North Star Academy Students Are Fed Up with Racist Charter Schools

The dominant KIPP Model for racist chain gang charter schooling, i.e. "No Excuses," has spread to other charter corporations wanting a piece of the pie.  One of the largest knock-offs is the charter school corporation, Uncommon Schools.  

What black and brown students have found is that they are uncommonly racist and de-humanizing:

. . . . North Star Academy, which is part of the Uncommon Schools network of charter schools, is one of New Jersey’s oldest and highest-achieving charter schools. In the 2019-20 school year, 83% of North Star students were Black, 15% Hispanic, and more than 86% were economically disadvantaged, according to state data, yet the students routinely outperform their peers in wealthier districts on state standardized tests.

But like other so-called “no excuses” charter schools, North Star has long had a reputation for strict discipline along with its demanding academic program. In 2019-20, the most recent year with available state data, nearly 19% of North Star students received suspensions — a rate about six times higher than the average across New Jersey or in the Newark school district.

After the murder of George Floyd in May 2020 drew widespread attention to anti-Black racism in all facets of American society, many young people took to social media to recount instances of racism at school. Current and former students and staff members at Uncommon Schools began sharing their experiences through an Instagram account called Black at Uncommon, where many described a school culture that felt overly controlling and occasionally unwelcoming to Black people. . . . .

How Corporate Takeovers in Newark and Montclair Spawned a New Solidarity Movement Against CorpEd

Terrific piece at Rethinking Schools by Stan Karp on how corporatization pushes in Newark and Montclair have brought poor and middle class parents and teachers together to save public education, children, and the profession.

If you thought corporate takeovers of public schools was just for poor districts, this is a must read.  A clip:

. . . in the summer of 2012, as Cami Anderson was hollowing out Newark, Montclair hired a new superintendent. Penny MacCormack was new to the state, had never been a superintendent, and wasn’t known to many in Montclair. But those who track state education politics knew she had been a district official in Connecticut who was recruited by Cerf to be an assistant commissioner in Christie’s DOE. The department had received several grants from the Eli Broad Foundation and was staffed with multiple Broad “fellows.” MacCormack, Cerf, and Anderson all have Broad ties.

MacCormack was at the N.J. Department of Education for less than a year when she suddenly resurfaced as the new Montclair superintendent without any public vetting, a clear sign the board knew this was a controversial hire.

Her welcome reception began with a video about the origins of the magnet system in the struggle to integrate the town’s schools. Some honored town elders who had played key roles were in the audience. MacCormack awkwardly attempted to connect her vision to the compelling town history framed in the video. Despite the town’s commitment to equity, she said, wide “achievement gaps” remained, and addressing those gaps would be her No. 1 priority.

MacCormack didn’t pledge to restore the equity supports that had been eroded in recent years or challenge Christie’s budget cuts. Instead, she announced that the Common Core standards and tests, and the state’s new teacher evaluation mandates, would “level the playing field” and “raise expectations for all.” “And,” she said, “I will be using the data to hold educators accountable and make sure we get results.”

After she finished, a latecomer took the floor and told the audience how lucky Montclair was to have MacCormack come to town. It was Jon Schnur, the architect of the Race to the Top. He also lives in Montclair. We later learned that Schnur was MacCormack’s “mentor” in a certification program she enrolled in after being hired without the required credentials to be superintendent.

In Montclair, there was no formal state takeover and no contested school board elections. Instead, the long reach of corporate education reform had used influence peddling, backdoor connections, and a compliant appointed school board to install one of their own at the head of one of the state’s model districts. . . .

New Jersey Education Reforms: Reckless and Irresponsible, or Just Illogical?

Following the State of the Schools Address last week by Ed Commish Chris Cerf, another of Jeb Bush's Chiefs of Change, Bruce Baker took time to elegantly eviscerate the State's misleading and disingenuous analysis, particularly in relation to low-scoring, high-poverty schools (priority schools).  Below is a small clip from Baker's takedown, which describes the connections among race, class, and test performance, which the Cerf plan for corporate charter school privatization ignores.  Do read the entire post, for it is relevant to every state where public education is being displaced by corporate-run schools funded with public dollars.

