Help us understand, if you can, these dynamics around these situations like this.

Yeah.

I, well, you mentioned something really important, and even inherent in what you were saying, and I think that's, like, a little more of a culture of nuance, right? I think that in situations like this, and in many situations involving complicated family dynamics and environmental dynamics, two, and sometimes multiple things, can be true.

We can both, we should be able to hold true in our minds that it is inappropriate for, and this sounds crazy, but, you know, a child to bring a weapon to school and to shoot a teacher.

It is inappropriate for a child to be hurling profanity at adults.

And also, that child learned that from somewhere.

That child has been marinated in an environment that not only prioritized, but incentivized that behavior.

How do we save kids like that? How do we get kids not only to, to read better and to do better, but, but to, to get on a path where they're not gonna end up dead?

... a few hundred kids, but, but what do you think of that development?

I, it's, it's incredibly exciting.

I mean, I think that the thought of, of being able to not only sort of consolidate resources into a place to have a campus, obviously, of that size to accommodate the students, but to have, uh, like, an incredibly dedicated staff, you know, led by Dr. Karab and some other folks who are, who are, like, incredibly high quality and committed educators, is only a benefit for our kids and families.

And so it's a great opportunity to, to, as we talked about, put together the multi-variable pieces of, of what this means, right? We have a great place that will have a strong curriculum and committed teachers, and I got to go in and walk through it the other day and, I mean, you could feel, like, the energy and the passion and, like, they were...

You know, all the folks who are there are there for the right reasons, which is really exciting.

And then to build out of the back of that, to support these kids and their families in their environments when they're home, right? Continue to have this sort of 360-degree view of, of, um, you know, preparation and of support.

So we say, "Look, we know you're gonna get A1 inside the school building.

[laughs]

Price, we're spending millions

... well-funded systems, right? And to that I would say, one, they should be well-funded, right? So this is not, I don't want...

Sometimes people get lazy and go, "Oh, you just wanna take money from the schools." I don't.

I want the schools to have money, and I want us to have money.

I wanna r- you don't have to rob Peter to pay Paul.

But what that means is that if you are a kid who grows up in poverty, who grows up in a, a, a under-resourced environment and goes to a nice school that has nice facilities and is expensive and leaves that school and goes out into your environment where you spend most of your time where resources aren't, you will not close these literacy gaps that we're seeing.

These are the kids that are falling behind, right? So the importance of environment, the importance of economics, but it's also very important where the money goes.

Mm-hmm.

What are y'all doing to assist

with that? So summer school is incredibly important and it doesn't.

I think sometimes we throw these things out and negate the fact that they are hard and they are complicated and they are people intensive and they are labor intensive.

And also, I love to say, my father used to tell me this all the time.

He said, look, multiple things can be true.

We can say, look, it's hard to put together a comprehensive summer school program for a lot of kids that covers the ground they need, whether it's education and transportation and food and extracurriculars, yes.

It's also worth it.

So there may be a revolt based

Price, I'm wondering if you could say a little bit about like how you go about how Montpelier has gone about developing and cultivating relationships based on trust and mutual respect with the descendant community.

Part of it comes from a clarity of mission.

And, you know, another part of it comes from honesty.

When we talk about, you know, our American DNA, when we talk about the evolution of this country, it's not really rainbows and sunshine.

You know, and Black history is not hardly in any case, you know, rainbows and sunshine for a lot of people.

And for a lot of these descendants, this is a real lived experience for them.

They remember those stories passed down from their parents or grandparents or great-grandparents.

professional historians, public history organizations, other museums, other historic sites and the like.