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schedule on your program guide or watch online anytime at booktv.org. >> "washington journal" continues. host: this is mark lieberman from education week joining us. he has a reporter that focuses on school financing and -- when the federal government decided to give money specifically to schools because of covid or covid relief what was the main philosophy? guest: the federal government has given schools three rounds of funding during the pandemic, one in march, december, and one in march of 2021. the first two were geared towards responding to the immediate pressures of the pandemic, things like purchasing masks and personal protective equipment for students and staff, cleaning supplies, staffing for the unusual

situation, as well as purchasing technology, laptops, wi-fi hotspots, and things like that to ensure that students can learn remotely while still -- while school buildings had to be closed. the third round of funding came a couple months into the vaccine rollout and was geared more towards recovery, providing resources for students who had missed instructional time, mitigating the effects of the pandemic while emerging stronger than before. and, i think that funding came before some of the current crisis situations emerged, and so a lot of it at the time was year towards recovering from -- geared towards recovering from the pandemic. host: just to show the viewers at home, the american rescue plan offering a relief aid package from december 2020, $15

billion. 15 billion from the cares act. so around figure of $190 billion. how much of that has actually made it to the schools? guest: at this point the majority of the money has made it to school districts, however it has pretty long deadlines for when it has to be spent. the initial deadline -- the initial round had a deadline of later this year. the final-round had the deadline of december 2024. school districts have a lot of the money available, many have had to submit plans for how they were going to spend the money to the state governments before they could access it. all 50 states have compiled the plans and spent the money. right now the school -- the challenge is facing when to spend the money, what to spend it on and how they will prioritize their wide-ranging needs. host: that was kind of the comments. becky pringle was on our program

recently talking about money delivered to schools and i asked her about the idea of what schools are doing with the money. i want to play you her response and i have a couple of follow-up questions. [video clip] >> very unfortunately, we find it unevenly depending on what was going on in a particular state. i know you saw that happening in the fall where some states and governors were refusing to allow school districts to use the money. the secretary did intervene to make sure that those school districts did actually get the money that they needed so they could purchase those and make sure that they had enough tests for all of the students and educators, making sure that they were repairing ventilation systems. we know that there are still schools that do not have the resources available to them, or they just have not had the time yet or do not have the people to

do the types of repairs that are needed to ensure that all of those mitigation strategies are in place. we have to stay vigilant because we know that there are schools with work to do. [end video clip] host: that is her approach. you talked about that. can you elaborate now that the schools have the money. how do they go about deciding what to do it with -- what to do with it? guest: it is an enormous challenge, school districts are juggling a wide range of priorities. in the last two years school budgets have become more complex because the additional rounds of funding come outside of the normal budget cycle. so school finance administrators are having to reset and pivot. sometimes, numerous times in a year. now, another challenge is that the trajectory of the pandemic remains on fort -- uncertain. in march of 2021 there was a

hope that things were on a better footing, the primary priority for the year would be to address the learning time that students had lost during the early days of the pandemic. what we are seeing now is that schools are finding that prior to spreading rapidly we are seeing closures as a result of outbreaks from schools and a significant challenge in terms of staffing. you know, a combination of people having to be out for covid related reasons and reluctance to take positions in schools for a variety of reasons that we will get into later. i think the big challenge that we have right now is trying to balance the urgent need to provide services and support to students who have had very challenging and trying times, many cases are way behind in their studies, while also

addressing the imminent and present needs of ensuring that students are properly taken care of in the buildings when they are therefore in person instruction as the majority are. it is a really tough balancing act. host: we will talk about the money do to schools with mark lieberman of education. if you have questions here is how you can call. 202-748-8000 for parents of school aged children. current educators, 202-748-8001. all others, 202-748-8002. and you can also text us at 202-748-8003. when a school or state gets the money, what are they required to do with it? are they required to do certain things only related to covid? guest: that is a great question. this money has a wide amount of flexibility in what -- in terms

