Building AI Guardrails and Future-Proofing Tech in K12 with Bo Charlton

Hey, Alex, thanks for letting me lead off again here this week. Our guest is a business manager and I think it's our first go around with a business manager. Yeah. And I'm a little surprised that it's taken us this long to sort of do this because you know about, when we talk to the tech directors, you know, about half of them report to the business manager and about half of them will report to the superintendent. We've had plenty of superintendents on the show, but our first business manager. So I think this is going to be an interesting conversation. I'm really looking forward to it. Yeah, let's go find out. Hi everyone. Welcome to another episode of Learning through technology at K12 podcast. We have a great guest on the show today. We'd like to welcome Beau Charlton who is the business manager at Cashmere School District in Washington State. I lived in D.C. washington, D.C. so I have to always refer to the state of Washington as Washington State. Bo, welcome to the show. Tell us a little bit about yourself. Thank you guys for having me. We are. Cashmere is a small little school district in the center of Washington. We have about 15, 1575, you know, 1,575 students in our district here. And our district is a real close knit community. Agriculture is big here, so we have a lot of apple production and other frees across the, you know, across the area here. But that's what we're most known for is our agriculture and just the beautiful area we live in. So Cashmere is a really cool district. And this is my second year in the district. Before that I worked at esd, is what they're called in Washington State Education Service District. So that's kind of where I got started in the business manager role. And yeah, things are going great here. Thank you guys for having me. Absolutely. Is it a, is it a K 12 district? Yep, we're K 12 and we, we have a. About three buildings. So we have three schools. We got elementary, middle, high school all on the same campus or are you guys spread out? Slightly spread out, but you know, within a mile radius. Okay, that's great. Bo, did you end up working in schools and in K12 on purpose or extant happy coincidence. But you've had a couple of jobs now in IT and, and being a business manager you have, you have other opportunities. It's not like you were a teacher and you had to go into teaching. So how, how did you end up in schools? That's a great question. And I actually my. Both my parents are educators. My mom's A teacher. My dad's an administrator. So I kind of got to see it growing up and kind of seeing how, you know, schools really work and what it's like from the administration side of things. So I was kind of targeting school finance out of college. Covid was in the peak when I was graduating college, so I graduated in 2021. So that threw a whole nother wrench in the whole, you know, job search and everything else. But, you know, I've been very fortunate, got some great opportunities and. But yeah, this was kind of my target coming out of school, and it's so far, so great, and I really loved it. It's funny that you're. You're our first business manager. We've, I think Alex and I did some math, and we've probably recorded about 50 podcasts now. I can't believe I spent that much time with Alex without breaking out on hives. But it's been successful so far, so we're going to, we're going to try for 51 here. But you're our first business manager, and it's kind of reassuring to me that you set out to be in education and that you've seen the other side, how educators think about their schools and the things they go through. Because we talk about in technology, the, the most important thing is, is the education, you know, in our. I tell people this about edutech, our company, that the Edu comes before tech because the learning comes before the technology. And it's really, it's really good to know. And we didn't know that before we, before right now, that, that you'd set out for a school and that you had, that you had educators as parents, so you, you knew what you were getting into and still decided to get into it. That's great. So we'll, we'll move on a bit here. And, and I want to ask you, you've. You've been at this for a few years. You, your second year in the school, tell us something about something you're proud of that you've accomplished there or you and your team have accomplished or that a success in general. Yeah, you know. Yeah, you kind of mentioned it. And it. At the end of the day, we're here for the students, right. We're here for every kid across the district. Right. Whether they're just walking through the doors as kindergarten or getting them up through graduation at 12th grade. And at Cashmere, we just, we really focus on the students, and I think that's kind of what makes Cashmere a little special. Is just that. That kind of high school experience. But not just the high school, you know, across the district, you know, the educational experience. We want our students enjoying coming to school each day. So, you know, it's hard to pinpoint just one success. But I would just like to highlight what we got going here is a really good thing. And I like to think that as a whole, our staff really care for our students. And that's one thing that really, you know, I've kind of. I'm still kind of new in my career here, but I just kind of feel like something's different in Cashmere. And I think that's what it stems from is that our students and our staff really care about our students. And I'd say that's probably, you know, that translates to a lot of different things, from extracurriculars to, you know, our graduation rates, and then our students going on to post graduation, whatever they choose to do, Whether it's trades or going into universities. We just, we have a lot of. A lot of pride in Cashmere, and I think that shows in our students. And then, you know, how many of those students come back to