FULL TRANSCRIPT:
Roy: Good afternoon. Roy Oppenheim here on behalf of Oppenheim Law and Weston Title. We’re here for our 20th week in a row at “Zoom at Noon.” I know that a number of you have been with us for many, many weeks. Some of you maybe have been here since day one. It’s just hard to believe, to get our head around that we continue to do this and that you continue to join us and that this week we’re talking about a topic that is very emotional, it’s very personal and it really goes to really how we are as a community and as a society. We’re talking about how do we restart our schools during this pandemic, during COVID-19.
I, first of all, wanna thank my staff, my wife, Ellen Pilelsky, my partner who’s here who always has been assisting us, Geoff Sherman, my partner and Mia Singh, associate and also Paola Vergara who’s been helping us put these presentations together. And this week I’m being assisted by my daughter, Wendy Oppenheim, who’s also helping us. So thank you all very much.
For those of you who know us, we have been around for 30 years. Our law firm and our title company serving the South Florida community during the last economic crisis, during the foreclosure crisis. We represent thousands of homeowners dealing with the banks, trying to get them out from under a very bad situation. This time around we’re all in this together and we’re not sure exactly how it’s going to end but hopefully it will end positively and in a good way. But today we are talking about how do we restart the schools?
Oops. Sorry about that. I just dropped my phone. I thought I turned it off. As we continue, I do wanna talk about…first of all, there’s a headline today that the teachers are joining the fight over the schools and the schools reopening and they and the NAACP have filed an action against the state to prevent the state from forcing certain school boards from reopening all on their own. In addition, there are other lawsuits by parents as well as students about being required to open the schools. Again, of course, this is a very emotional situation because the schools are just so important to all of us as a society.
And so today we’re very fortunate to have some guests with us who are gonna be able to speak very personally about the situation. We have with us James Conway and his son Troy. Jimmy, who’s a friend of the family’s, has a very successful company called Jimmy Jam Productions. They’re involved with planning and producing events. Their son Troy has been homeschooled for the past few years and they’re here to talk about what it’s like to both be taught and to learn from a home environment. And equally importantly, I have Karen Powers here who had been a principal and a teacher for 35 years. She’s retired now and she’ll be able to talk candidly with all of us about this crisis and all the different facets that we all have to look at whether we’re a parent, a teacher, a student, or a grandparent or someone who just is concerned about how we’re going to educate the future generations of America.
Last week we talked about air travel and how to make it safe during COVID-19. We had an American Airlines pilot on, Byron Jaffe, who’s also a good friend of the family, we’ve known for a long time. He’s also a Weston city commissioner and he explained to us if we’re gonna travel, how we can do it safely.
And this week we’re gonna have a panel discussion talking about how this academic year is going to look. But before that, we wanna quickly and briefly go through some economics and as well as some pandemic issues that give some context to these decisions because the decision of opening the schools is one that relates both to the economy as well as to our health. And we have to look at it holistically and cannot just put blinders on in making this decision. While some people think this is a political decision, it really is a science-based decision at the end of the day. How do we keep our kids safe, our teachers safe and our community safe as we try and push forward?
Okay, the weekly economic update, as we talked about. This is a very interesting slide. We’re talking about is the economy actually recovering? And if we look at these little dips right here…we can put the mouse here. We’ll see that for example, the construction industry has seen a slight rebound in a little dip right here at the end here on the mouse head. And we’re seeing that we’re really basically back to where we were almost four years ago after this cliff in February and March. In education and health, we’re seeing that those areas are continuing to improve also and that there has been a very tepid kind of rebound.
We go to the next slide, we’re gonna see that manufacturing also, while it fell below where we were four years ago, still isn’t where it was four years ago. And then if we look at business and professional services, I’m not sure we can see the whole slide but I think we can, we’re seeing that that has also fallen off and has only come back. Go to the next slide, we’re gonna see that retail is probably back maybe six, seven years ago and unfortunately, leisure and hospitality and the airlines, they’re probably back to the levels of 10 or 15 years ago. And while there has been somewhat of a rebound, it has not been really enough to get us back to where we once were. Next slide.
