you've attended council hearings in person you tuned in to our televised proceedings on channel 13. now you have a chance to listen to us on the radio as we demystify the work of the people who do it this is not a council here this is hearing the council with your host josh gibson thank you deep voice person with a funky backbeat indeed this is not a council hearing this is hearing the council you can't have a government without a council so you can't have a government radio station without a council ship this is it i'm josh gibson director of communications for the council you may also know me as the council's voice on social media at council of dc uh welcome back listeners it's been a while since we've had a new interview new content so uh thank you very much to our guest at large council member christina anderson for joining us thanks for having me josh it's good to be with you um now i am maybe wrong about this i'm guessing that you are a rachel maddow fan i am and in fact i was just reading um her piece in the vanity fair about this um i won't call it a sabbatical but this break that she's taking from yeah yeah yeah um well as a as a fan of the show you you know that a fan of rachel maddow's show you know that often she starts the show way out in left field and you're thinking where is she going with this but she always brings the plane down um and i figured uh because of the themes we wanted to talk about today i was going to do a rachel maddow approach so bear with me we're going to take a minute or two we're going to start way out here and then we're going to end up with the the local policy topics we want to talk about sounds good um so anyone who has ever joined a new uh social media stream knows that the closer the time between when it's founded and when you pick your username the better luck you have so anyone who's gotten the gmail address recently knows not only is first name last name going to be taken first.last all of those are going to be taken you're going to end up with something like josh gibson 2863 at gmail um you can judge uh when people join social media based on how good or bad their handle is um like for example twitter was started in march of 2006. um jack dorsey who founded it has the handle at jack because he also joined as soon as twitter started um local food blogger tammy gordon who has my favorite local twitter handle is at tammy and that's pretty badass um to have that kind of twitter handle she joined a couple years in now our current guest christina henderson has at c henderson which is not quite at tammy badass but is still pretty good and that speaks to me about someone who is well tuned in the arts of twitter and a couple of your recent tweets i found quite well done and they're on two policy topics that we wanted to talk about today so anyway that's my rachel maddow date twitter was founded to the two topics we want to talk about um which are uh abortion rights abortion access is the first topic um and how things stand in the current crisis we're living on that front uh specifically in dc and then the second topic is early childhood education because there was some lively twitter discussion of the state of dc legislation on that um but why don't we get started first with uh the overturning of roe um what i appreciated was in the moments after the decision dropped uh most of the content on twitter was understandably full of anger uh full of fear full of sadness but i thought your tweet which did well um was very uh helpful you said i want to make it abundantly clear that in our local laws the district of columbia we're a safe haven for women seeking unrestricted access to reproductive health care we must not go backwards and that's a reminder that at least for the moment locally things have not changed at all legislatively and if anything we're reminded how important these rights are and how essential it is to protect them so uh can you give us a sense of um how first of all how you were feeling when that news broke and then your immediate pivot to brass tax to how do we keep things safe and let women know that they're protected in the district yeah thanks josh um and and for that opening and for that context you know it's interesting when it comes to roe v wade and abortion rights and abortion access i think for a lot of us we always knew the day would come we always knew that dodd's decision dobbs decision was possible um because even before that happened the fight for roe was happening in the states or states and local jurisdictions right states were chipping away and while people were so focused on the senate and the supreme court um state legislatures around the country had already been chipping away at access um for women and so you know i was kind of prepared even when we saw the leaked draft opinion i was like okay i thought that i had mourned all of those pieces but you know that morning um when we did get the the real supreme court um ruling on the case it just felt like a ton of bricks on my chest not necessarily thinking about dc but thinking about just women in general across the country thinking about my kids thinking about then taking a step further of okay dc is safe today but i know that there are republicans in congress who would love nothing more than to pass legislation for a nationwide ban or if they can't get that passing legislation to just ban it in the nation's capital and so that impacts dc we are uniquely situated in a very unprotected way because we do not have statehood and um i just wanted to make clear to people that for today right like don't cancel your appointment um women here women in neighboring jurisdictions