Cashmere. So that's great. You know, it's hard to pinpoint. You ask for individual success, but I just like to highlight, you know, like I said, what we got going. That's. That's great. Do you have so small district, central Washington? Are you reasonably rural? Very rural. We're about two and a half hours from Seattle and about two and a half hours from Spokane. So we're right down there. Right. Literally in the middle. Yeah. So a lot of times, even when they have high graduation rates, small rural towns struggle to get students matriculating to trade schools, universities, you know, advanced education, whether. Whether it's degree or not advanced education. But it sounds like you guys have that. Is that correct? My, you know, we being an agricultural community, we do have a lot of students that maybe don't necessarily want to pursue that. They want to go down different routes. Whether that's, you know, that maybe we've got a lot of pathways here. And I think that just making sure that students, whatever they want to do, we have the resources available to help support them to get to that end goal. One thing that we've been doing more recently is internships and kind of, you know, allowing those to really allow students to be exposed to different things while they're still in high school. Whether it is, you know, working in the medical field or whether it is working in the agricultural field, it's just Kind of exposing our students in high school to as much as they can so they can be more prepared as they graduate. That's great. So, Bo, since you're a first business manager, I'm going to stick with business management a little bit here for a second. Could you share with us the hierarchy, like, what parts of the organization, the school district report to you as business manager and who you report to as the business manager and just what that looks like? Sure, yeah. We're, like I mentioned, you know, we're a small district. Right. And we wear a lot of different hats. So as far as like the hierarchy and order of operations, I would say that, you know, it starts with the superintendent, of course. Right. And our superintendent, he's been here for, you know, over 20 years, so he's, he has a oil machine. And what we got going here in Cashmere, and from that, it just kind of triples down. We got our building administrators and then we got our district administrators. And then as a business manager, you know, I have my hands in a lot of different aspects on the kind of operational side of things, whether it's food service or, you know, transportation, just kind of making sure we're all on the same page. But at the end of the day in Cashmere, it's, you know, we all kind of, kind of oversee different aspects on the administration side of things. So there's not really like an order of operations necessarily. But I would say our principals, building administrators report directly to the superintendent. I report to our superintendent, and then our tech director kind of also just reports to the. Directly to the superintendent. And then everything else kind of, you know, filters down. So this is a Learning through technology podcast and we have a lot of technology directors or academic tech folks and that kind of folks who are part of this audience. Does technology report to you? We, like, you know, it's hard to say. Yes, you know, they do report to me because it is. We're really close knit. Right. You can pop into my office, you can pop in the superintendent's office and kind of get the same result at the end of the day. But yes, you know, we, we do all kind of flow through the same communication channels. So it is a constant ebb and flow of myself and the superintendent, the tech director and myself. And we just kind of, we don't necessarily think of it as like who we talk to, who we report to. It's more just this is the problem we got. How are we going to get it done or, you know, whatever comes across. So what kinds of technology initiatives Are you working with the technology team on. Yeah. E Rate. E Rate's a big one, right? That's every district, every across the country is working on an E Rate. So that's, you know, that's always something that takes a lot of planning. Esser. So you know, during COVID we got this extra money from the feds and it was the Esser funds. So how we were able to not only utilize those that help set us up for the future, but how did we do one time only purchases that, you know, didn't create as big of an Esther Cliff. And one of the things we did is technology. That was one area that we really focused on utilizing our Esser funds with and, and from that, you know, planning for the future. Right. When you buy a lot of Chromebooks and you buy a lot of staff workstations, eventually those are going to come to a point where they need to be swapped out or changed. So it's. How do you plan for that in the future to kind of avoid those cliffs, you know, couple years from now or five years from now. So a lot of planning goes into our technological plan plan here and that's kind of where we're at on the budgetary side. You know, maybe this budget isn't necessarily looking at one year only, maybe it's a three year budget and how we're going to encompass those plans with the tech department. So Bo Esther is an excellent topic that, that is especially pertinent since we're talking to you. We do know that those funds are, are now exhausted and like you said, lots of schools, including it sounds like Cashmere bought a lot of technology. What are you doing to sus? I'll put this. What are you doing to sustain that? But let me put it in this case and that it might be both a pro and a con. We like to ask like what are your challenges and what are you, what are you succeeding at? So you had a success in buying all that technology? I imagine it's a challenge. What's your plan? Even if you don't know what you're doing now, what are you, what's your process look like for figuring out what a post Esser budget looks like