. It's collecting that data to help identify root causes and it's establishing really positive school climates and cultures, which we know through research. You look at the work of folks like Hetty Chang at Attendance works. That's foundational, that's fundamental. The first thing you need to do to get kids in the door is, is create a school environment that feels really welcoming for them. And we like to think that our PowerSchool solution is really focused on just that.

Speaker C: Excellent points there. Jesse, what happens when, um, you have a parent who is very defensive about this issue of absenteeism? Um, how do you go about dealing with that and trying to gain their trust 100%.

Speaker B: And I think I'm going to sound like a bit of a broken record here, but I think it starts before you even hit that point with that parent of making the school environment feel welcoming, making everyone feel included in the conversation by establishing that consistent homeschool communication in a variety of ways that is maybe most convenient for that parent? Maybe it's text, maybe it's email, maybe it's physical mailers, it's phone calls. You know, our solution can accommodate all of that and can be personalized in that way. 65 to 80. Steven, you probably know the number of different languages that we translate our messaging in to make sure every parent feels like we're meeting them at least halfway. So I think that's the start. I think when you invite parents positively and proactively to be partners in solutions instead of kind of given the finger wag, I think that's when those walls start to come down. They feel like they're being empowered. They feel like they're being honored in their knowledge, in their efforts, and that helps to open those doors again.

Speaker C: Steven, is there anything you want to add on that?

Speaker A: No. I will say that, you know, some of the reluctance or apprehension on the part of the parent comes from their own experience with school when they were young. And that then they translate that onto their student. Well, I was mislabeled or I was treated poorly when I was in school. Not much probably has changed since then. And so they bring that with them when they, when they're, when their child comes to school. Oftentimes is, uh, some. You know, that is the case. And so as Jesse pointed out, that, that, that initial outreach is that. That positivity forward approach. And what we see oftentimes when it comes to absenteeism and chronic absenteeism, it's a negative first approach. Your child has been absent this many days. If you don't do this, if they don't come to school, these are the penalties you are going to face. And while, you know, in some cases it's important to remind the parents of, you know, if your child is consistently absent, this is what can happen more, more likely than not. M. You know, most of us, I think, would agree. We respond more positively to positive reinforcement. Um, and so if we can work directly and do that initial outreach or remind parents, and this is something just, even my own kids district has started to do, where they spent the entire summer talking about why it's important for kids to be in school, and kids who are in school, they get better jobs and this is what they do. And telling individual stories of kids who were chronically absent and now they're not. And the stories of those parents, they took a. They took a positive first approach and they've seen that chronic absenteeism rate decline this year, um, rather than the kind of the penalized approach they've done in the past. And that's, you know, ultimately what our attendance solution does is it takes. It's the only solution that, that's out there, that uses actual research to show and use positivity and uses that positive reinforcement to remind the parent. Thank you. Thank you for bringing your. Thank you for sending your child to school today for three days in a row. This is awesome. And this is what they're. This is what they're going to be able to do. It's that positivity first approach that I think it really makes the difference to break down some of those barriers that, uh, that we've seen been built up in the past.

Speaker B: And I think Michael, I think there can be a natural defensiveness as you pointed out, around attendance. Because when a family is contending with a student who is not consistently getting to school, I think that family can perceive that the school is going to perceive something negative about them. You know, this is an issue of being disengaged or not caring or not getting it. And I think what our tool does is allow for kind of those different buckets of root causes to be explored and honored instead of kind of leaving parents feel like feeling like that assumptions are being made a lot of places and a lot of systems kind of just stick to the three letters, right? And by the three letters I mean student was absent five times. They get the form letter home that says hey, your student's been absent five times getting to school, it's 10 times. And now the letters worded a little more strongly, it's 15 times. And in some places that's now a referral to the county attorney general's office. That's not how you build relationships, that's not how you uncover root causes. That's how you continue to strengthen those walls that parents have put up when they've started to realize or they've started to see that, you know, attendance is a challenge for my student. And now look at these letters. You know, they think I'm doing a bad job, I'm going to get in trouble and on and on and on. It's not a proactive, positive, um, collaborative

Speaker C: approach to really addressing the problem positively does definitely work. So we have time for one final question. It's just a general question and you know, you guys are ed tech experts and I'm sure that you've had discussions with schools leaders uh, about the students use of social media. And I just, you know, this is an open ended question. Just give me your thoughts because obviously you know, you, Stephen, you mentioned that you're one of your kids can do, you know, TikTok really well and I'm sure that uh, you know I have a, a grandchild who's only two and a half but I'm, I'm sure in another couple of years she's going to be able to do all sorts of social media that uh, probably your grandparents don't know. Um, so my question really is just give me generally your thoughts about the uh, you know, social media today, how it fits into the education realm. And obviously I know we could spend the next eight episodes on this but uh, I just want your thoughts off the top of your head on this issue.