you know you still have an option here if you can get to us um and so yeah it's just going to be an ongoing battle we see that struggle happening every day yeah it just got back from some international travel and when you try to explain to folks in other countries how prior to the overturning of roe the right to abortion was protected it sounds crazy for such an essential right to have been created in a supreme court opinion that created or detailed a right to privacy in most countries it says the right to an abortion is protected under law um and the fact that for so many decades we lived in this tenuous existence where there was this one supreme court decision that was holding things together um it raises so many questions in other countries they're like well why don't you just pass a law if there are a lot of times uh i think people in other countries look at the american political system which is supposed to be this like gold standard in terms of democracy gold standard in terms of debate and they're like y'all y'all don't make no sense and i i can't even um argue with them against that fact um i went to grad school with uh rebecca gompertz who was the founder of women on waves and it is a international organization that essentially helps women get abortions in countries where it is illegal i mean they even go so far as for a period of time um they had a boat where they would um go pick up women take them out to what is considered international waters perform the abortions and then return folks home right they're following um she was a dutch city or following dutch lost as a dutch citizen and i remember at the time this was like um 2011 2012 her talking about the things that they were going through in other countries just seemed so like surreal in terms of the restrictions and then you know even this morning i was reading an article in politico that was talking about a judge ruling um in florida that a 16 year old girl was not mature enough to have an abortion even though she was 16 didn't want the child and was still in school right so like you're not mature enough to make a decision to have an abortion but you are mature enough to birth and have a child like it doesn't make sense to me whatsoever the headlines in the united states are starting to look like the headlines in other countries and you know i introduced legislation even way before the dobbs decision for the council to just close the loopholes and some of the gaps that we had because i saw that you know a lot of the focus around abortion right abortion rights conversations have been focusing on clinical care a woman who's actually going into a clinic to receive an abortion that way when in fact we know that a growing number of women choose to self-manage their abortions at home so um either your doctor provides you with a prescription you go pick it up you take the drugs um and and and that you are able to manage the process in your own home and i felt like that's going to be the next frontier i hate to call it the frontier but like that will that will be the next thing that um anti-abortion activists will try to attack um not just the self-managed abortion peace but criminalizing anyone who participates in it we've seen that happen in texas and then um taking it a step further until like all the way back to what the united states used to be like with the comstock laws of basically trying to say providing any abortion material through the mail is illegal right um there used to be a time for for your listeners with the comstock laws like um any lewd quote lewd material um was considered illegal um to be sent through u.s postal service and that included birth control right so like um it's weird when you think about sometimes like how history repeats itself but we have to have these conversations to make sure okay have we fully like done what we can here because i think that anti-abortion activists are trying to be as creative as possible uh to chip away like there was a state legislator in missouri who wanted to pass legislation to prohibit women in missouri from traveling to another state to get an abortion i don't understand how that works like legally like i'm not a lawyer but like legally speaking if i could prohibit one state um residents from doing something that might impact me like we would have done that on gun rights already right dc would have sued another state to say y'all need to stop selling guns because they're coming to the district of columbia so um anyway i'm really grateful to um councilmember robert white um for holding that legis uh for holding a hearing on that legislation and legislation that councilman bernado introduced right before we left for recess um and we've been working with his office in the office of the attorney general and advocates and i'm i'm excited that we'll we'll move that bill um in the fall and you think the prognosis is is good for the bill for the bills i sure hope so i mean if any of my colleagues feel differently about it they have certainly been quiet yeah thus far how do the how do the co-sponsors look on the bills i mean all of the bills have enough votes via co-sponsors and co-introductions to pass i think um you know we have to make some minor adjustments here or there um to address some legal concerns but i i think overall in terms of the sentiment um you know there are a lot of things for which we are divided on in the district government um but this happens to be one of those issues where i think the council the mayor's office the office of the attorney general um are fairly united in terms of our quest to protect the rights of not just women in the district of