while maintaining what you've got? Absolutely. I think the biggest thing is communication. Right? I don't know. I don't know. Our tech directors don't know if we're not having the open form of communication there. So I think the first thing we did this year was we not only looked at our budget in a one year cycle, but we try to map out what the next five years looks like. What's the next eight years look like as far as our technological needs? We know that we have student, student devices. We have enough on hand right now. We know those are going to start hitting about 2028. What's that plan look like? Are we going to tackle it by building? Are we going to tackle it by department? Are we going to tackle it, you know, how are we going to get new devices in the hands of the students that are relevant at that time? Right. We can't make decisions for 2030 right now. We don't even know what the technology is going to be looking like or what the needs are going to be. That so it's just kind of this constant communication chain. So I think that's probably the first step was figuring out what Esser, what do we purchase, what was our biggest needs, how do we set ourselves up best for multiple years and then from there how are we going to determine what the biggest needs are on a timely basis and then how do we plan for that? Where are you finding the funding for replacements of things that were funded by one time monies? That's a great question. So we have, I'm not exactly sure how it works across the country, but here in Washington State we have, you know, just levies like anybody else. Our EPL that is operational legs, part of our levy plan is we do support student technology and making sure our students have the technology that they need in the resources. So that's one area. We also use program dollars, you know, when applicable. So whether that's, you know, federal or state program dollars. Yeah, second kind of funding source. And the third and you know, most prominent probably is just making sure that when we're developing a budget, we're allocating some of our resources to, you know, student technology needs. So we work with our tech director every single year. We look at what the needs are, what needs to be replaced, you know, cameras, keyless entries. I mean there's a lot that goes into technology that's not just necessarily a student device in hand. Oh yeah, and making sure we're on the same page there. Yeah, absolutely. Bob and I have chuckled about like how the role of the technology director has changed over the years and now it's to the point where anything that plugs in it seems to be the tech department's responsibility. If it's an electric pencil sharpener, that's our responsibility. The so but you know, somebody's got to keep keep these things humming. So BO has AI played a role in any of the work that you guys have done in the district recently? Yeah, AI is. I'm using. I'm using it often. Right. I think everybody is eventually going to kind of short. Whether they know it or not, they're using AI in some way of shape or form. We here in Kashmir, we're in the process of developing AI policy. It is a. From the. The board, director, board of directors, all the way down to our, you know, teachers. We want to make sure we have really clear outlines about what uses of AI are allowable versus not allowable, which, you know, grade levels are going to be expected to kind of be exposed to AI in a sense. And I think more than anything, you know, we have a collected commitment to making sure that we're not letting AI replace what we've got going here in Cashmere. We got a really good thing going with our students and our teachers. However, there's a lot of enhancements that could come from AI and whether that's just administrative efficiencies or if it's how do we expand critical thinking with the help of AI that's kind of what we're looking at and how we go about this policy. We have an assistant principal is kind of taking the lead on developing kind of the staff wide plan with AI as long, you know, it's a. It's a team effort. Our superintendent's very involved. But more than anything, it's just how are we going to get our staff, our teachers, quit with AI knowing the expectations? How do they communicate that to the students and getting them the tools they need? We're devoting some of our professional development days this year when in August, coming back to the school year. We're actually having AI be a critical kind of main theme this year. And it's, how are, you know, different staff members? Key leaders have attended some professional development over the course of the past year and a half or so. And now they're going to be asked to be peer mentors and kind of share some of the strategies and tools that they've learned with some of the staff members that maybe haven't been exposed to it as much. So we're kind of really diving into AI this, this upcoming year. But I want to really be clear, we're diving into AI with guardrails. We're guiding. Diving into AI with a really clear vision of we're not changing what's working. It's all about enhancement. Bo, it's very encouraging to hear that you're spending. We know how valuable Those professional development days are, and trying to, trying to get them in. Aside from all the, the stuff you have to do every year, CPR training and recertification for this and, and then different state requirements. But that you're dedicating that time. Do you think that your, your policy that you're working on, is it more aimed at staff, teaching staff or students or both? What, what, what are we looking at? That's a great question. At think the clearest way I can describe it is our policy is more driven from the student side of thing as far as how, how do we expect our students to utilize different things. But more than anything, it's going to be clear communication from the board, the, you know, the district on what do we expect our staff, how do we make it look the same in each