Weekly unemployment. We’re actually seeing that while unemployment is coming down in terms of a number of applications, there’s now going to be a spike because of the new crackdowns of closing restaurants and bars and clubs and having new curfews that many communities like Miami Beach and Broward County have imposed whether it’s 8:00 p.m. or 11:00 p.m. And so people who typically were working those night shifts now are going to go on unemployment again. And on top of that, we have the federal government that on July 31st…the $600 a week that was part of the package to try and keep people employed has to be renegotiated and it’s unclear if it’s gonna be extended or if it’s gonna be reduced and so obviously that’s a big issue. If that money does not come back into the economy, clearly, we’re going to see retail sales plummet and it’s typical. The consumer that has been the driving force to keep this economy buoyant until now. Next slide.
So if we look real quickly at Florida, California, and Georgia, there’s been a new rise in unemployment as we talked about, particularly because of the fact that a lot of restaurants and service industries are again having to scale back their services and therefore reduce the number of people that are unemployed. Next slide.
Let’s talk about the pandemic real quickly. And this is, of course, a troubling picture. You know, in Florida alone there are 360,000 cases, 80,000 in the past 7 days. That’s an average of 374 per 100,000 or in the alternative, 1,600 per 100,000 as it relates to the total number of 360,000. Florida is unfortunately now one of the epicenters. When we talk about Florida, we’re really talking about Dade and Broward County. Dade particularly, Broward, and then maybe a little bit of Palm Beach. But as we look at the next slide, I think, we’ve seen that there are certain parts of the state that really aren’t as bad. The dark colors, of course, worse. The areas in the Panhandle for the most part aren’t too bad. And of course, that’s why I think the governor doesn’t wanna have a one size fits all saying that you have to open the schools although some people are saying that’s what he’s saying and that’s what these lawsuits are about. But the real question is what each local community is gonna do. And at the end of the day, we have to look at what the CDC guidelines are, and more importantly or probably equally importantly, what the World Health Organization is saying. Next slide.
Again, there are new orders in Broward. We don’t have to go over these. We talked about them, about curfews in different parts of the county but that obviously has a constraint on trying to keep the numbers low and at the same time unfortunately has the impact of unfortunately increasing unemployment and reducing the impact of the economy.
So this is a cute little slide. “Some have a story, some have a legacy, we had a pandemic.” And these were seniors 2020. It’s certainly gonna be a memorable year for everyone. A very unfortunate memorable year. But there’s so much going on in terms of what different schools are doing right now and that’s what we’re gonna talk to our guests about in one second. I wanna go to the next slide.
And this is a really neat slide. And then if we can get Karen and Troy and Jimmy on, that would be great. In “The New York Times,” they surveyed a bunch of epidemiologists. When would you send your children back to school or camp or daycare? And they asked 304 epidemiologists. Almost just like the rest of the country, they are somewhat divided. 10% said now, 20% said during the summer, which would be now, 40% said in the fall, 7% in the winter, 9% said in the spring and 15% of them said in one year. So we add the 15%, the 9%, and the 7%, they’re basically saying…that’s almost a third of them are saying that they would wanna wait at least another season or even another half-year or as much as a year before having their children go back to school.
Is Karen there and Jimmy and Troy? Can we get them on and unmute them? There we are. Hey, Jimmy. Hi, Troy. Let’s see if we can get Karen. Karen, you there?
James: Come on, Karen.
Roy: Okay. Well, we’ve got Jimmy. We’ll work on getting [inaudible 00:09:32]. Okay. Okay. Hey, Jimmy, Troy, how are you? Good to see you.
James: Good to see you.
Roy: I wanna start off by thanking you both for joining us and Troy, I’ll start with you. What is it like to be homeschooled? And then what is it like to be homeschooled during COVID?
Troy: We homeschoolers pretty much doing the regular curriculum and following it. And it just feels the same. I’m doing the same stuff over the pandemic.
Roy: And Jimmy, tell me what it’s like to homeschool your son.
Karen: Yeah, I did that. Okay.
Roy: Okay, Karen, we got you. Karen, you’re on. Karen, we got you.
Karen: Okay, great.
Roy: Karen, we hear you.
Karen: Yeah, I’m here. I’m here.
Roy: Okay, just…okay, let’s just get your camera on, please. Thank you. There are you are, Karen. Great.
James: [inaudible 00:10:25] Hello.
Roy: Hey, there you are. Good to see you. Thank you very much. Good to see you. I was just asking Jimmy what it’s like to homeschool their son, Troy, who’s going into ninth grade, Karen.
James: So to answer your question, it’s been really smooth. It’s been a pleasure. It’s been an adjustment. Been doing about two-and-a-half months now and it’s just worked for Troy. It’s worked for his mom and I as parents. We’re technically the teachers and we do rely on some outside resources to keep the ball moving but fortunately for us, Troy is self-motivated. He likes to read and he likes to study and he likes to…well, he likes to play too. But all around, you know, normal kid. But it’s been smooth and it’s been fun.