columbia women and their families let me just say because i don't this is not just about women this is about any birthing people but also the people who support birthing people and then also our ability to provide care to um others who aren't able to receive it in jurisdictions um i hate the idea that like someone has to travel to the district of columbia but we know you know from the data already that even before the dot's decision um a high percentage of the abortions that take place in the district of columbia today are not actually of dc residents and do you think we're i guess that that is proof positive that that we're doing a good enough job getting the word out to our own people and to people who need it in other states that that we are a protected space yeah i mean i feel like this is one of those situations where i'm glad the internet exists um i'm glad that people feel like they have excuse me through social media internet and otherwise have the ability to find the information that they're looking for um you know i grew up as a military brat i think we talked about this the very first time that we talked and i do think very like you know i went to high school in georgia um it wasn't a rural part of georgia it was actually one of the cities but i do think about people who live in states like that in in in rural parts of the state where not only do they not have a hospital but they don't have an ob gyn in their county right uh so um i i feel a sense of responsibility for d.c residents but um as an american citizen i also feel a deep responsibility for how this impacts women and girls and birthing people throughout the country right and we as we are constantly reminded uh technology is a blessing and a curse and in terms of this ban well it goes both ways i mean we've seen cases you know facebook turning over records of families discussing internal family health care decisions and travel decisions and being that data being turned over uh to law enforcement for prosecution but conversely if you want to put a uh damper on conversation about getting access to care it's much harder to do you know comstock laws you ban sending things through the mail well there's a lot of ways to send things now you know their private company there's electronically you know there's so many different ways what's that yeah i mean there's so many ways to send information now that it's uh both sides on this battle are going to try to use technology to their advantage oh for sure for sure i mean i just um i i think i read the story that you're talking about in terms of the facebook app or the facebook messages that were being sent um there are i you know i think this is also going to be a very interesting time for american citizens because up until this point i would say um i wouldn't think about abortions as like a story that you read about in the local paper right it's not something that you hear about on the nightly news very few women um who've had abortions actually talk about them out loud even though it is something that happens to a lot of women whether it be um you know needing abortion care to handle a miscarriage or something to that effect or a pregnancy that is unviable um and now i think you're going to be seeing more and more stories about how the dodds decision as well as states taking steps to prohibit and restrict how that's going to impact everyday people and it's not going to be because oh the number of abortions have skyrocketed no it's now that we are talking about it um you know i i have a shirt that says everyone loves someone who's had an abortion right you may not know it you may not know what the story is behind it but it is likely that someone in your life has done so and i think that um you know we saw that play out in kansas where they had the referendum um just a few weeks ago and you know overwhelmingly the kansan voters voted no in terms of giving the legislature the ability to restrict abortion rights and i think a lot of that has to do with the fact that you have some people who have experiences very quietly but when you put it on the ballot they're like no i want other people to be able to have the choice that i had um so i i i it's going to be very interesting i would advi i like i um i was talking to a friend of mine who's uh an administrator at a university um in the southeast in terms of like how are you guys going to be handling this new environment um especially given the interplay with campus sexual assault um rules around investigations and and all of those different things and i was actually just reading an article that was talking about how any type of health care that's done at a student health center on a university campus doesn't have the same privacy protections as health care done in a doctor's office or at a hospital in terms of hipaa and you know university officials are having to think through what does that mean right like they're i feel like we have opened up pandora's box um and i i hope i hope no one dies in the process i hope no one is severely hurt in the process by um the supreme court being able to make a decision not based on health care not based on circumstance um but to to decide to take away a right which we haven't done in so long taking away rights from people that yeah yeah it is um painful and complex um with no transition at all i want to pivot to our second topic to talk about uh and return to the theme of uh twitter uh because a couple weeks ago um a couple weeks ago a few days ago um there was a tweet that came out that said this long delayed dc requirement for daycare workers to have college degrees will be truly terrible for