of what schools overtook -- are required to do. the american rescue plan fund requires 20% to be spent on measures that address learning loss among students. however the definition is pretty broad and there are lots of different things that one can assign to that, that all into the category. obvious things like tutoring and summer school seem directly tied to that but things like mental health support and social and emotional support and providing a foundation for students to learn things in school, and so that is a pretty broad mandate as well. in general the funds are supposed to be in some way tied to the pandemic, so if a school district cannot demonstrate that an expense has -- is related to

the pandemic than that could be a problem. but the nature of school operations is that everything is interrelated and many schools are finding that there is a wide range of things that they can do and spend the money on within the parameters of the regulations, you know that address the effects of the pandemic and the urgent priorities. host: we have an interesting perspective from a viewer off of twitter. this is steve. "we were already buying technology so our district use the funds to have all students k-12 getting a chromebook. now we can go virtually at a moment's notice. ." one example and a way that funds can be used. can you elaborate? guest: schools were really caught off guard by the sudden pressure to pivot their entire operation to online. higher education is more experienced overall with online education.

there are scattered schools in the country that prior to 2020 were doing some form of remote learning, but nothing on the scale that we saw in march through may 2020. and so, i think that that chaos exposed a lot of gaps. there are tons of students who lack internet access at home, tons of schools that did not have the numbers to supervise each student at home and schools are recognizing that while there is a pretty reasonable emphasis on returning to in person learning and the value of that as opposed to sitting at home, isolated learning, i think that schools are increasingly realizing that having the capability to go remote whether it is an emergency situation like a pandemic, flu outbreak or hurricane as well as for individual cases where students need to spend time at home or prefer to spend time at home for

social and emotional reasons, i think schools are recognizing that they want to have that ability, and purchasing technology should do that and it is a key step. caller: let -- host: let us use that as an example. to the schools have to go back to the federal government and say this is exactly how we spent the money? how specific does the government want to hear? guest: this has been an area of interest because as i mentioned to the funds have a pretty flexible set of guidelines, and so individual states expect schools to report to them what they plan to use the money on, but because the funds do not have to be spent right away those plans can change. there will be some accountability because we have school districts that have gotten large amounts of federal funds so some audits or state investigations afterwards, but

there has been a fair amount of scrutiny and handwringing among those in education where tracking the funds have not been so specific -- has been sophisticated. the federal government is tracking state plans but at the local level it is more opaque. it is difficult for me to figure out how these funds are being spent, it also for families and school staff who are curious how the money, so i think there is a bit of a transparency issue that is the product of the diversity of the landscape, and the complexity and bureaucracy of ensuring that these plans are publicly posted and uniform so people can prepare them. host: $190 billion given in the general sense and mark lieberman talking about those issues. 202-748-8000 for parents. 202-748-8001 for educators, if

you are current. our line for others, 202-748-8002 and you can also text us at 202-748-8003 or post on our twitter and facebook feeds. that as hear from daniel in pennsylvania, our line for others. good morning, you are on. caller: good morning. i was wondering if there is a possibility that in the future that you might investigate our secular curriculum on the basis of it would be a critical ecology theory and critical etiquette theory. thank you. host: ok, not exactly in our purview as far as what we are talking about but let me give you a line from one of the stories you wrote in relation to spending and i will let you

elaborate. you wrote that on december of last year "some districts are investing big money and initiatives that do not appear strictly covid related. miami-dade schools plan to spend $86 per student on cybersecurity. raleigh county and west virginia spending $800 per student to expanded elementary school adding nine classrooms, expanding the kitchen, and separating the cafeteria and the gym. the newport news school district is spending $840,000 for a new student information system to catalog student's academic progress." those are the specifics, elaborate on that. guest: what i was trying to highlight was that there are a lot of priorities that school districts had prior to the pandemic that have not gone away. the school building is overcrowded, that did not stop being a problem when the pandemic started, and even

