S2 E11 - Can SPS go bankrupt? with Stephen Nielsen

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[00:00:00] Christie Robertson: Welcome back to Seattle Hall Pass. A podcast with news and conversations about Seattle Public Schools. I'm Christie Robertson. 

[00:00:14] Jane Tunks Demel: I'm Jane Tunks Demel.

[00:00:16] Jasmine Pulido: I'm Jasmine Pulido.

[00:00:17] Christie Robertson: This is the next in our series we're calling Option C, after the district initially released two school closure options to close up to 21 Seattle elementary and K-8 schools. Since then the district has walked back their plan, and they are currently considering closing four schools. Among other things, this means that essentially their entire approximately $100 million budget deficit will need to come from other school cuts. 

What happens if they can't find the cuts? What happens if they can't balance their budget? The mechanisms the state has for dealing with this situation are generally referred to as "binding conditions" or "state oversight." That is what we are here to talk about today, and we've brought in an expert to help us understand this.

[00:01:05] Jane Tunks Demel: For this episode, we welcome Stephen Nielsen, who was a Deputy Superintendent of Seattle Public Schools from 2016 to 2019. Before that he was a Chief Financial Officer of Seattle Public Schools. From 2001 to 2006. He also served as the Chief Financial Officer of the Puget Sound Educational Service District, which you'll often hear referred to as ESD. From 2006 to 2016. 

So he has a wealth of financial experience in K through 12 education, and we're looking forward to him helping us understand what binding conditions is, how it works, and any unintended consequences that might come from it. 

[00:01:46] Christie Robertson: A couple of notes. First, our guests' opinions are their own. Second, we edited this interview for length and clarity. And third, this interview was recorded on a phone call, so apologies for the sound quality. And on to our interview. 

[00:02:01] Jane Tunks Demel: So welcome, Stephen. 

[00:02:03] Stephen Nielsen: Thank you for pursuing the topic. It's both technically simple and interesting and politically challenging.

What Are Binding Conditions?

[00:02:12] Jane Tunks Demel: Stephen, can you explain what binding conditions actually means? 

[00:02:16] Stephen Nielsen: What are binding conditions? It's very simple. A school district has to pass a budget that has a surplus of at least a dollar between their expenditures and their revenue. 

When a district cannot do that, then the school district has to declare to OSPI that we cannot balance our budget. Then OSPI responds and says, “All right, well, you can borrow from us the apportionment that will come in the next fiscal year.” So basically you're asking for a loan from the state on future apportionment. And over a period of two years, you have to pay that back. And if you do all of those things, then you're out of binding conditions and you're back on your own. 

If you cannot pay back the apportionment from the future, plus cover your own expenditures, then the state puts you into fiscal oversight, which can include what is now happening in Marysville, where they have appointed a fiscal overseer, Art Jarvis, as you know, to come in and say, "All right, we're going to take over and do whatever we need."

By the way, there are two very good PowerPoint presentations on binding conditions within the OSPI website. Those are great and they're very simple and they're easy to understand. 

[00:03:43] Jane Tunks Demel: This is Jane. We'll link to the slide shows on binding conditions in our show notes. 

[00:03:48] Christie Robertson: You had some experience dealing with binding conditions, is that right? 

[00:03:52] Stephen Nielsen: Binding conditions involve the Superintendent of Public Instruction's office and their particular local ESD.

[00:04:01] Christie Robertson: And let's explain what an ESD is. We're all familiar with our school district, Seattle Public Schools. The state-level agency is OSPI, the office of the superintendent of public instruction. Between them sits the ESDs, which represent clusters of schools. Ours is the Puget Sound ESD. Does that make sense? 

[00:04:25] Jane Tunks Demel: Totally. Let's go back to Stephen.

[00:04:29] Stephen Nielsen: While I was the fiscal officer for Puget Sound ESD, the Shoreline School District went into binding conditions. And I was the appointed intermediary and worked with the school board and the school administration to help them get out of binding conditions.

[00:04:40] Christie Robertson: were they in financial administration for a year or how long did that last? 

[00:04:42] Stephen Nielsen: Two years.|

[00:04:45] Jane Tunks Demel: Seattle Public Schools announced that they are going to do closures. But there's other options, you know, one of them could be binding conditions, or financial oversight. Just to help people understand because it sounds ominous. What's more ominous: closing schools or binding conditions? 