everyone except montessori day cares where workers already have college degrees if it goes into effect and this went fair for dc area early childhood education twitter uh fairly viral um and it's interesting it's an interesting case study because um there's a little bit of everything that's wrong with twitter wrapped into this because first of all yes we uh the tweet was actually tweeting out an article um and if you drill down on the article the organization um that uh had written the article um is i think the institute of justice and it said uh their mission statement is their uh nonprofit public interest law firm our mission is to end widespread abuses of government power ding ding ding your constitutional rights and then if you read through in the article and i'll just remind people that twitter did a smart thing fairly recently that when you're retweeting an article it says do you want to read the article before you retweet that and people don't click the article they don't they don't but anyway so further in this article that no one clicked because of twitter um despite twitter warning them about it uh they said that the bill would um impose huge costs on daycare workers quote without teaching them anything useful about caring for infants and toddlers and it continues to say today's opinion treats the right to earn an honest living as something government regulators can grant or take away based on their slightest win because i know you just you're sitting there in your home and you're like how can i take away people's right to earn an honest living by creating irrational uh requirements um so anyway this is again a long lead up to you came in and with what i thought was an extremely useful detailed uh string of tweets that clearly took you a fair amount of work you're like okay you know it's fun to dunk on the dc government and out of context it you know you might be able to wonder what was going on here let me elucidate this for you yeah um so why don't you take this opportunity to and obviously you can't quote chapter and verse because it was ten tweets that were extremely detailed but why don't you help talk us down from uh this uh tweet that got us all spun up yeah thanks josh and first let me just say i'm so glad that you provided the context in terms of the organization who provided the article that kind of sort of started all of this because a lot of people don't actually look at sources right i feel like that was a very fundamental thing that i learned in middle school when you start to learn about research and research papers it's like check their sources don't read trust everything you read from the internet and certainly don't just trust a tweet which was wrong um and i remember it was a saturday night um i was reading it and i was also reading the replies because people were tagging me in it and my husband was like do you really want to go down this road and i'm like i don't like when people blame me for things that aren't true right like i as a council member dc council we make dc government we may not always do things that are popular for everybody right there are different strokes for different folks and some people may feel like sometimes they are particularly against something that we do okay i'm willing to accept that those licks i'm willing to engage in debate but i feel like we all have to be starting from the same place of facts and in this particular case i also felt like they were well number one they were wrong so the the original tweet said dc is requiring all daycare workers to have college degrees and we're not that is not what the requirement is um the requirement for early educate early childhood educators around credentials is that anyone who is providing care at a licensed dc facility needs to have at least a child development associate credential which is very specific to what it means to provide early childhood care at a high quality um not just in dc but nationwide it is the most widely recognized credential it's called a cda you do not have to go to a college to get a cda actually in the district of columbia you can actually start working towards your cda while you're still in high school right that is the beauty of this um bria public charter school a lot of our adult public charter schools offer um programs to help people get their cda yes surrounding universities like american and trinity and udc do as well but one of the things i just want to sort of distill for people is that we're talking about coursework and brain development we're talking about coursework and safety we're talking about coursework in terms of how to best provide stimulated activities and environment for very young babies and brains who people think can't learn but in fact that period from zero to five you are learning like the most at that time like in terms of brain development and science development birth to five is like critically important and you know several years ago education ece early childhood education advocates started to look at the quality of care that was being provided across the district and decided hey we need to step it up in terms of quality um as i mentioned in the tweets a lot of this stemmed from in 2007 um in 2008 the council passed legislation to establish voluntary universal pre-k 3 and pre-k 4 across the district now everybody's all excited about it but at the time it wasn't um it was a very controversial idea of we're taking three and four-year-olds from a child care setting and then we're going to be putting them into schools dc public schools or public charter schools one of the concerns that was raised was around equity if your child um was