though expanding the school building might not seem like a direct response to the spread of a virus within the school community or building, i think you can make a connection there and i think school districts are trying to do that in terms of improving the learning experience, especially the most recent round of funds. it was really pitched towards providing schools with the tools to be able to grow from the pandemic and emerge stronger than they were before. with the example of expanding a school building, there are various ways to connect that to the pandemic, more classrooms, fewer students in the classroom and it will help with social distancing capabilities that you would not have in a smaller building. more modern school buildings have modern ventilation compared to the school buildings that are old and that has been a big issue that school districts are confronting, there is a wide range of schools in the country that are 90 to 100 years old,

and the ventilation systems are so old that they cannot necessarily be right to -- to be repaired. the materials to repair them are no longer manufactured so they are facing a situation where the only option is to entirely to redo the building. and so, i think that i would urge people to think of the federal funds as -- and i think schools are saying it this way, as an opportunity to take some of the items that have been on their list for a long time that are holding them back from providing the ideal school experience and using the funds to strive for that in the midst of a crisis situation that is putting pressure on them in different ways. host: i suspect there is a perception or if such is shared with tony. he says "it sounds like schools are awash in money seeking a

problem to dress -- to address" and that might be a problem they have to fight. guest: one of the challenges is talking to the public is when you hear that schools got $190 billion, that number is so big that it is kind of abstract. the vast majority of people cannot really picture what $195 billion looks like. on top of that, this money did not go equally to each school in the country or to even each school district in the country. it was filtered through the federal title i formula geared toward providing federal aid to schools with a high percentage or proportion of high need students or typically low income students or students with poor families. the money, if you've where for example to look at two school districts with an equal number of students, one in a high poverty area and low in a poverty area, even though they are the same, the district would

be a higher concentration of poverty and would've gotten more federal funding through the covid emergency package than the distinct -- the district with a lower number of portions with poverty. this is painting with a broad buck -- broadbrush but it is illustrating that some schools got very very little from this pot of money, while some schools got more than $20,000 and a vast majority got somewhere in between. that is one thing in terms of understanding the impact of the funds. the other thing i would stay -- i would say in response is you know, this money is going very quickly in some places or going to a wide variety of costly priorities. construction costs are going up and schools are trying to improve their ventilation and the money is not going as far as it would three or four years ago

, that is increasing and that is in part because of high demand and school districts. and that is because of institutions or entities, and that is one example. schools are finding trouble staffing their buildings and in some cases are trying to increase rages -- wages for substitute teachers, bus drivers, cafeteria workers and others in an effort to extract more qualified candidates to staff the school building on a daily basis. i think that is a need that many school districts did not anticipate earlier, but it is one that they are finding serving as a significant source of their priorities for the funds. and so, i think that while it may appear on the surface like tools or sort of sweating money, if you talk to administrators, many of them are appreciative of

the funds and excited about the opportunity on things that they have hoped to spend them on. i think that many of them are not -- are having trouble -- are not having trouble finding things to spend them on, they are having trouble narrowing down the things that they want to buy in order to fit within their allocation. host: mark lieberman joining us. victor on -- victor in florida. you are on, go ahead. caller: i think they need to start putting more money into the early childhood education and to have better testing to pass these children on that are behind in reading and math because of covid. once they get behind they need tutoring. we need half a day of tutoring on saturday for any kids that are below grade level in reading and math, so that starting at age three up to the fourth grade

is where the money needs to be spent. most productively, and you also need to listen to the teachers. they do not listen to the teachers, everything is top-down. it is ok to have a new facility but the most important thing in education is to have a well-qualified teacher and they are hard to find because teaching reading and math is very difficult and so kids are not getting a lot of support at home and we need professional tutors to work half a day on saturday and that is where i would like to see the money spent more than on physical things. host: that is victor. coda school district decide to use this to -- could a school district use this to increase teacher salary? could you expand on it? guest: many school districts are

finding a lot of areas. the challenge to use this money to raise salaries is that it is finite, there is only certain amount of it and there is only a certain amount of time. once they spend all of that they do not have an assurance of getting more through this mechanism. what it means that is if you hire a teacher or increase their salary significantly for the next three years, and you run out of funds your options are either to find another source of funding, to maintain the teacher's high salary, or risk losing that teacher or having to cut their hours or find another way to make ends meet. so school districts are hammering right now over how to balance what this caller is talking about correctly, which is an urgent need to retain the teachers that they have and to grow the teaching course and to ensure that there are enough