Roy: So Karen, as we can see, Troy is just your “average, normal kid.” And I say that in quotes because the reality is not every kid has access to the internet, not every kid even has a computer, not every kid has the ability and discipline to keep his own schedule whether or not a parent is watching. So how do we, you know, try and get the schools back open and give kids that sense of schedule and normalcy that is almost required?
Karen: Yeah, I think it’s wonderful that Troy is able to do that but in reality, especially in Miami-Dade and Broward Counties, 80% to 90% of our students don’t have that luxury. I mean, 80% to 90% of our students live in homes where both parents have to work and a lot of our students are coming from one-parent households and a lot of our students aren’t as motivated as Troy is. And so what we have to look at is how do we get the schools ready to deal with the inner-city child and the exceptionally handicapped child? There is so much that needs to happen before our schools can open.
Roy: So in order to open the schools, the CDC and the WHO are saying that you need to have a transmission rate below 5% and that Dade County is around 28% and Broward County is around 19%. And so the real issue was, you know, what do you do? I know some private schools were trying to stay open or maybe be open and do some hybrid kinda stuff but I’m not sure if the public schools have the resources and the capability to do that, you know, this first semester. In fact, the Broward County Commission…chief of the school board just over the weekend on NPR was saying that we’re going to be begin the semester basically online and that maybe except for meals, which will be delivered or picked up by the parents, for the most part, they are not in the position to provide in-classroom instruction at the beginning of this next semester.
Karen: You know, let me just add. I have the luxury of going online and keeping abreast of what’s happening in Miami-Dade County and about a week ago our superintendent, Alberto Carvalho, met with some very important people from the district, Mayor Carlos Gimenez. I know that you’ve seen him on cable news along with Aileen Marty. She is a specialist from FIU. Vivek Murthy, you’ve seen him, he was a past surgeon general, and also Benny [inaudible 00:13:51] who is the CEO of Jackson. And what they decided, and if you could just bear with me, are the eight elements that they decided before they could even look at opening up any schools in Dade County and I’m sure it also applies to Broward. And you just mentioned one of them, the positivity rate. The United States says it has to be below 10%. WHO says it has to be below 5% but nonetheless, they have to sustain that for at least 14 days. So they just can’t open. So that’s one thing.
Another thing is they have to reduce the number of people who are in the hospital. As you keep on hearing how many hospitalizations we have day to day. The third thing is to lower the number of ICU beds that are being used. And it’s not the total ICU beds because they’re finding very creative ways to open up more ICU beds but it’s the total number of people who need ICU beds and also, they have to reduce the number of COVID positive. Now yesterday, I was just watching the news and it said that there were 9,000 COVID positive in Florida yesterday. There is a drop because it’s been 10%. But we obviously have to sustain that. We also have to increase the speed at which someone can get tested.
And number six, the turnaround time. It’s taking 10 to 14 days to get the results, which also plays into number 7, how do you do contact tracing if it’s taking so long? And the last thing I’d like to just talk about is that no child will be allowed to enter school without at least the flu vaccination and all of their other vaccinations. So those are the eight elements that Miami-Dade County is looking at. So when will we get there? I mean, we’re talking 5% to 10% positivity.
Roy: Right, so the reality is that the schools would not open during this first semester and maybe even next semester and that we would be looking at the homeschooling that Jimmy and Troy have been involved with. But I wanna go back to Troy. Troy, tell me what it’s like to learn just, you know, only through video because, you know, when you’re learning at home, you know, it’s more tactile, you know, you have your parents, you have…but if you’re just doing the Zoom stuff, tell me whether you like that or not and what the downside to that is.
Troy: Well, I actually really enjoy the Zoom stuff because our teachers actually allow us to learn some way tactile-y. We’ll do some of the same stuff that we do in class but we’ll do it really hands-on even through Zoom. It’s just the same thing just through a video.
Roy: Interesting. And then Jimmy…I mean, the real question is if you have…even if you have two parents and you’re both working or one parent that’s working, you know, how are you supposed to work the miracle of both maintaining your job, getting paid and then taking care of your kid? And that’s assuming you work from home. What happens if you don’t work from home? I mean, Karen, you were talking about these folks who are working in the hospitals in New York and they had to drop their kids off at like containment centers. I mean, they call them schools but they really were just drop-offs so the kids could be safe while the parents went and saved the world.