[00:04:50] Stephen Nielsen: So binding conditions is far more onerous than closing schools because once you have a physical overseer, that overseer has one objective — and one only. You have to obey the state laws around funding. You do everything to ensure that students are getting the services they need guaranteed by the constitution. 

And everything else that is in excess to that is subject to being cut: schools, programs, any transportation that costs above and beyond the state allotment. If we're busing kids between alternative schools, and if I'm the administrator, I'm going to say that's a nice thing, but it's not basic ed, it's not required. We can't afford it anymore. It's gone. If we close schools because we need to save money. Everybody might hate it, but my job is to balance the budget. It doesn't matter my emotions, or how much I love students. It's gone. 

And that's the stance that Art is going to have to take in Marysville. And if Seattle went into binding conditions, they would suffer those same consequences. It is not a pretty picture. And it's far more serious than a lot of people think. 

I heard some people in school board meetings a few years ago say, "We're too big to fail, the legislature will bail us out." That would be wonderful if it's true, but there's no guarantee of that happening. 

[00:06:48] Christie Robertson: It sounds like, based on what you're saying, that it wouldn't prevent schools from closing to go into binding conditions, that they would close with less consideration for the impact on students potentially.

[00:06:58] Stephen Nielsen: Yes, they would. And this is the crass part about it. It's not because people don't care. It's because you have to live within your budget. That's state law. And if you don't, the state will take over. And up until the point of, and they've never done this with a large district, but in theory, they could dissolve the district. Or they could turn it into three little districts combined with your neighbors or whatever. There's a lot of options there. They're all ugly. They are all politically laden with all sorts of landmines. It's not a trivial conversation, and it's something to be taken very seriously. 

School Board in Binding Conditions

[00:07:36] Jane Tunks Demel: What happens to the school board during that time? 

[00:07:38] Stephen Nielsen: Well, let's use Marysville for an example, because it will be a real-life operation to be able to watch. They were not able to bail themselves out in that two-year time. So OSPI took the next step and appointed the oversight, including assigning that to Art. 

The rules around how much power that position has are unclear. 

That's a gray area in the way binding conditions work. The administrator, in this case, Art, will have to make hard decisions. The board may get into some kind of a conflict. And the way the law is written I'd vote for Art having the authority over a local school board.

[00:08:31] Jane Tunks Demel: But they [the school board] do stay in place? Because we have been told that the school boards get disbanded. 

[00:08:37] Stephen Nielsen: They could. The state can disband them. Or the board could be reconstituted. The state ultimately could disband the whole district and consolidate it with others. 

And I suspect, because Marysville is a pretty good-sized district, and it's an exhibit A for challenges that other districts have, I'm pretty confident that OSPI isn't just thinking of Marysville. They're thinking, what about all these other districts that are in trouble? So we're going to lay out a path that could be followed with other districts up and including Seattle if necessary. And that's where it gets very political and very “interesting” in a bad sense of the word. 

[00:09:19] Jane Tunks Demel: Sounds like it's kind of not known what happens next. 

[00:09:22] Stephen Nielsen: No, it's not. It isn't something that has happened very often in the history of our state. In the last 40 years, there have only been a couple of districts that were consolidated. And in those cases, their boards were dissolved, the district was dissolved, and the territory was placed into the dominance of another district.

[00:09:44] Jane Tunks Demel: Interesting. Oh, I wanted to ask about staffing and collective bargaining agreements under binding conditions. What happens there? 

[00:09:54] Stephen Nielsen: Any collective bargaining agreement that has been ratified by the union and the administration, cannot be altered without going back to the table and both parties agreeing to reopen and to renegotiate. So they would stand. 

There are some contracts that aren't of that scale, that the district might be able to readdress and stop. But in terms of the big contracts with labor, they stand.

Binding Conditions in Shoreline

[00:10:26] Jane Tunks Demel: So tell us more about what happened in Shoreline. How did they get into budget trouble?

[00:10:30] Stephen Nielsen: Their superintendent had engaged in a couple of contracts that I don't think he understood when he got involved with them, and they overwhelmed their general fund. And they figured out that they didn't have enough money to do everything, including meet these particular contracts. They were energy-saving contracts. In those days, people were marketing tools that would come in and say for X dollars, we'll come into your school district and we will reconfigure your heating and air conditioning and we'll do a whole lot of stuff to save you money over the long haul. The costs of the contract was always higher than what they initially said. And so those contracts, district-wide, cost enough money to put them into the red. 