qualified adults to provide students with the support that they need in various contacts. while also being clear eyed about the fact that the federal funding is a temporary lifeline but not a permanent one. and, i think that many districts are taking the approach of saying we know this money will run out so we are going to spend it on one time priorities and to lay the foundation for better things to come but we are not going to invest in things that are ongoing and recurring costs because we are worried about having to abandon those in a couple of years. on the other hand some school districts, i talked to the chief financial officer at cleveland schools in ohio and he told me that his philosophy with this funding for a district with a high percent of low income students and students with significant needs, is to use this money as an opportunity to

invest in all of the things that the school district previously had not been able to with the hope that the effects of those purchases will be so significant and such an improvement on what came before that there will be widespread support for these initiatives within the community which is more support for things like raising taxes to acquire more local funds, and perhaps even being able to convince the state to increase education funding with these initiatives. i think there are different schools of thought about how to make the most of this money in the time that schools have, but that is really the challenge with staffing needs, figuring out whether to make a bet on being able to find money from another source later, or being more cautious and spending money on things that are one-time

costs. host: john in california. go ahead. caller: i am really concerned that you want to raise teacher salaries. they have failed at their job. you tell me that teachers are doing a good job, the teachers are doing a good job across america? out in california, the public schools are terrible. baltimore is not learning anything. not one kid in baltimore high school could pass a simple math test. host: so, because our guest is dealing with money specifically for covid relief funds do you have a comment towards that? caller: he said he wanted to use the relief funds to raise teacher salaries, he things that is a good use of these teachers who are lousy? host: i will let him respond to that. go ahead. guest: absolutely. i as a reporter do not have pacific things that the funds should be used on, that a lot of schools are trying to find ways

to pay their employees more, for a variety of reasons. i think that certainly teachers and other school -- and other employees are beleaguered, many of them have been working in person for quite a long time, every day risking some would argue their lives in terms of the possibility of contracting covid in the classroom and on top of that students are coming back to school after a long period of remote learning and disruption caused by the pandemic in a really tough place. a lot of them are also struggling emotionally with the effects of being isolated from their peers. up people and their families caused by economic forces that have been disruptive and teachers are having to deal with that on top of the fact that a lot of my reporting is focused on schools that are struggling to adequately staff their building as i mentioned. what i mean typically is that if

you cannot find a substitute teacher to fill the classroom for a teacher that is sick with covid the only alternative really is to find somebody who is already working in the building to cover the class. i talked to teachers who essentially are giving up their break. -- their break period to substitute for a class, teachers often work nights and weekends to serve students. but we are seeing a lot more of that and we are seeing things like rinse bows and administrators cutting behind cafeteria lines and helping the school bus to just ensure that the daily operation of schools is happening and that is purely talking about the logistics of the school day going from morning until afternoon, and that is what we did. all of this is part of the challenges of providing a robust instructional experience for students, especially given that students are dealing with what

is really an unprecedented disruption in their learning process. so, certainly i think parents and those in education have a right and should expect big things from the teachers and from their schools in terms of serving the students, and i think teachers and schools tend to feel the weight of that responsibility. a lot of my reporting is focused on the ways in which those jobs are extremely difficult and it is sort of an uphill battle to get through the day, let alone achieve everything that they want to achieve. it is a tough situation for everybody whether it is teachers, parents, and school administrators. it is time where there is pressure from alta -- from all sides. host: a parent in wisconsin. hello, mary. caller: if the kids were treated

with love, those children would obviously want to come to school. and, you cannot expect a child not to have a goal, maybe prayer, maybe just to teach one commandment. they have taken religion out of schools and schools have been failing. host: those are not the topics for our guest. he is dealing with covid-19 funds. do you have a topic addressed to that? caller: my husband is a physician and he works in the hospital and some of the money that has gone to teachers should be going to the nurses and technicians and the people in dietary because they are the ones that bare the burden of taking care of everyone and they all got covid. host: mary. to that end, do school nurse programs or nursing programs or health programs within schools get the money specifically? guest: yes. one of the things that the

