I would just say if someone does come to you and tell you that my child has autism, believe them.

Believe us because we don't lie about this. We don't like being sick. We don't like being disabled.

We don't like needing accommodations. So if someone says, I can't see you today. I'm not feeling well. Believe them.

This is Sarah and Beth, your listening to Pant suit politics, the home of Grace filled political conversations.

Hello everyone. Thank you for joining us for this episode of Pant suit politics. We are really excited to continue the discussion that we began on Friday's podcast five things you need to know about the Americans with disabilities act.

Today we're going to bring you four different voices from our community in the area of disability advocacy. Before we do though, we're going to talk a little bit about schools because you know, just can't get enough on schools right now.

We're specifically going to talk about the differences in the way that colleges and K 12 public schools are handling COVID-19.

We will end as always with what's on our minds outside of politics and Sarah. I just need to offer a correction here at the beginning last Tuesday when I was expounding on my excitement about wastewater testing.

I said that Arizona State University had identified COVID cases through wastewater in order to quarantine people and ensure that the spread did not continue.

It was not Arizona State University as many people have pointed out to me. It was the University of Arizona. And so many apologies to the wild cats and well done University of Arizona.

I mean, that does not sound like an important distinction to me, but I do not live in Arizona. And I feel like if you lived in Arizona, that's probably real important. Maybe like the difference between Western Kentucky University and the University of Kentucky.

I think so. I respect that distinction and I'm profoundly sorry.

So this is a good lead into the college conversation. And the first thing I want to say is I'm tired of these getting lumped together. I'm tired of the K through 12.

Being lumped together with conversations about college students. To me, this feels like entirely different universes with entirely different risk assessment decisions to make.

Not to mention entirely different priorities, which we're going to get into in a minute.

Well, and I will add to that that I don't even know that we should do K 12. I said it, but I don't think the risk assessment is similar for kindergartners and seniors in high school.

I think that the way school systems are operating right now and I understand why in that sense of we have to make a decision for the entire district. And we have to do the same thing for the entire district is an approach that is not supported in the data that we have about COVID in schooling.

And so precision, I think, is very important when you're discussing risk assessment and schooling.

We're going to lean really heavily on the reporting of Anne Helen Peterson, front of the pod. It's going to be on later this month to talk about her new book can't even I can't wait for that. But she did some great gathering of testimonies from particularly professors at different types of universities.

And that's a thing like right we can't even really talk about colleges as one groups because you're talking about like small rural liberal arts universities all the same as like ginormous state universities.

And of course the risk assessment depending on the type of university is going to be really different. But I think what her reporting did a great job of this particularly with regard to the state university decision making is like there's some real real consumerism going on right now.

The funding for higher ed has been cut. That's not news anybody. It's continuously me cut. And so they have to depend more on private funds and tuition. And so they're trying to get everybody back.

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