Speaker A: Yeah, so uh, so I, I wrote a whole book about this. But yeah, I could talk for hours and hours at end about, about the use of social media. So, you know, before we entered this phase of misinformation and disinformation, the social media was a great tool to have kids connect with folks that they may not have the opportunity to connect with with, um, any other way. Because many of the authors of the books that they were reading in class were on social media. And I even did um, sessions and worked with a school library journal to develop lists of authors who were on social media who you could contact and then they could Skype into your classroom. We've been doing that for a very long time. It was a way for kids to see, uh, uh, folks in various fields that they were interested in and to follow them and to interact with them. It was a great way to do that. Now we've entered kind of this phase where the realization has come that, hey, we, you know, we need to understand where information comes from and understanding the difference between misinformation and disinformation, because those two things are very different. And so I have a, I have a friend who, um, who works for a nonprofit called the um, News Literacy Project. And that's what they do. And they specifically look at things like TikTok or look at things and uh, like, uh, like X and other social media to help students understand that. And so there is still a place for social media in schools. Let's, let's make sure we, that I say that clearly because if we completely disengage from that aspect of where people are getting their information from, then just as I've been saying for the last almost 20 years, we're going to raise a generation of students who um, feel that, hey, I can just say whatever I want online. And that's kind of what we're, we're reaping what we're sowing today because we had so many places we told kids, oh, don't, don't put your name on the Internet, because someone could find you or someone could find out where you live and they could snatch you up. And I've been in, I've been in sessions where people have said that to students. And so, you know, we want to make sure that we are doing it in a responsible way, way so that kids can identify, you know, disinformation and misinformation and own what they say and create, you know, there's still a need for a positive digital footprints even more so today because so much of it has shifted Online. The other side of that, too, is that's the creativity aspect of it. Like, I talked about my daughter and how she can do really incredible things that I never would even know how to do with transitions and things like from her phone. Like, the kids have these. These really cool ways to produce new pieces of. Of content to demonstrate their learning. That learning doesn't have to be demonstrated anymore in a PowerPoint or a. Or a paper. Those things, those. Those things still have their place. But if we think differently about how, you know, we were just talking about how do we keep kids engaged in school? Let's go to where they are and let's use the kind of. The tools that they're using, even though we might not understand how to use them, but they can create some pretty wicked awesome things, um, based on, you know, on the. On what we're teaching them and produce new, uh, new pieces of content that really bring them back, that really say, wow, I'm really excited to be in English today. I'm really excited to be in math today because they're able to use those tools. So there's still a place for it. Our intentions may have shifted, and we need to continue to shift with them, but there's still a place for the use of those tools in the class, classroom.

Speaker C: Jesse, you got the last word, if you want it.

Speaker B: Yeah, I'll agree with a lot of that. You know, not all social media use, not all screen time is created equal. And I think. I think sometimes you run into situations where. Where lawmakers or a district leader kind of takes a hammer to the problem without understanding some of the nuance. Um, you know, just because students are bringing Cheetos and Doritos to school doesn't mean you ban all orange foods, because then you're cutting out the carrots and the oranges.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: And I think we need to approach things like social media, screen time, cell phone use with that same lens.

Speaker C: Uh, that's a great way to end it. It is a nuanced issue, and both of you guys really brought that to light. So I want to thank, uh, Jesse and Steven for being such great guests on education and excellence, um, and bring this fabulous series that we've done with Power School to an end. I also want to thank our assistant producer, Sam Hofmeister. We urge you to subscribe to education Excellence. That's really the only way that you'll know that you have not missed any, uh, episodes and that you'll get entire series that we do, like this one with PowerSchool and remember that this podcast is free and you can hear it on Apple Podcasts Spotify. Really. Wherever you get your podcast, we welcome and value your feedback, ideas or questions about the podcast. You can email me@michael.levenepstein ah, gmail.com or you can ping me, um, on LinkedIn. If you'd like to be a guest marketing partner or a sponsor, we like to hear from you. We'd appreciate it if you give us a five star rating on Apple Podcasts and tell your friends and comments colleagues about us. It really does make a difference. Thanks for listening today and we'll see you next time on Education Excellence.