school districts is using the money for is using it to improve their health departments and protocol. obviously school districts are accustomed to a certain extent to dealing with illness within their buildings. you know, schools are known as a hotbed for germs just given the collision of students and adults on a daily basis, so flu outbreaks and most things are familiar. so the extent of what schools are expected to do from a health perspective has really never -- we have never seen this before. a lot of schools are offering masks to students, hosting vaccine clinics in their communities even for people who are not attending the school or working for the school. of course, we are seeing one of the conditions for schools reopening that the schools have to provide or schools are finding that they need to

provide some extent of covid-19 testing for the students and staff to ensure that outbreaks are not occurring in the building, and all of these things are responsibilities that school districts did not typically have and that people who work in schools typically did not have to do. i worked at a place where school districts were hiring additional nursing staff so they had the regular nurses to handle the covid end of things and additional nurses can deal with all of the other medical issues that come up in the school building on a regular basis. i think that is crucial with what we are talking about today is that covid has created a situation in schools where all the things that they normally do is harder and there are a lot of things they have to do now that they never really had to, and there is only so much time in the day and so many people to carry out these responsibilities. and so a lot of being -- a lot is being placed on school

districts' agendas that i think is proving a big challenge. so, absolutely. nursing and medical staff are among the priorities that schools are finding the general funds are useful for. host: pittsburgh, pennsylvania, diane on the line for others. hello. caller: i am calling because i am a resident of the pittsburgh public school district and to hear that they are sitting on a surplus from the covid-19 funding, from -- from the federal government and yet taking up property taxes. we received an increase of 3% from 2022 school year, they are sitting on $145 million just on a reserve, and in addition to that, the pandemic relief money from the federal government, who audits them? they are not held up out -- held

accountable for answers for where these funds are going to go or sit there for the future when they are sitting there making the taxpayer pay for the funding of their so-called shortfall. host: thank you. guest: i cannot speak to pittsburgh in particular, but i will say a couple of things. one, the federal government's most recent set of funds came with a requirement for school districts to seek meaningful consultation with the community about how the funds are being spent. meaningful consultation is a term that can be defined in a lot of different ways. but i think the overall thrust of the requirement is that schools need to be actively engaging with the community that they serve in order to understand what they expect to be doing and how they expect the funds to be spent. there is really an obligation for school districts to be as

transparent as they can and proactive to engage with families and maybe with those who do not typically interact with the school system on a regular basis but have strong ideas about what they want the money to be spent on or stories would really inform what school district most -- district's most significant needs on. i think members of the public should feel empowered to have school districts engage with them on these issues. in terms of the interaction of federal funds with schools reserves or state and local funding. in a typical situation is that a majority of their funding comes from state and local sources. and these federal funds have created a situation where they have a bigger slice of the pie in terms of school funding than it normally does.

going back to what i said earlier about these funds being temporary. school districts epic -- recognize that the surplus that they are experiencing right now in places where they are experiencing that is temporary and andalusian. the funds are going to run out at some point and they expire. whether they are spent or not. many school districts are trying to find a balance between dealing with the immediate needs that they have and addressing the chaos in the school building and while also taking a long look on what is our budget situation going on in five or 10 years, and i think they are finding as anyone can appreciate having our current conditions in the pandemic, predicting that far out what is are going to look like is tougher than it has ever been. in 2019 the school districts made a five-year plan, and i think many of them would be

looking back and saying we could not have done this with anything has happened in the past few years. i think that some of the efforts to whether it is raise taxes or look further out in terms of sources of funding reflect a desire to not be caught offguard by unexpected developments, and to take a bit of a more proactive look at what might be coming or might how it -- or how that might impact the school district. host: what determines how much a school will receive? guest: in terms of federal funding, the title i formula is a complex formula but the essential purpose is to identify students in poverty and to direct more money to schools with high percentages of those students than students with low percentages. there are some who say the