And it was an embarrassment to the superintendent because he didn't know really what he had done. And the school board was both contrite and embarrassed to have that happen. So their motivation to do whatever they needed to do to get out of binding conditions as quickly as possible was both laudable and practical. And they were willing to do what was necessary to do that. 

The other easier part then than now is school districts had more money than districts do now. So they had more resources to help them get through the problem and get back onto a balanced budget.

Possibilities for Seattle

[00:12:03] Jane Tunks Demel: And Stephen, as you may know, Seattle Public Schools, they spent their rainy-day fund for last year's budget — that was $42 2 million to help them bridge the gap. And then for the current school year we're in now, they used a $27.5 million interfund loan. 

One way of looking at it would be that they haven't really been able to balance their budget with their revenue the last couple of years. And so now that they're all out of options, it's really starting to look dire for the next year. 

[00:12:39] Stephen Nielsen: Yes, I agree. 

[00:12:41] Jane Tunks Demel: What kind of paths are there? 

[00:12:44] Stephen Nielsen: Well, you mentioned in your podcast [The Story of How We Got Here episode], who's the villain in all of this? And it made me smile. My answer to who's the villain. There are no villains. I would rephrase that as "Where are the conflicts and where are the challenges around different objectives within a common goal?"

I would like to think that the common goal of almost all people is to provide a paramount duty education for the students of all school districts in the state. And in our case, Seattle. So with that positive thought, the competing interests are what caused — over a long period of time — the challenges. And I think the ability to kick the can down the road has been a real issue with public school funding for a very long time. 

When I was appointed CFO in 2002, we had identified that we were going to have a problem balancing and may go into binding conditions. So in the short amount of time that I had before we closed the books, I took a meat-ax to anything that looked like dollars that could be saved. And it was a terrible, awful exercise. I hated it and so did everybody else. 

And, people would say, "Well, you can't do that." And I'd say, "Do you want binding conditions? Do you want somebody from OSPI or the district ESD coming in and telling us, ‘This is what you're going to do, whether you like it or not? Or are we going to make these cuts on our own?’ "

And we did that, and we managed to balance the budget. And I had $1 in the black at the end of that fiscal year, which the auditors were raising their eyebrows about, I might add. But anyway, we passed the audit, and we were okay. It was awful. But it was way easier because I only had to find $23 million. I didn't have to find $100 [million].

And back to the culminating problem that we have now. Those same awful cuts were all based on competing interests. Not viewing anybody as a villain, but you have parents who want a program that helps their student for very valid reasons. But it might not be basic ed in the way the state sees it. And therefore, that good program that's been working in Seattle for a long time for a particular group of students might have to be cut. From a technical standpoint, it has no standing. From an emotional, from a learning, from “what's good for kids,” as you said in your podcast, it has huge learning. But those things aren't going to be the drivers of what the district is forced into doing. And it's going to be very uncomfortable because Seattle's never had to go that deep and make those really, really hard decisions.

The other thing I would say is that Seattle has programs that other districts don't have. And it's because Seattle has had a big levy for a very long time. But if you drive around the state and you talk to other school districts, and you say, “Tell me about your XYZ program that we have in Seattle,” you'll get a blank stare from a lot of them. “Well, we don't do that. We don't have the money to do that.”

And in Seattle, we think that's normal and we deserve it because it's good for kids. And it may be. And it's doing good things. But you're not going to get a lot of acceptance by other school districts saying "bail Seattle out" when we've never been able to afford that to begin with.

You also won't get it from legislators from rural parts of the state who just think, “Are you kidding me? Seattle's got a huge levy with very little effect on the property tax per thousand compared to my district where it costs me $3 per thousand to raise a few thousand dollars per kid.”

So the equity issue isn't in favor of Seattle when you look at it across the state. That's a long answer to say there are no easy solutions. Tough decisions are going to have to be made. 

[00:17:05] Christie Robertson: What's an example of a program you're talking about that Seattle has that other districts around the state might not have?

[00:17:12] Stephen Nielsen: Well, you'll hate me for this, because I like the program, so I hate myself for it too. The Deaf and Hard of Hearing Program as a standalone. It's a wonderful program. It's valuable. It helps kids. All of the things that you highlighted in that podcast, and it's all true. That's not a requirement. And I'm not saying it should be cut. I'm just saying that that's a good example of something that Seattle has done — and it's very valuable for kids — but there's nothing in the law that says you have to have a stand alone program like that.