From Bruce Baker's blog, School Finance 101:

. . . .Most notable, as I show below, priority schools have about 80% of children qualified for free lunch and reward schools less than 10%! Yet as the NJDOE slide above shows, at the high end these school districts spend slightly under 30% more than state average. Notably, this shoddy comparison does not compare these districts to others in their own labor market.

Indeed, New Jersey more than other states has put some money into these districts. See “Is school funding fair?” But, let’s be clear, these margins of funding difference, while helpful, hardly make these districts – given their needs – flush with excess resources!

In fact, the strongest empirical research on this topic suggests that it would take an additional 100% or so per pupil funding for a district that is 100% low income versus a district that is 0% low income. Here, we are looking at nearly that extreme of low income differential, and not nearly that extreme of funding support! So while these districts are better off than similar districts in other states, implying that they’ve got more than enough to close achievement gaps is a huge stretch.

But do those demographic differences matter?

This figure shows just how much the demographic differences represented above matter with respect to student achievement, and specifically how much school demography continues to dictate the performance classification of schools under the NJDOE waiver plan.

As I pointed out on a recent post, NJDOE has basically flagged schools in low income neighborhoods for experimentation and substantial disruption (closure, etc.) with an option to override any/all local input.

Notably, this pattern is likely better than it would otherwise be because of New Jersey’s past efforts to target additional resources to high need settings, including pre-kindergarten programs, smaller class sizes and more competitive teacher salaries than might otherwise exist in these settings.

Stopping Christie's Corporate Feeding Frenzy in Camden

A former NJ DOE employee continues to send us news of from his/her former workplace, where incompetent and corrupt corporate toadies now pretend to do the work once done by educators and administrators concerned with the welfare of children and their education.   To demonstrate the point, see what is happening in Camden and other New Jersey areas blighted by poverty.

If it were not for organizations like the Education Law Center in Newark, the corporate raiders running the DOE would have already turned over urban public education in New Jersey to the corporate foundations and hedge fund managers to feed upon, as they use their unmonitored charter schools to miseducate, to culturally sterilize, and to behaviorally neuter the children of the poor.

Below is the Camden story from the Courier-Post Online, and below that is David Sciarra's letter referenced in the piece:

The Education Law Center is questioning a request for proposal made under the Urban Hope Act, and approved by the school board earlier this month.

The ELC, which advocates for poor urban districts, including Camden, called the district’s proposal, seeking plans for four Renaissance charter schools “premature” because state regulations for the schools are not yet complete, according to a letter written by ELC Executive Director David Sciarra.

Also, the failure of the RFP to adequately solicit the public input and comment “is a glaring omission, and the schedule should be revisited to provide explicit times and locations at which public input can be solicited and considered,” his letter concluded.

Lanning Square School activist Mo’Neke Ragsdale read portions of the ELC’s letter to the school board Tuesday night and promised to provide full copies.

The Department of Eduation responded by saying, “We have provided technical guidance to Camden as they developed their RFP. As we pursue regulations that will be in place prior to our approval of any projects, the Camden RFP also allows the district to request additional information from applicants to conform with the new regulations, if needed.”

The main points that are unaddressed by either the DOE or the district, according to ELC’s review, are:

• Whether students in designated “attendance areas” would be eligible for automatic enrollment in a school built on land conveyed by the School Development Authority, or SDA, and/or Camden to a nonprofit entity, or whether those students would be given only an enrollment preference.

• Whether Camden is prohibited from conveying district-owned land for a Renaissance project without first determining that the tract in question is “no longer desirable or necessary for school purposes.”

• A significant unanswered question is whether the SDA can convey any site in which it has expended public funds for site remediation, site development and design, all of which under the Hope Act must be undertaken by at the “sole” expense of the non-profit entity.

• The RFP does not specify any time, place or mechanism through which public input and comments, which are required, can be heard and the expedited schedule does not provide enough time for the notice of a public hearing.

Also not spelled out, according to the ELC are: site lease or sale information, financing details, details about what defines an attendance area, financial assurances from the proposed operator, various attendance eligibility issues, teacher and staff recruitment and retention, plans for meeting proficiency goals and plans for parental and community involvement.

Sciarra’s letter closed by saying: “We strongly recommend that Camden withdraw the RFP for further development, and to await regulatory guidance. We are prepared to meet with the board its representatives to discuss these concerns and to assist in revising the RFP to ensure that the interests and needs of Camden public school children are properly addressed in any future Renaissance school proposal.”