lucky enough to get a slot at a dcps school they would be taught by a teacher who has a minimum of a bachelor's degree because that is what gcps requires and then those teachers would also earn on the wtu pay scale meanwhile if your child stayed at a child care center that is in a community-based organization um they may not have any credential whatsoever besides a high school diploma um but also those educators would only be would be basically earning a lot of them minimum wage and so the conversation was around is this going to exacerbate the achievement gap when the whole reason we're doing this is to boost kindergarten readiness right the whole reason that we want to get the babies young is to help make sure that everybody is on the same track and prepared for kindergarten and here we're having a conversation about well you know teacher quality which is frankly a conversation that we've been having in the public school public education debate writ large for a long time particularly in dc right like impact is based on this idea that teacher quality um improves student outcomes um and so uh in 2008 the council passed the pre-k bill that basically said if you teach three and four-year-olds in the district of columbia you have to at least have a bachelor's degree and in exchange the state superintendent of education will provide a payment equal to what dcps gets per kid and the teachers who are teaching at cbo's three and four-year-olds would earn parity with dcps teachers as well so that was kind of like a win-win we get high quality teachers in both sectors and then the money will also follow as well um to take it a step further then there was a question around okay we're taking care of three and four year olds but what do we do in the birth to three space um and again you know this nationwide conversation around how does teacher quality impact student learning how does teacher quality impact student outcomes on the federal level congress had already made a decision that when it comes to head start and early head start which are programs designed uh for low-income families early childhood education programs nationwide congress said nope you need to have at least an associate's degree period um for those programs and then so in dc um advocates here started to say okay can we establish the same type of credential requirement here and will this help improve the quality of what's happening um in our ece space to really give our kids the best chance uh to set them up for the best chance for learning and so it was a regulation from aussie that established this uh requirement so if you are an assistant teacher in a child care center you have to have at least a cda if you are a a teacher you have to have at least an associate's degree in early childhood education and if you are a centered director you have to have at least a bachelor's degree now for most people they're like uh why are we requiring four-year degrees for center directors and the way that i like to think of it as a if you are a director of a child care center not only are you the business person right because child care centers are a business right you're dealing with a lot of money um and and some of it taxpayer money if you are receiving a subsidy or receiving a grant or something to that effect but also you are supposed to be the chief learning person in your building as the center director you are the one who establishes the curriculum you are the one who sets the tone in terms of like what is happening in each of the classrooms if you have multiple classrooms and things like that so i like to think of a center director as the principal of a elementary school or principal of a middle school or a principal of a high school they are supposed to be the leader of that building and so yeah yeah i mean you're the chief operational officer yeah make sure the trains are running on time you're the chief educational officer right um and you're not and meanwhile your business you're not manufacturing widgets you know you're creating building children's brains you know it's citizen you pointed out in in one of the tweets like your analogy was you're not just a babysitter no i my analogy is it's not child ballet parking yeah it's not like you know hand them the keys so have them near the front i'm gonna need to get them in a rush you know i'll be back around three like that's not that's the way it's been perceived possibly right and i think that around the country a lot of people think that this is what this is right child care is just babysitting not recognizing that um let's say you have a kid who's at a childcare center from nine to five you'd be very disappointed i would be very i would be supremely concerned if from nine to five my child didn't do anything that was learning based right you parked them in front of a screen and they just parked them in front of a screen or you just put them in a room but you know their centers are around the district right there's reading that is happening even if it is kids just hearing reading or whatever there's music class right there are trips to the library um there there's art that is encompassing other types of learning materials right like learning about speak animals and species and you know all of this different types of things it's through play but it is learning and you know i recognize that child care is supremely expensive across the united states not just in the district of columbia but across the united states it was something that i worked on when i worked for senator schumer on the national level because we wanted to do something in the child care space and this was after lots of