[00:17:46] Christie Robertson: Wow, I mean, it seems like if you just go based on what the legislature calls basic education, a lot of vulnerable kids are going to get left without programs that are really making a huge difference for them. 

[00:17:59] Stephen Nielsen: Yes, that is absolutely true. 

[00:18:03] Jane Tunks Demel: What is considered basic education? 

Underfunding 1: Special Education, MSOC, and Transportation

[00:18:06] Stephen Nielsen: Well, the easiest way to look at that is to look at... you know what state apportionment is? And the formulas that are dispensed, different word? 

Yeah, if you go into the OSPI website, you'll find apportionment reports of every single school district. And the apportionment is divided into two categories: basic ed and non-basic ed. The staff ratios in the prototypical model are basic education. Special education is basic education. Transportation is basic education, even though SpEd and transportation are both grossly underfunded. MSOCs are basic education, even though those are also grossly underfunded. 

[00:18:50] Jasmine Pulido: Jasmine here, just coming in to say that MSOCs is M S O C, which means materials, supplies, and operating costs. Okay. Back to Stephen.

[00:19:02] Stephen Nielsen: And then a lot of other grants and things that districts get are not basic ed. For example, Title 1 from the feds, that's not basic ed, even though it usually goes in and is applied in areas that are basic ed needs for students. So supplants it. But the basic ed allocation is not everything that a district gets from either the federal or the state level.

[00:19:30] Jane Tunks Demel: And so what path do you see for Seattle that now we have a $ 94 dollar budget gap for next year? What might happen? 

[00:19:45] Stephen Nielsen: Well, I would like to think that the legislature will recognize that they need to do more for K-12 funding, because Seattle isn't the only district with financial problems. We've got more now than we've ever had in my lifetime of career. And the biggest problem that both the federal government and the state government has is special ed funding. So if the state paid fully, and the feds fully paid for special ed, that would solve the problem all by itself. Whether they could do that with one fell swoop, I'm not sure, but that would help. That would also help them in a future lawsuit. 

The school administrators and the school business officials are working on their legislative package for the legislature next year, and the three big things that they want the legislature to address in funding would be an increase in special ed funding, an increase in MSOCs, and an increase in transportation, all addressing those overspends at the local level. If the legislature did that at scale, that would solve almost all school districts, financial difficulties, and it would hopefully keep them from coming back. 

Underfunding 2: Staff 

[00:21:14] Stephen Nielsen: The other elephant in the room is how much does it cost to pay your staff. And you will hear political statements coming from certain candidates saying, "Well, the way you solve the problem is you just tell your staff that we're going to have a pay cut." And it makes a great political sound bite for someone who doesn't have a student in school or someone who wants to get elected by saying that there's all this waste in a school district. Until you try to figure out how you're going to do that. You have a staff in two years all quit and leave to go somewhere else where they can make more money. 

And that's where 85 percent of the dollars go. So the elephant in the room is the cost of staff, and that, in my opinion — beyond the three issues that I just talked about, SpEd, MSOC, and transportation — that's where the real money is. 

If you go back in and look at the state apportionment for Seattle, the state gives them about $73,000 plus an 18 percent regional bonus for a Seattle teacher. So, if that same Seattle teacher is actually paid $110,000 a year (which sounds like a lot of money until you try to buy a house and then have a nice day), those individual teachers are going to say, "I need those dollars and I can't afford to take a pay cut." The local levy is supplanting the state obligation to provide what I think is a fair and living wage in the city of Seattle. And that's also true for Bellevue and other expensive places to live. 

So the real elephant in the room is the state underfunding the cost of staff. The second real elephant in the room is the state underfunding SpEd, MSOC, and transportation. 

[00:23:16] Christie Robertson: Interesting. I heard talk of those first three, as a legislative asks, but not about increasing the allocation for staff.

[00:23:27] Stephen Nielsen: And that's a very expensive bill for the state. The state did a study. I actually chaired a legislative task force for the state about 10 years ago, on what it would cost to bring teachers up to a wage that would be equitable compared to other jobs of similar skills. We spent almost a year very carefully researching and determining like skills.  

And some were easier than others, like a science teacher compared with scientists was pretty simple. A first grade teacher compared to something in the private sector was more difficult, but we did the best that we could. And the difference between what the state was allocating and what the cost was at that time 10 years ago was about $ 1.5 billion per year of state underfunding of those staff costs. And it went nowhere. I can't even find the report on their website. It got buried in OFM's archive somewhere. 