The board offered no response to the comments after Ragsdale spoke.

Re: Request for Proposals, Renaissance School Project

Dear Ms. Ragsdale:

I am writing in response to your request for Education Law Center

(“ELC”) to review the Request for Proposals for Renaissance

School Project (“RFP”), dated May 18, 2012, recently made

available by the Camden City Board of Education (“Camden”). As

you know, ELC serves as counsel in the landmark Abbott v. Burke

case and, in that capacity, represents children attending public

schools in Camden. Based on an initial review of the RFP, our

preliminary comments are set forth below.

First and foremost, Section 13 of the Urban Hope Act (UHA)

requires the Commissioner of Education to adopt regulations to

effectuate the purposes of the Act. N.J.S.A.18A:36C-13. We are

unaware as of this date that the Commissioner has issued the

required rules, even in draft or proposal form. As a result, the

RFP is premature and should not have been issued by Camden,

especially since there are a several significant issues that

require State guidance. Some of these issues include whether

students in designated “attendance areas” would be eligible for

automatic enrollment in a Renaissance School built on land

conveyed by the School Development Authority (“SDA”) and/or

Camden to a non-profit entity, or whether those students would be

given only an enrollment “preference.” N.J.S.A. 18A:36C-8. As

you are aware, this is a major area of concern related to the

Lanning Square project if Camden abandons having the NJ School

Development Authority build a new Camden school in order to

facilitate a non-profit Renaissance School project on the site.

Another major issue necessitating regulatory guidance is whether

Camden is prohibited from conveying district-owned land for a

Renaissance School project absent a determination that the tract

in question is “no longer desirable or necessary for school

purposes.” N.J.S.A.18A:36C-12. Further, there remains a

significant question as to whether the SDA can convey any site in

which it has expended public funds for site remediation, site

development and design, all of which under the UHA must be

undertaken by at the “sole” expense of the non-profit entity.

N.J.S.A. 18A:36C-7 and 12.

In addition to these issues, the RFP, as drafted, fails to

address critical elements for any proposal to finance, construct

and operate a Renaissance School project. Some of these

deficiencies include:

1) information and details on the site and whether it will be

acquired or leased, the prospective terms of the lease or sale,

and the parties, including any third parties or governmental

entities to be involved in the transaction;

2) information and details on the proposed financing of school

construction, including the extent to which per pupil revenue

will be needed to support servicing the anticipated construction

debt;

3) identification of the proposed enrollment attendance area, the

student and family demographics of the students to be enrolled in

the proposed area, and an assessment of those particular students

for academic, social and health services, and other needs to be

addressed by the proposed school project;

4) the financial ability of the non-profit to pay for planning,

design, code compliance and other necessary professional

services, since these costs are the “sole” responsibility of the

non-profit entity under the UHA;

5) the manner in which the proposal will address the admission of

students to the Renaissance School, including the prohibition in

the UHA against any discrimination on the basis of intellectual

or athletic ability, measures of achievement or aptitude, status

as a handicapped person, proficiency in the English language, or

any other basis that would be illegal if used by Camden;

6) the manner in which the proposal will ensure automatic

enrollment of all students residing within the designated

attendance area, and the policies and procedures to be employed

in such key areas as special education, school discipline,

alternative education, and student transfers to other schools;

7) if the attendance area will not be subject to automatic

enrollment in that area, the manner in which the students will be

admitted, including any proposed lottery for student selection;

8) a plan for attracting and retaining effective teachers and

other support staff, in light of the prospective academic and

other needs of the prospective student enrollment;

9) the plan for achieving the student proficiency goals

established for renewal in the UHA;

10) the cooperative arrangements, if any, that will be made to

coordinate educational programming, curriculum, assessment,

support services for students with disabilities and other special

needs, and other critical areas with the Camden district and

other Camden public schools; and

11) plans for parental and community involvement in the school.

Finally, the UHA requires that the selection process be subject

to public input and comment. N.J.S.A.18A:36C-4(b)(15). While

the RFP notes this statutory requirement, the timeline provided

in the RFP does not specify any time, place or mechanism through

which public input and comments could be collected or heard.