building, right? And AI is changing, right? Think about how much two years ago, what, you know, some people didn't know what Chad GBT was. Now it's a common everyday terminology we just throw around. We know that this policy is going to morph and change, you know, yearly, if not sooner. So it's just making sure that our, you know, staff, our students and our, you know, expectations are all the same and they're changing as, as needed. So we're kind of, we're kind of in the early stages here of this process. However, we do want to make sure we have really clear guidelines for our students going forward this upcoming school year and then how our staff's communicating that to our students. I think you kind of struck on one of the things that makes AI policies uniquely complex, right. Is, is that how do you create something that's relevant enough in a field that changes so quickly but high level enough that it, it can sort of create those, those guidelines. We have one of our, one of our top speakers in, in AI or consultants in AI and educational collaborators, Lindy Hockenberry was, she spoke at a conference that, that we hosted and she, she was making changes to her, she was doing a keynote on this. She was making changes up until the morning of the keynote. Right. She said because like things are changing so fast. She said things that I had activities that I had in our session. She said they changed like you know, the night before last and I had to make the, you know, understand these things and make these changes day of. And, and so I, I find that when we're working and talking to schools about some of the policies that they're creating that they tend to sometimes dive too far into the weeds and struggle a little bit with making A policy that's not going to be relevant or at least part of a policy that isn't going to be relevant a week later or certainly a year later. How are you guys? How are you, what, what are you guys thinking? And I know you're still in the process, but that's why this is a fun conversation right now. Where are you guys in the, in the process of thinking about how do you make adjustments to feel that changes so drastically, so rapidly? I, you hit on the head, right? It changes. Everything's changing. Right. When we started this AI adoption policy. Wait, when did you start? I, I, I was first part of conversations last, you know, let's say February, March of last year. And, and we, we knew we wanted to have some guidelines. Right? We knew we wanted to have changed system started even. Yeah, exactly, Exactly. Right. We knew we wanted to have some system, system wide commitments to certain, you know, guide, guide rails. We want to make sure that our staff know exactly what is allowable and not allowable from our board of directors. From that though is morphed into kind of like, okay, how do we make sure it looks the same in different classrooms? You know, how do we utilize which subjects allow for artificial intelligence? And there's just this broad conversation that's taking place right now of what is the role of a policy versus what is a handbook versus what is just teacher expectations. And then kind of how do we just make those, you know, really core beliefs and core commitments. How do we make sure those are not going away with the help, you know, with AI being introduced and this whole conversation now, like we just had a board meeting know, not so long ago we were talking about a. And there are some great questions brought up. And from those questions it's changed our policy, right? It's going to change our approach to finishing this policy out. And I think that's just kind of one of the, this is new, right? We're all learning at the same time and we're all kind of figuring this out at the same time. But I think that, that we have a really good approach to how we're going about our policy and that's, we don't need to get something as quickly as possible. We want to get something that's tangible and that we're going to use going forward. Yeah, that's, that, that, that's great. And I mean, going forward, I think is a journey, especially with AI, Right. And it's going to need to continue. All right, so, so Bob started by asking some of the successes and, and then we even got into this process of, of the AI stuff, which I think is presenting as many challenges as it presents successes. But that's fine. I mean, that's, that's schools, right? I mean, that's, that's what we do. But let's, let's chat a little bit about some of the specific challenges that you guys are dealing with. What are some of the challenges that you guys are wrestling with at the district right now? I think AI is from a just, you know, 10,000 foot view, right? It's like the, the, the fear is that it's going to take over how you think and it's going to, it's going to limit your critical thinking. As far as when I type something in there, you know, I say, hey, draft me a paragraph that talks about, you know, food service and how we're going to change food service up this year. And it could give you a million different ways, you know, and so when you see that from a really far perspective or if you're not super familiar with artificial intelligence, you can say, whoa, hang on a second. Where's the critical thinking in this? I think it's all about messaging and making sure that people realize that artificial intelligence isn't necessarily replacing that critical thinking piece of it. It has to come from a human thought and has to, you know, we're enhancing different aspects of it. And then how do you communicate that to staff members that maybe aren't super, you know, confident in AI or feel like it's a waste of time? And it's just all that, that, you know, there's just a lot of new challenges going on with AI and how is it going to be used in schools and how is it going to be used in the business world and just making sure that, you know, it's okay that people aren't super familiar with it. But we're having these conversations