And as long as the state underfunds the cost of staff, and underfunds special ed, the second largest problem, districts will not be able to do everything that we've always done, especially in Seattle with a large levy.  

Federal Mandate but District Responsibility 

[00:24:46] Jane Tunks Demel: And so when they're talking about “improve special education funding,” you hear them saying, “Let's lift the special education cap.” But if you lift the special education cap in Seattle, that would only be like $5 to $7M dollars. It doesn't really get us there. Are they suggesting we increase the multiplier? I just don't feel that hopeful that is going to get us where we need to be. 

[00:25:11] Stephen Nielsen: It's better than nothing, but it will not. You are correct. The easiest and simplest way is to look at the cost of what IEPs drive. The feds created that law an obligation to provide services under the defined individual IEP and then they don't support it. 

And I spent a lot of time in Congress talking to people about it. And they'd all smile and say, “Oh yeah, we'll do that.” And they never have. But starting with the feds, they ought to either change the law and be realistic, which they won't do because it would make them look like evil villains, or they ought to pay for what they require at the local level. And then the state ought to act accordingly. That would solve the problem because the other calculations around the formula will help, but they don't pay the full cost. 

[00:26:00] Christie Robertson: It's kind of wild, because the law comes from the federal level. But if an IEP is not fulfilled, the lawsuit comes at the school district level.

[00:26:11] Stephen Nielsen: Yes. 

[00:26:13] Christie Robertson: So the obligation really ends up falling to the district. 

[00:26:17] Stephen Nielsen: Correct, and that's back to who are the villains. It's that competing interest issue. No one wants to discriminate against those students and their families. They want to provide as best they can. And different districts approach it differently. Some do it better than others. Some are more efficient than others. And, the technology of understanding student needs and how to address them is more sophisticated and therefore more expensive than it used to be. The costs are increasing faster than what the feds and the state is providing. But there's not a lot of waste laying on the table.

Enrichment Levy

[00:26:58] Christie Robertson: We switched topics next to the enrichment or operations levy. 

[00:27:03] Jane Tunks Demel: I was just going to ask about the levy cap for the EP&O levy or so-called enrichment levy. Because from what I've heard, those levies were frothy enough that they were able to fill in the gaps. But subsequent to McCleary they have a cap on them. 

[00:27:19] Stephen Nielsen: And the short history of levies. And I'm a guilty party here of going to Olympia and saying, "Hey, legislature, you're not giving us the money we need for things like special ed. So would you please increase our levy cap?" And I did that more than once. And they did. 

And the good news is, that gave Seattle more money. The bad news is, it's a direct conflict with the constitution. And it's not fair to other districts who can't raise money through a levy like Seattle can. So the legislature could do that, and it only makes their position on a third lawsuit against the Paramount Duty Clause more tenuous. So it'll be interesting to see if they're willing to entertain that idea or not.

History/Context 1: Paramount Duty Clause

[00:28:04] Christie Robertson: And we asked Stephen to tell us more about the history of the paramount duty clause in the constitution of Washington State. 

[00:28:12] Stephen Nielsen: I think it's very important, and hopefully, your listeners would find this interesting and informative as we're looking at the current situation with not just Seattle but other districts as well.

Let's start with the state constitution, which, as you know, says that it's the paramount duty of the state to provide an ample and equitable education for all students, giving students here a birthright to a public school education. 

And it's, I think, laudable that we are the only state in the union that has that paramount duty clause. It's a very important civil rights issue with its origination following the United States Civil War. When the war ended, and southern states wanted or needed to rejoin the Union, someone in D.C. or a group of people, I wish... I looked it up, and I can't find the authors. Because they deserve a lot of credit. They wrote state constitutions that could be adopted by a local state. And when that was adopted by the local state legislature, then the U.S. Congress would approve the state coming back into the union. 

Included in the original language was the paramount duty clause providing for a free and equitable education for all students, and they were very clear to say all, which included females and students of color. And that was because they recognized how important education was and how former slaves and other people would be able to receive a free education. And that would change the economy and it would be a fair and equitable way to rebuild the country as a whole. So a number of states adopted those phrases, that language. And then when Jim Crow started, they started pulling things out of their constitution, including the Paramount Duty Clause. 