James: So we’re actually at my office right now and Troy will do a variety of things. He’ll sometimes go to his mom’s office. He’ll go with me to my office. And then there’s times where he’ll go into a classroom setting pre-pandemic and he would go for one day and get a curriculum from a group where he has a hands-on science class, hands-on math class, hands-on English class, and maybe social studies, history or other like this so…but we just make it work. It’s been a challenge in some regards but the overall experience has definitely been positive for us as homeschool parents because the thing is we did the math on this before [inaudible 00:17:52] homeschool and when he was in elementary school, he was in school for six hours. And by the time you minus out the time for recess and changing from one class to the other, lunchtime, and let’s say…and phys ed, he was getting about 4-and-a-half hours of actual instruction with 20 other students. So his mom and I, as the teachers really…in fact, I just graded two tests this morning before this Zoom call that Troy did on his own and we went over with what was going well, what he needed to correct. So it’s been [inaudible 00:18:30] for sure but we just make it work.
Roy: No, I know. And you’re very blessed and you’re very fortunate. There are some questions here that go to some very interesting issues. I’m gonna ask Karen to give it a shot. What about services like free lunches? Isn’t there more of a societal issue as some of these kids, you know, will go hungry or won’t be properly even attended to if the parents have to leave the house?
Karen: Right. I’ll only speak about Dade County. While school was on and it will begin again obviously August 24th, there were two days a week that parents could drive to selected schools from 4:00 to 7:00 p.m and they were given boxed lunches. Enough for every child for breakfast and lunch for three and four days at a time. So that’s been the easy part, the lunches and the breakfasts, to give to the students who need it.
Roy: You know, the other thing about school is that people don’t go to school to be in math or to, you know, learn science and obviously that’s why we send them but they go for the music, they go for the art, they go for the socialization, they go for lunch, they go for gym, they go for the football team, you know. The question is how do we provide those experiences in this crazy environment? You know, I’ll let Troy try and respond to that because he already has been homeschooled and wasn’t getting the full panoply of those things, yet seems to be enriched. And then Karen, if you could respond, you know, on a more institutional level. Troy?
Troy: I do have to say with homeschooling, one of the most common myths is that you don’t get to do most of the things that you do in public school. You know, we have football teams. You know, we have all the sports teams and then some. We have theater groups. You know, we have prom, homecoming. We have everything that a [inaudible 00:20:14] school would have. But we’re finding unique ways to provide those experiences still while maintaining social distance and wearing a mask and hand sanitizing and, you know, washing your hands.
Roy: Karen?
Karen: Yeah, well, of course, homeschooling is very different than students having to learn, you know, via the computer with their teachers. And let’s keep in mind we’re talking about maybe at most one more year before we can go back to school. So I know in Dade County once they resume the math…I mean, the music and the art teachers are going to continue with their online teaching also. And hopefully, I mean, you know, like I said, I think…and if you’ve been watching TV, the vaccine is the big thing. And Oxford University is making it. They’ve been very successful. And probably by March…I know the United States has ordered 300 million dosages. So we’re not talking about, you know, robbing children from music, art and PE for more than a year but hopefully, once those vaccines…we get them, we’ll be in place and maybe we’ll be able to start school again in February or March but I don’t see it happening before then.
Roy: Right. And so there’s a question here.
Karen: Brick and mortar schools. You know, I mean five days a week. Yeah.
Roy: And there’s a question here. You know, in South Korea, the kids over 10 were really bringing the disease back to the home, to the parents and the grandparents, and so the real question really isn’t just about protecting the teachers and the kids. It’s about schools becoming super spreaders. And so if our objective is to keep the numbers down, opening the schools is exactly what South Korea did and what Israel did and it backfired on both of them because while they had thought that they had tamped down the virus, they really just created a super spreader by reopening the schools too early. And so I think…
Karen: Yes, and they recently did a study of two schools in Northern Germany and their positivity rate was less than 3%. They both opened up and the same exact thing happened. So I mean, I think it’s very difficult for us to even say what’s gonna happen until we have a whole community that’s vaccinated.
Roy: And we saw that in Palm Beach that a third of all kids being tested for whatever reason were testing positive. Many of them asymptomatic yet innocently spreading the disease to older people who were going to be very severely affected.
Karen: You know what? You brought up a good point. What they found is that children less than 10 don’t get it as much and don’t spread it as much. So I think when we open, they might do a staggered elementary school opening. Yeah, that’s something that they’re talking about.
