Shekar Krishnan
1:29:22
Thank you so much, Cherry.
1:29:24
Thank you all for your testimony today too.
1:29:25
I just have a few questions to follow-up and and apologize if I repeated.
1:29:30
Something that was asked before, only because I was at another hearing earlier.
1:29:33
But just before starting, I just wanna say, in Council, I'm doing what made this point, I think, very effectively too.
1:29:40
Appreciate and understand that you all know that this is a mandate and a statutory obligation and that you have to comply with it.
1:29:48
One of the things that I'm frustrated by is that a lot of the agent, you know, it's there will be, of course, challenges with funding and otherwise, but there's also choices of how the agency invests its dollars.
1:30:01
And the reason why there's this mismatch between the stated intent and the impact on the ground is because you look at there's not a budget hearing.
1:30:08
I'll say that for budget stuff later, but you do look at this in the context of other cuts.
1:30:12
Cuts to 3 k cuts, you know, cuts to school lunches, for example, which will revisit late, and I was not a school lunchoring.
1:30:21
But that's really, you know, deeply upsetting to me too, or you look at the lack of investment in bilingual education resources given number of asylum seekers who are coming here.
1:30:30
So in the context of all of those things to also hear that, well, we recognize the mandate but we don't have the money or we need the money to do it, falls flat because it it is in line with other policy choices being made by the agency.
1:30:45
Are not in line with the fundamental values, right, whether it's class sizes, whether it's school lunches, whether it's bilingual education, whether it's 3 k.
1:30:51
These are all foundational things.
1:30:53
I think the department has to find a way to really invest in.
1:30:55
So with all that being said, I think that's why we also you know, it's important to to see our perspective on why the the the stated, you know, intent isn't aligning with what we're seeing on this side of things given this larger picture of where we are with DOE spending in the budget right now.