When Washington became a state, the founders of Washington took a look at that same origination language that was provided for those southern states and said, “Okay, we like that, we take it.” And it was adopted here, and it has remained ever since. So we, in theory, do not have Jim Crow laws on our books, starting with our state constitution that discriminates against a free and equitable education for all students, which I think is a really big deal.

History/Context 2: Testing the Paramount Duty Clause & Defining Basic Education

[00:30:56] Stephen Nielsen: Now, the second part of the background is, while that's on the books, we have discrimination, and we've never really lived up to — we being the state of Washington — the Paramount Duty Clause. So we have our own, non-official Jim Crow behaviors And to this day, we are not providing an ample and equitable education for all students. 

It has been tested in court a couple of times, with subsequent changes made to our laws. The important part about that, though, is that the courts in both cases of the Doran decision and the McCleary decision pushed back to the legislature the definition of what basic education is and, therefore, what the legislature needed to do to fund it. 

In the Doran case, which Seattle brought against the state back in the ’70s, the legislature never had a good definition of what basic education was. So, in 1993, Governor Gardner started work to define basic education, 

And so if you look at RCW, that's the Revised Code of Washington, 28A, the laws around public schools. And you look at 28A.150, it tells you in broad language what it is. You have to be able to read, you have to be able to write, you have to be able to think, you have to be able to do certain things. And the legislature then is obligated to fund different tasks within a school district in order to help students achieve those learning objectives. And that's again new since 1993.

History/Context 3: McCleary Decision & Prototypical School Model

[00:32:50] Stephen Nielsen: What we all know is that the legislature has gone on somewhat of a roller-coaster ride on whether they're funding enough to make that real. And it was found by the court in the McCleary ruling that it wasn't ample and it wasn't equitable. So the legislature redefined funding formulas, which include the prototypical school model, which is an allocation of so many staff per students and ratios for different size schools and all of that. They determined these ratios, and they did that through several task forces and work groups, of which I was a member of several of them. And yet, they never fully funded their own funding formulas, and that continues to this day. 

So then fast forward to the pandemic. School districts are in trouble. They've lost enrollment. They use federal funds that were 1 time for Covid support to backfill behind basic education requirements. They burn up all the money on necessary kinds of activities, and those dollars dried up after Covie ended. And all of a sudden, many districts are now saying, “Now, what do we do? Because we don't have enough money to do all that is necessary.” 

History/Context 4: Funding Beyond Basic Education

[00:34:12] Stephen Nielsen: The final part of the background is the state-funding formulas are built to fund or basic education. And as I mentioned earlier, that is somewhat clear about what that means. And there are a lot of things that school districts do now, including a lot of things in Seattle, that are not basic education, that constituents, parents, even school board members think is actually funded by the state, and they're not. They should be funded by the local levy if that's what people want. The local levy is supposed to do all of these extra things that are above and beyond. But that's not how it actually works. The local levy supplants a lack of state funding, a lack of federal funding, and it supplants dollars for salaries, various costs. And it's all mooshed together and brings us to a mess where districts don't have enough money to do everything that (A) they want to do and (B) that is required by basic ed law. 

[00:35:17] Christie Robertson: And that brings us back to where we started. Seattle Public Schools not having enough money to pay for what they want to do or even to pay for what is required.

Is there anything else you think we should know? 

[00:35:29] Stephen Nielsen: Keep being curious. 

[00:35:32] Jane Tunks Demel: Thank you. I love that. 

[00:35:34] Stephen Nielsen: Yeah, as a part of your curiosity, and you've demonstrated this in the podcast that I listened to, be slow to judge. Because there are a lot of people who will tell you there's a simple fix. That's not true. It's complicated, and there is no singular magic bullet. It's a series of very difficult conversations that have an effect on students and their families, and it's very, very hard. 

[00:36:02] Jane Tunks Demel: Yeah, it is. No, this conversation has been very illuminating for me. Talking to you, it really puts things into perspective. So I really appreciate it. 

[00:36:12] Stephen Nielsen: I'm glad that I can help you. I'm sorry that it's such a difficult and sad time that we even have to have this discussion. 

[00:36:19] Christie Robertson: And that concludes this episode. 

Thanks so much to Stephen Nielsen for joining us today. If you have more questions or answers about binding conditions, email us at hello@seattlehallpass.org. Meanwhile, you can see our show notes at seattlehealthpass.org. Thanks for joining us, and we'll see you next time on Seattle Hall Pass.