now and we're kind of setting the table for the next couple years to the. I personally don't think AI is going away. So it's all about how we adapt and learn. How's that gone away? BO so we've, I spoke a little earlier on about the resistance by some or many to AI in that whole critical thinking. Or is it your own work or what defines your own work in a world of AI? So how does a small school district in Central Washington handle that? Both the professional development and the, I guess the explanation of the benefits or the necessity of that of learning this skill set? I think at the end of the day, right, it's, it's up to individual basis. And it's if, if you want to dive into it and you want to kind of see the aspects of it, that's great. But I think keeping that open mind is just having that conversation that here's what we're committed to. We know that it is not going to do X, Y and Z. That is not going to replace a teacher working with students one on one directly. You know, we just know that we're collectively committed to, you know, let's say three or four core values around AI and then how we branch off from that, that's where we kind of need to, you know, learn as we're going. Right. We know we're not going to have all the answers come day one. We know it might take a couple of years till we finally hammer in exactly, you know, what we want our AI policy and AI to look like in our Cashmere school district here. And I think that making sure that we're okay, having the patience to really not get ahead of ourselves, I think that's important too. Making sure that we know this is a process, not a. Not a quick and easy fix. So I think, you know, it's just, it's just keeping that communication open amongst all staff members, amongst all parents. Right. Parents are another aspect. Some parents probably are hesitant to have their student using AI in schools, and that's absolutely okay. So it's just making sure we're all on the same page, committed to the same aspects and learning as we go. Because I think this is not going to go away. It's, it's, it's here. So it's just how we roll that out from a district level and as a community level, I think that's important. Yeah. What about other challenges in terms of, like, I mean, you're the business officer, so. Yeah, money. Right. Like, are there funding challenges? What's, what's driving the funding challenges? And then how are you dealing with that? Absolutely. It's funny challenges. I mean, when you think about, like, chat GPT, for example. Right. It's a monthly subscription that as a district, if you have every single staff member and student hooked up to Chad gbt, you'd be spending hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. Yeah. And we just, you know, you can't afford that. Right. You have to live within your means. So it's, how do you find safe, how do you find useful platforms out there? And something we're kind of dipping our toes into this year is a product called Magic School. And that's something that we was financially advantageous in the sense that we can afford it was within our budget. And on the flip side, it kind of checked some of those safe guidelines that we wanted and it was designed for K12 education which at the end of the day that's why we're here. Right. So we kind of are learning, leaning into that this year and that's kind of the product we're kind of fix having our staff focus on as they start this year. Nice. Are you guys a Google or Microsoft district? A little bit of both. Our buildings are more Google driven and our staff are more on the Office 365 side of things. Have you guys been looking. So we're partners, PD partners with both of those organizations. And on the student side, which is if your buildings are more on Google, there's really particularly at, at ISTI this year they really, Google really announced a lot of the Gemini features that used to be and the, the full adult paid for version have been sort of clean and structured and put into the Google workspace. Right. So they're accessible now to the students as well. Has that been part of your work? We haven't, we haven't really. We wanted to make a collective commitment to one product and then really to kind of learn that well. Right. So we, I wouldn't say discouraged, but as a district and as a leadership team, we kind of wanted to make sure that what we were choosing as a team was going to be uniform. We didn't want, we didn't want a little bit of this and a little bit of that. Now mind you, we, I mean I'm personally using Chat GPT a lot. I'm using Copilot sometimes. I'm learning, I'm using different AIs for the different needs that come up. So we're not, you know, hesitant to let staff, you know, explore and kind of when they need something else. But as far as like a district wide commitment and for our students and staff right now it's Magic School is kind of what we're leaning into. Great. Great. Bo. It's hard to believe that we have been at this for nearly 30 minutes now, which is what we promised our audience and you, that we, we would keep it in those, those parameters. But we have one more question that we ask of everybody. So put on your thinking hat here. It's. This is the most important question I will ask you today. We all have had my. I won't, I won't frame it like that for you. Ox. Do you have a favorite teacher or an educator who impacted who positively impacted you. And would you like to share their name and your, your story about that? Sure, yeah, absolutely. When I think of positive teachers that I've had in my lifetime, I instantly thought of in high school. I went to Manson High School, so that's about an hour from me here in Kashmir. And I had a history and social studies teacher there named Mr. Soliday and Mr. Solidad Brass Holiday was. He just made learning fun. He had really high expectations for us students. But I love history. I love learning. Um, we had some cool, we had some cool classes. We had military history, which was a lot of