Furthermore, the expedited schedule does not provide sufficient

time for provision of notice for a public hearing at which public

input and comments could be heard. The failure of the RFP to

make any provision to satisfy the public input and comment

requirements of the UHA is a glaring omission, and the schedule

should be revisited to provide explicit times and locations at

which public input can be solicited and considered.

In light of the absence of State regulations implementing UHA,

and many concerns highlighted above, we strongly recommend that

Camden withdraw the RFP for further development, and to await

regulatory guidance. We are prepared to meet with the Board its

representatives to discuss these concerns and to assist in

revising the RFP to ensure that the interests and needs of Camden

public school children are properly addressed in any future

Renaissance School proposal.

Sincerely,

David G. Sciarra

Executive Director

New Jersey's Cerfdom Brings Treasure to Corporate Broadies

Below is an email I received from a former NJ DOE employee whose moral fatigue forced her from a good paying job with the State.  Read it and then you will know why the Eli Broad calls his kind of philanthropy investments rather than grants. _______________________ I am a former NJ DOE employee who resigned recently because I could no longer be a part of the extortion and fraud that is taking part there under the Broad Administration of Chris Cerf, Penny MacCormack, Peter Shulman, Bing Howell, ad nauseum. Cerf first tried to get rid of the County Exec Superintendents offices, but was stopped when the legislature reminded him that they were created by statute.  How inconvenient!  So he hired a Broad Intern (for $90,000 named Rochelle Sinclair) who came up with the idea to overlay the state with 7 Regional Achievement Centers (RACs) staffed with "Education Rockstars" from around the country (read Broad Academy grads) who would go in to schools that were failing, assess them, replace the principals and hire new teachers (Teacher 4 America, anyone?).  The problem was the cost. Enter Arne Duncan and the NCLB waiver, plus the Race to the Top funding.  Now Penny MacCormack is trying to divert the SES money we still have ($56 million)., to pay for the RACs.  Oh, and we have thrown out the NCLB report cards and replaced them with our own in-house "measures of proficiency" which is a lot of speculative data manipulated by another bunch of Broad interns since none of the in-house data people would go along with this scheme.  They have all been "rubber roomed" in other departments for not being "team players." So far, so good.  Now, armed with his new proficiency data, Cerf has swooped down on a bunch of "underperforming" charter schools, presenting them with two options:  we pull your charter, close you down, and your kids are on the street OR you select from this DOE-approved list of Charter Management Organizations (more Broad buddies) who will TAKE OVER YOUR CHARTER.  This is extortion.  The first to fall will be Paul Robeson Charter in Trenton which has a fund balance of $1.6 million.  They are even forcing them to change the name of the school to Scholars Academy!!! Save us from the pirates of education reform.  I know you guys are not really fond of charters, but Cerf is after the public schools, too.  (See Newark, Paterson, Jersey City, and Camden).  First he comes for the charters, then he comes for the public schools.   http://www.nj.com/mercer/index.ssf/2012/05/administration_to_resign_to_ke.html http://www.courierpostonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2012305010023 http://www.njspotlight.com/stories/12/0517/2208/

The Stomach of Austerity

Idiot!

 A very good article here from the pressofAtlanticCity:

By DIANE D’AMICO Education Writer pressofAtlanticCity.com 

Southern New Jersey towns with the highest unemployment and poverty in the state will also be among the hardest hit by school-funding reforms proposed by the state Department of Education and Gov. Chris Christie.

The four southernmost counties, Cape May, Atlantic, Salem and Cumberland rank at the bottom of the state in child welfare measures, according to the 2011 Kids Count report by Advocates for Children of New Jersey. Those four counties also have the highest unemployment rates in the state, with Cape May at 14 percent in December and Atlantic County at 12.4 percent compared with 9 percent statewide, according to Department of Labor statistics.

Yet while Christie’s proposed budget would increase state aid to schools almost 2 percent statewide, overall, school districts in Cape May and Cumberland counties will get slightly less aid, at least partly due to enrollment shifts.

Atlantic County will see a 2 percent increase as aid catches up to growth in suburban enrollment over the last decade, but its two most economically challenged districts, Atlantic City and Pleasantville, will lose funds.

Advocates for children said the reforms ignore the pervasive problems of poverty and the vital role schools play in giving children the opportunity to succeed. They worry that proposals will pit poor children who need funds against suburban families looking for property tax relief.