Roy: So I think we have to be creative. We have to be flexible. We can’t think of school in the context of what we have previously thought and we have to expand the notion of school and it’s an interesting issue. The next question I have from someone is why are we not using thermometers when the schools reopen? Why wouldn’t we be doing the thermometer check, a temperature check on each kid, or is that impossible?
Karen: That’s absolutely gonna happen. I mean, they’re already talking about that. As a matter of fact, teachers get this leave money every year. They get X amount of dollars to purchase supplies and equipment and they’re only talking that not only will they have to check the children as they stagger in but also throughout the day the teachers can check them.
Roy: So Jim, I wanna go back to…Karen, I wanna go back to Jimmy because even though he is unique and his son is unique in that they’ve been homeschooling, they really are ahead of the curve because everyone else, whether you like it or not, whether you have the assistance of the schools, whether you’re in the virtual school or whether you’re relying on your local public school, the teachers and the people who are gonna have to oversee their kids are gonna be the parents here unless some people do what other people do and they’re hiring third parties to create these little pods to actually help and assist their kids during this process. So Jimmy, what’s your advice to other parents, especially single parents? You know, it’s really gonna be tough.
James: It’s gotta be tough. You know, my heart is breaking for the single parent that’s got three kids, different schools. They have to work who don’t have the luxury of working from home. They have to go to a job. Whatever it may be. Everybody has a different set of circumstances and I am fortunate and blessed to be in the situation that I’m in. Actually, my business is pretty much shut down so, you know, we’ve been…this is the most that I’ve dressed up in the last four-and-a-half months. So it’s just open your eyes, look out for resources. There’s all kinds of forums online and reach out to different groups and see what works in your area. There’s gotta be things coming together as we speak. Maybe it’s a Facebook group that’s a resource for parents.
Roy: You know, and other people have to almost redefine what their family is. It could be a neighbor down the street that has a kid and you switch off who’s gonna watch when and then you get, you know, employers to work around that schedule and everyone just has to, you know, kinda just kick in a little bit. So if you’ve got three or four families and everyone’s creating a schedule and say, “Okay, this is my time.” You work around that schedule. And I think, you know, it could be a grandparent, it could be a friend, it could be literally a neighbor. And I think people are gonna have to be very creative in terms of saying, “Okay. Who’s gonna do what?” And we have to think of ourselves as a village and we all have to work together on this.
As Karen says, it’s probably only gonna be another six to nine months until we are able to get back to some sense of normalcy. We’re seeing other parts of the world are actually being…are coming out of this. And so I think unfortunately some people think that we have to clamp down a little bit more. We have to stop the boat parties, we have to stop the block parties. You know, and I think the messaging hasn’t been consistent in terms of how we’re gonna get out of this. If we can clamp down and take just one step back, we could possibly reopen the schools or reopen part of the schools. But we’ll never get there if people aren’t receiving the full message. If we’re being told that these eight criteria have to be met, how can people be going out on boat parties? How can people be having these massive house parties? How can these people be having massive block parties? The answer is we will never get there until the vaccine comes.
And so it’s really a collective decision of where we wanna go and how irresponsible or how collective we wanna be. If you wanna be irresponsible, be my guest but you’re really hurting your neighbor, hurting your parents, hurting your grandparents. And so those folks who’ve been following us at “Zoom at Noon,” we have taken you from day one when all of this was just hypothetical when none of this was fact or science-based, but we were looking at what was going on in China, what was going on in Italy, what was going on in Germany. And so we’re trying to get people around the curve to figure this out. Are there any other questions that we have? Otherwise, I wanna see if Karen wants to add something here.
Karen: Well, I do wanna add…and James just hit on it. I think that if you’re looking for activities, you could always go online to either Dade County website, public schools, or Broward County. They have so much information, so many materials. I’m the grandmother of two. I have one that’s 4 months and one that’s 2-and-a-half and there are these…even though they’re not even in school yet, there’s so many activities that parents, grandparents, or whomever can be doing at home so that they don’t fall behind. That’s the most important thing. Our kids are gonna lose almost a year of learning because we stopped teaching them in March. And it’s so important. It’s so important that when your kids wake up, you give them a routine. You know, you get up, you have breakfast, you sit at a…you get dressed so you’re ready for the day and you…I don’t know if you do that, James. You sit and you have a schedule. You know how many minutes you have to do one subject, how many minutes you have to do the other subject. We have to keep the kids with their routine so that they don’t fall behind.