work to get senators to think of child care not just as a care issue but to think for of it as a workforce issue if you want parents to go back to work um they need some place safe for their kids to go right so it is the workforce of today and then it is the workforce of your future right the investments that you make in them today will give you productive output in 20 years when they become adults right um but you know what seems like a lot of money doesn't go very far and i remember you know talking to chuck and can be like like why is this so expensive and i'm like well they can like explain all of the various economic inputs to it but if you ask any child care center director particularly in the district of columbia what are the most expensive inputs that they have it is people and facilities so on the people side it's not that you're paying for people with child care degrees but it is literally because living in the district of columbia is expensive so i cannot pay someone 525 an hour and think that i am going to get talent or i can't pick you know what i'm saying like no one well you know the minimum wage in dc is not 525 but you know it was at one point uh under the federal minimum wage and so pay has had to increase to keep up with inflation to keep up with costs it has nothing to do with credentials but it's just like literally we want people to be able to live and a lot of child care workers are currently earning the minimum wage and we're working on that front to sort of raise those wages the second thing is around facilities and most people don't think about it this way either so in dc and i would say around the country too from a regulation standpoint when you are dealing with infant and toddlers they are usually on the ground floor of buildings for safety reasons if there is a fire um you you know i'm not sure i don't well yeah uh you may not have seen anybody so if there is a fire drill that happens at a child care center most people don't see it but like in the infant room they literally put babies in um cribs that have wheels and they roll them out right that is the fastest way that has been determined to be able to move infants in an emergency is to be able to tie you up and move you out you need to be on the first floor of a building for that okay so in dc who are child care centers competing with in terms of commercial space on the first floor buildings restaurants restaurants banks um retail shops etc and i mean frankly like the rent is too damn high like you know um if anybody has ever asked someone who owns a business in dc in a desirable location how much they pay a month in rent for the first floor you would be like wow how um so those are two things i introduce legislation to try to help subsidize the cost of facilities again seeking to bring down the cost of care if if the government can pick up some pieces of some of these costs then that would allow for centers to be able to bring down the cost for families but it's expensive yeah and it just it just i mean that this is not news to anyone that that social media doesn't always allow for complexity but you know you know when you take that one sliver like oh why are they doing this crazy thing it ignores that dc's on the cutting edge of early childhood education and made it a guaranteed uh guaranteed access to people and guaranteed funding for that access pre-k three and four um folks don't take that into account we don't get any credit for that this is a necessary follow-on a complication that you know if you think it through like your point about equity like can you imagine if we didn't put a restriction in about education and then all of a sudden a news story came out that said in the fancy upper northwest daycares the average worker has a bachelor's degree but in home based yeah in board seven and eight folks you know maybe have uh uh equivalency uh you know not even a diploma there'd be a scandal like why didn't the council think about this don't have a two-track system but meanwhile we did think of it and are trying to avoid having a two-track system and it's still coming back to bite us right and i mean i think though people think about the expense piece i'm not gonna lie to you like i have a three-year-old who is going to be entering pre-k three this fall and i'm so excited to get the twenty one thousand dollars a year we pay in childcare back right it's like you were paying two mortgages and then you go back to paying just one mortgage you know that day that hits right and so i totally understand where people are feeling like gosh it's so expensive there are weightless everywhere and all of these different pieces but again you know i think to your point around not really having the ability for nuance here there was so much more that i wanted to say that i couldn't say because i felt like i had already done a lot in the twitter thread but you know also taking it a step further um we've been providing scholarships to people for years you can get your cda for free in dc it takes a you know i think there are programs as little as six months um there are some that take as i think the max maybe about 10 months um to get that credential which it doesn't actually require you to do full-time you can do it while you're currently working um so like working up to it um there are a lot of people who decide to go a step further an associate's degree and a lot of this is around also building a career ladder for individuals in this field ece advocates felt like if we were going to make a case to raise the pay of workers we need to professionalize um our sector right um i think it goes back to those conversations