“The idea that you can somehow leave poverty behind at the school house door is foolish,” said Cecilia Zalkind, executive director of the Advocates for Children of New Jersey, or ACNJ, which will be monitoring the proposals.

Millions of dollars are at stake. Of the more than $8 billion proposed for state education funding next year, more than $2.5 billion targets programs such as preschool, bilingual and remedial programs, and extra services for economically disadvantaged or “at risk” students, according to the state formula.

Acting Education Commissioner Chris Cerf, in an Education Funding Report that accompanied the state aid figures, questioned whether the state investment in its poorest students has paid off, noting the achievement gap that still remains between test scores of low-income and minority students and their more-advantaged peers.

Using the “more money hasn’t solved the problem” argument, Christie has proposed what he calls “common sense” changes to the state school funding law that would reduce funding to most of the state’s poorest school districts and would also affect districts with shrinking enrollment.

Local legislators said they still have to review the 83-page state report, but are concerned. State Sen Jim Whelan, D-Atlantic, a teacher in Atlantic City, said he doesn’t understand the proposal by state Sen. Michael Doherty, R-Warren, Hunterdon, that all children get the same amount of state aid; Hunterdon County got a 10 percent state aid increase under Christie’s proposed budget plan, the largest in the state. Warren County got 1 percent more.

“It doesn’t make sense,” Whelan said. “Different children have different needs. Poor families need more help. I don’t understand the rationale.”

Rutgers professor Bruce Baker, who writes the “schoolfinance101” blog, noted in his analysis of the state report that the test scores of poor students have improved with extra state aid. But so has the performance of suburban students, so the achievement gap remains. He said if anything, taking money from struggling poor schools and giving more to already more successful suburban schools is only likely to increase the gap.

A report by Stanford University’s Sean F. Reardon found the “income achievement gap” increased by 30 to 40 percent for children born between 1975 and 2001. It attributed part of the growth to improved achievement for families above the median income.

David Sciarra, of the Education Law Center, which has represented urban students in court, said while the state proposal appears to help suburban districts, he believes Legislators will reject it once they understand their long-term impact on all schools. He believes over five years more schools will lose aid.

“Even schools that are getting increases are not getting all they are entitled to under the law,” he said. “It’s just going to take some time for people to realize it.”

State Sen. Jeff Van Drew, D-Cape May, Cumberland, Atlantic, said he has already been talking to his Republican counterpart state Sen. Steve Oroho, who represents districts in Sussex County, the only other county to lose state aid. Van Drew said since they are both on the Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee, the school aid proposals will get a thorough review.

Van Drew said he is also concerned about the funding law’s “geographic adjustment” that gives proportionally less aid to districts in the southern part of the state.

“We are going to look at how to minimize the impact of the proposals,” Van Drew said.

Contact Diane D'Amico:

609-272-7241

Christie and Cerf's Transparent and Ridiculous Plan

photo by Bobby Bank/Getty

Before New Jersey’s hog-headed governor, Chris Christie, fired his first inept Education Comissioner, Mr. Schundler, that rascal claimed in public that New Jersey's No. 1-2 ranking on NAEP was irrelevant when it comes to judging what kind of job the schools are doing.

Having now moved on to hire a more polished corporate leech to attempt to dismantle New Jersey's public schools, the current Commissioner Cerf and his Wall Street team are attempting to create their own crisis to justify a complete charterization of public schools in New Jersey, while removing all regulations on charters and  protections for teachers (such as tenure rights for charter school teachers) that might hinder the benefits to the hedge funders who are lined up behind this corporate reform schooler plan.  

The Christie-Cerf plan follows the neolib and neocon disaster capitalist script in once more cynically representing themselves as civil rights advocates who are out to protect the poor and downtrodden.  The intro the brand new New Jersey plan establishes the rationale for further dismantling the public schools in order to address the civil rights issue of our time--education:

The core goal of a state public education system is to assure that all children—regardless of background or economic circumstances—graduate from high school ready for college and career.  New Jersey’s educators should take great pride in our track record of success against this measure, especially relative to that of other states. 