Roy: The parents themselves have to have a routine, which is also somewhat difficult. So a lot of it has to do with modeling, you know. If the parents can create a routine for themselves, then they can model a routine for their kids. And some of the parents have had difficulty, you know, with either being unemployed or being underemployed, you know, developing the proper rhythms of what it’s like to basically be much more at home. We have a question for Troy. What does Troy feel is challenging about virtual learning?
Troy: Something I feel challenging because I learn orally, which is where you use mnemonic devices and you make rhymes and that’s how you learn, and I also learn very, you know, tactile-y. So it’s kinda hard for me to grasp some of the subjects that I’m learning online because I’ll be taking a science class, I’m not able to fully understand something.
Roy: Yeah. And we were talking the other day that sometimes one of the problems is that the online doesn’t really allow the teacher to go back and help a student who is falling behind or in the alternative, a student who is bored to tears and is beyond the curriculum. Just respond to that for one second, James. I meant Troy. I’m sorry.
Troy: I do have to say something that I really do enjoy about some online curriculums is that you’re able to go at your own pace and go at your own speed. So you’re able to go ahead or if you don’t understand, you’re able to stop and fully learn it because I like to think of some things as a foundation like math because if you don’t understand some basic subject, some basic things about it, then you’re gonna be messed up when you go ahead and do advanced math.
Roy: Karen, I see you’re nodding and shaking. I wanna hear what you have to say about that.
Karen: No, I mean, I agree. I mean, homeschooling is wonderful but some of the things that he’s bringing up are very important. You know, it’s not like a face to face with your teacher but I have heard that some school districts are thinking about the teachers going into the schools actually and doing their distance learning at the school. That way they have their class in front of them, they can see what the kids are doing, they can give one set of students some activities and the ones who are not getting it, they can work with them in a very, very small group. So I think that that’s a great idea. You know, and that way…
Roy: And you know what’s interesting? I thought that was a great idea too but there was so much pushback in the spring from teachers because they felt that they had to watch their own kids. And so, you know, I think that was a real sensitive tightrope there between, you know, the teachers and their kids, personal kids, and of course, their classroom kids. But why should they be different than everyone else in terms of having to figure out what to do with their own personal kids? You know, they’re not exempt. They’re not exempt from the Amazon driver or the Uber driver who has to deal with that same issue.
Karen: Right, but maybe they could do what James is doing and bring them into their schools and be there, you know, to help them while they’re, you know, teaching their own kids. I don’t know. I don’t know. I think we’re in uncharted waters. I mean, this is so new for us. But we’re gonna get through it and we just have to be positive because…and again, look what happened in Florida yesterday. We went down to 9,000 cases. So maybe we’re in a downward trend. And I just try to be optimistic.
Roy: James, Jimmy, last words?
James: Just you already…to reiterate what you already said is to be creative, be flexible, and one thing I would add is maybe add incentives for those students that maybe aren’t self-motivated. Give them…and it doesn’t have to be buying them a gift or buying them something. Just get creative and find incentives and set goals so that the kids…as parents, you’re the teacher now. Don’t just rely on the traditional schoolteacher. Step up your game, get creative, add incentives and the kids will step up.
Roy: Right. I mean, I think we have to look at our relationship with the school system somewhat differently. As parents, I think some parents said, “It’s the school’s responsibility. It’s not my responsibility.” And I think we have to reorient that and say, “No. The education of your kids is your responsibility and it’s gonna be a cooperative relationship with the school system.” And I think once we reexamine that dynamic, you know, our mindset will change and I think things will improve.
On that note, I wanna thank Troy, I wanna thank Jimmy, I wanna thank Karen, I wanna thank the folks that are out there. And more importantly, I wanna…equally importantly, I wanna thank my law firm and Weston Title for supporting me as I go through this every week. We’re here for all of you both on the title side and anyone buying or closing or…great time to refinance by the way. Interest rates are super low. You know, this is a really great time for you to save some money. And on the law firm side, if you’re having problems with your landlord, your tenants, your mortgages, whatever crises you may have, the folks at Oppenheim Law are here for you. We’ve been here for you for 30 years and we’ll continue to be here for you. So again, thank you, Troy. You were great. Jimmy, as always, great. Karen, fantastic. Thank you so very much. We’ll all see you next week, “Zoom at Noon,” Roy Oppenheim. Have a safe and great week. Thank you very much. Bye.
Karen: Thank you.