fun. Um, us, you know, we just know he made. Learning about a subject could sometimes be portrayed as boring and we made it really interesting. But on top of all that, he, you know, he had a lot of other aspects that I really respected as a teacher. So I would say Mr. Solid from my high school days was a great, great teacher that I had. And you'd say, you didn't really have to think about that. You knew that right away. I could tell by the look on your face as soon as I asked the question, you knew who you're going to talk about. Yep, yep, that was a no brainer for me. But you know, growing up just like, just like Cashmere, right? Manson is a really small school district. A lot of great staff there and a lot of great memories, for sure. We have a little ongoing bet bo that. So I think that people will sometimes need to reflect on that question. And Bob's like, no, everybody knows that out right off the top of their head. For the record, he's won pretty much every time. I think I won't like three wins in our 50, 50 episodes. So that was, that was excellent. I like, do you mind if we dig in just a little bit? Because you said there were also just some other things that just made him so special. Can you share some of those? Yeah, yeah. He was also my middle school basketball coach and he was also, you know, very involved in just kind of that school spirit and culture of, you know, what it, what does it mean to be a Manson Trojan and kind of what's it mean to be a responsible member of society and kind of some expectations outside of the school world of what it means to be, you know, just a certain standard of person that we strive to be, you know, and he just kind of made that expectation really clear from a young age. And in a small town like that, in a small school district, when you're, when the people you interact with on a day to day basis, Kind of set that standard. I think it helps a lot from the community aspect. And I just know, myself included and a lot of my, my friends that I grew up with would probably say the same things that they remember those conversations. And it means a lot, you know, when you grow up and you kind of think back on. Okay. Yep. You know, we all kind of had that same idea going forward and we knew, we knew what he was talking about back then, and we. Now that you're in the adult world, you see how it plays out. And so I don't know. I don't know if that made any sense, but there was kind of some standards. I think it's great. You know, Alex, I think, I think that's a common theme actually, is high expectations. We both know you don't know this, Bo, but Alex is completely aware of my less than stellar high school academic career and, but, but of my, my. There are two in my world, but they were both teachers who had high expectations for me, even though I did not have them for myself. And I think that is a common theme is, is high expectations is, is something that endears students to the teachers, even if not all teachers believe that. But I, I think it, I think it helps students see more in themselves. See more than they originally saw in themselves. Right. It certainly did for me. Yeah. And. And I think that that's. I think that's a great management trait as well. Right. And so I just think it's a good human development trait. So. Bo, this is great. Thanks so much for, for joining us today. This was a great conversation. You know, if I'm up in Washington, I'd like. We've got a couple customers in your area. I would love to come and visit your, your campus and get to know your district. But this was great. Thanks for joining us. Yeah, thank you guys. I really appreciate it. Hey, Alex, our first business manager, all wrapped up. What, what did you make out of that? I. Well, lots of, lots of great things, but I think the, the nugget that I pulled the most from is, is their work on AI policy. So first off, I really appreciate that the business manager took such an active role in something that is so impactful to the program. Right. Because sometimes business managers tend to stay at that 30,000 foot view and don't get into the weeds on things that are going to impact the classroom. So I thought Beau is unique and I think, you know, as parents, as educators and administrators probably influence that, but I thought it was great to see them getting the real work done in a Real process oriented way on AI. Yeah, I can't imagine starting that. They started that, that policy 18 months ago, and it's early, easily the earliest I've heard of any school starting a policy like that. And we have schools that are, that are that. That I work with, that are still kind of. I won't say paralyzed, but they're still looking for where to get that traction. And you know, I've made the recommendation that they talk to you and educational collaborators because they're the people who know, they know AI. The smartest AI person I know is a collaborator. So that's, that's where I, I think that the other schools that are looking to follow Bo and his school's lead should turn. Yeah, I think, you know, the understanding the, the difference between policy and practices is, is huge in this. And I think a lot of schools, they want to make sure that their policy is really reflective of the culture that they have, which I think we really heard from Beau. But you really need to understand sort of what are the parameters of what's a policy versus what's a practice needs to be determined first. Because when you understand that, you kind of set the stage for which. Where your culture needs to, to play in those spaces. And so, and I think that's one of the advantages that our clients, collaborators have because they've done this with so many districts. Right. They kind of understand some of those differences. And that's exactly what I was getting at, Alex. That explanation is why I turn to you and educational collaborators for help with these things. Well, another good episode, Bob. This was great. Until next time, my friend.