At the same time, a substantial distance remains to be travelled. Most notably, while New Jersey’s students perform at higher levels than their peers in virtually every other state, this aggregate figure masks several discouraging realities. To a startling and unacceptable degree, “zip code is destiny” in New Jersey. While the State ranks second in reading nationally, only three states have a larger achievement gap between economically disadvantaged children and their wealthier peers. Tens of thousands of children attend schools where only a minority of students meets basic levels of proficiency in reading and math, and hundreds of thousands of children overall perform below these minimal standards.

In a simple, yet devastating, demonstration of why Christie and Cerf’s claims carry no more weight (whew!) than the previous ridiculous claims of public school failure in New Jersey, Bruce Baker shows that the test score gaps that Christie is so concerned about are “largely a function of the income distribution in each state.”  In states where the largest gaps exist between rich and poor, we find the largest gaps between test scores of rich and poor. Go figure!

Baker shows clearly, in fact, that this manufactured crisis by the corporate reform schoolers is another worn-out play from the shock doctrine playbook, which uses phony concerns for the dispossessed and oppressed to engineer social policy that removes the protections of those very same marginalized groups, thus clearing the way for exploitative corporate welfare schemes aimed to provide the cheapest educational product possible for the poor, while raking in huge bounties of cash for the bottom feeders who are lined up to start their own unregulated edu-scam charter schools in New Jersey.

Baker’s analysis shows, in fact, that New Jersey schools are doing better than average when it comes to trying to minimize the effects of the economic canyon between rich and poor. New Jersey’s corrected test score gaps for NAEP are, in fact, 27^th highest among the lower 48:  “New Jersey’s adjusted achievement gap between higher and lower-income students, when correcting for the size of the income gap between those students, is smaller than the gap in the average state.”

If the titanic Governor Christie and his edu-economists want to do something to diminish the test score gap in the Garden State, they should condemn their own policies of doling out more tax breaks to New Jersey millionaires at the same time they attempt to dismantle the social safety net for the most needy citizens.  To carry out Christie’s kind of class warfare on the poor while blaming the schools for test score gaps demonstrates a level of hypocrisy and outright stupidity that remains unparalleled, even among the present team of proto-fascist Tea Party governors.

Wall Street Bottomfeeders Circling NJ Schools

HT to Stan Karp:

Braun: Parents push for laws allowing communities to vote on charter schools

Star Ledger, 6.23.11

"What do we want? A vote! When do we want it? Now!" while an assortment of politicians pledged obeisance to what these parents demanded: An end to the unchecked growth of charter schools.

Hedge-Fund Founders Eye N.J. Schools

Wall Street Journal 6.23.11

A new group backed by two hedge-fund founders is taking aim at New Jersey's largest teachers union. Better Education for Kids wants to end the use of seniority in teacher-hiring decisions . . . and weaken tenure. . . . It's the first major foray from the hedge-fund community into New Jersey's education-reform scene. Hedge-fund managers and employees have been active in New York education circles for years, as support for charter schools came into vogue.

Christie Continues Efforts to Kill Public Education in NJ

HT to Stan Karp:

 

There's a new superintendent in town

Joan Whitlow, Star Ledger, 6.18.11

State politics will affect Anderson more than most supers because Newark is a state-controlled district. Gov. Chris Christie has been pushing charter schools, vouchers and, more recently, the privatization of public schools. Mayor Cory Booker has inserted himself into the district's business. Although Booker lacks any legal authority, he has the governor's blessing and a $100 million pledge from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg that will grow to $200 million for education if the required matching donations come through. There's potential for political squeeze. It was reasonable to worry that the choice for super might be a rubber stamp for the Booker-Christie agenda. It is reasonable to wonder if anyone good enough to do the job wouldn't pack up her résumé and run.

Gov Christie turning public education into a for-profit industry?

Examiner.com 6.17.11

Last week, Governor Chris Christie unveiled legislation that would allow private, for-profit companies to take over failing public schools.  Christie has also pushed for more charter schools and a New Jersey voucher system. It turns out that our governor has a history of working for Edison Learning, the nation’s largest of these for-profit education companies

Christie's proposal would give private companies unprecedented control of failing N.J. public schools

Star Ledger, 6.17.11
Private companies may soon gain unprecedented control of five failing New Jersey public schools if a proposal unveiled last week by Gov. Chris Christie is approved by the Legislature. Fewer than 70 public schools across the country are managed privately and many struggle because of restrictive local regulations and feuds between the companies and the communities they serve, education experts said.