around pink collar jobs um and not having people think that it's just babysitting well if everybody has a credential we are sort of elevating the profession so you are recognizing um you know the skill and work and it is there are layers to this it's totally complicated and i'm not saying that it's clean and easy at all right um we have uh predominantly women um lots of immigrants predominantly women of color um and there's some people who've been doing this for 23 24 years and the idea to them and like i've been doing this for 24 years you're going to make me go like get a credential to sort of have that conversation and um you know i i was trying to like sort of dust off in the backs of my mind like trying to look back to 2015 when we were having these conversations when i was a council staffer um to sort of understand did we consider experience in lieu of credential right um if you have been in the field for 24 years do you need an associate's degree in early childhood education in order to show your readiness doesn't your 24 years count for something um but anyway in all of that i definitely um i think we should have a hearing on this i i think it deserves a fresh hearing of fresh conversation but i don't want people to think that this is in some way meant to penalize workers it's not it is um you know it is it was done in the best interest of kids and it was done in the best interest i think of the workforce in terms of where they signaled they wanted to go around professionalizing um all together right like a lot of people don't realize like in new york city the daycare workers are unionized over 6 000 workers unionized um and they have credential requirements that was the other thing that i kind of like people were like oh my gosh gc is the first in the country to always try to do and be extra and it's like actually we're not um maryland has credential requirements for daycare workers new york has credential requirements nebraska has credential requirements even utah has credential requirements for if you're going to be a director of a center right so like we have as a country made a determination that something beyond a high school diploma signals something in terms of your qualifications your understanding your expertise your understanding have we over emphasized credentials in certain sectors sure right like i don't need a bachelor's degree to do data entry we have companies who ask for that but like that is not something that is necessary um do i need to know something about early childhood development to be an effective early childhood educator i think so i think so and um unfortunately we're running super tight on time but speaking of penalizing workers can you very briefly talk about the application process that is open currently for early childhood workers yes josh so we decided and now again this is a process but we wanted to raise the wages of early childhood workers um last year the council did a modest increase in income taxes to both increase the number of housing vouchers that we have available and then also to give childcare workers a raise and so right now there's an application open um the first payment uh is up to fourteen thousand for eligible um teachers and assistant teachers at child care centers across the district of columbia um you just have to submit an application um which i took a look at in terms of the documentation that they're asking for it's very minimal uh you need you know uh id [Laughter] uh proof that you actually work where you say you work actually you don't even need that because that's in the computer system already but um essentially you know you provide this documentation and then within three to four weeks you get this payment um we did uh some things in this last budget cycle to make sure that by taking this income it doesn't disqualify you from other benefit programs that you might be a part of so if you're receiving medicaid or something to that effect this doesn't count against you um but then it's your money do what you want with it and the holidays are coming up so you know if i were a childcare worker you're telling me i can get an additional fourteen thousand dollars this calendar year um i would be running to the website but the deadline for this first round of payment is september 20th um go to the aussie webpage i think even if you just went to aussie.dc.gov it's the first thing on their website now about the applications and we just need to get the word out and become evangelists to this because we have millions of dollars available and we just need to get the people right and as as is always true there's no justice on twitter that the people dunking on us because the education requirement that gets a thousand likes but we're saying there's 14 000 available to these critical good essential people who are helping to form our children you put those out and there's crickets you know so we definitely all need to work together to get the word out so that the uh these employees can get what they deserve so anyway i'm sorry to cut us off for overtime but um thank you as always for being generous for coming back for another interview um and listeners uh remember to subscribe to our podcast on soundcloud or wherever you get your podcasts just search under hearing the counsel uh thank you listeners again for joining us tune in next time we're on dc radio 96.3 on your fm hd4 dial or at dcradio.gov i'm josh gibson this is not a council hearing this is hearing the council thank you so much councilmember i really appreciate your time and keep up keep up the good work on twitter thank you have a good one all right take care thanks bye-bye