formula is outdated or an aspect of how it works does not fully capture all of the students who would benefit from additional funding. the idea that being that students in poverty are at a disadvantage in terms of resources that they have at home and they might need more help from a school than a student who is not in poverty. the federal government chose to use the title i formula to funnel the covid relief in part because it was an existing formula geared towards schools with high needs, and they did not have to create a new mechanism for sending funds. like i said before, we are seeing some school districts with quite a bit of money for a student to work with a well -- as well as some school districts that are using this for useful things on the margin, may be buying new computers or

purchasing masks as many schools are doing again in light of the omicron variant. so, i think you are saying that some school districts it is more transformative than others. host: mike in michigan. hello. caller: thank you for taking my call. per the previous caller who was saying that the teachers are not very qualified or not very good, does mr. lieberman see that in the future, teacher salaries will increase so the workforce and the number of teachers can be expanded to relieve the teachers that do get covid? thank you. guest: that is a great question. i think there are a few answers. in general right now a lot of schools are seeing the teacher retention and teacher hiring issue as one of their biggest priorities.

a lot of schools are seeing that teachers are burned out, they are frustrated, that they are disillusioned with the experience that they are getting from the work that they do, or the balance of the reward that they are getting from their work versus the amount of effort and sacrifices that they are making. we are seeing a lot of schools really thinking hard about prioritizing ways to entice people to want to work in schools. i think one principal told me from north carolina said that she had trouble hiring people for her school and i think it was a middle school. she was saying that part of the challenge is that she used to be able to say yes, we do not pay as much as x company, but it is a more rewarding experience to serve students than it is to work at whatever that company might be. the problem she says she is having is that because of the

pandemic and because of the chaos in schools and the political pressure on schools in various directions it is harder for her to convincingly tell someone that this will be a really rewarding and pleasurable experience and i think that makes it more challenging to recruit people who are qualified and wants to teach. the other thing is that prior to the pandemic we saw a surge in activism among teachers, essentially agitating for better pay, and we are still seeing that in pockets around the country like in mississippi there is a polished increase -- a push to increase teacher pay and that is one of them -- one of the states that pays teachers less on average. i think you are seeing that in concert with the broader movement in the labor force in america to demand that are working conditions and better pay for vital contributions to

society, i think you are seeing teachers really recognizing their value and sort of their place in the world, and the importance that has been placed on them in terms of shaping the world of tomorrow. and, you are seeing a lot of them really expecting to be treated better than they historically have. host: from alabama a parent. good morning. caller: good morning. i always watch you just for the ties. host: you were on with your guest. if you have a question or comment for him, you can direct it to him. caller: here in alabama the legislature flights like cats and dogs trying to divide the covid money, it seems like they are trying to line their own pockets than helping people. people who do not think this

covid israel, and since november -- is real, since november 15 my brother has lost a son my wife has lost a nephew, and last friday we buried my mother. so to all of you that do not wear a mask and get vaccinated i just want to say thank you. that is all i have got to say. host: i am sorry for your loss. we will go to jorge, new mexico. the last call for our guest. good morning. caller: thank you for c-span. i think the way to raise the pay is to save the money, and a couple of ways to do that is going solar, saving on energy costs, and utilizing the space better. i envision each classroom having an indoor walled garden, plants are known to clean the air.

teachers are already busy enough, and so maybe the kids -- the schools could hire a gardener, or a groundskeeper that can go into the classrooms, show the children how to garden. for maybe bigger schools with more land they could also incorporate animal husbandry and supplement the food, -- host: we got the thought. what is the potential for future money, even on top of what has been granted? guest: absolutely. i would say at this point there is not a lot of optimism among school districts that they will be receiving a fourth round of congressional aid tied to the pandemic emergency. stranger things have happened. there has been some early talk reported about another stimulus

package geared toward small businesses. we are not seeing a huge push on capitol hill for additional funds in part because of an area of schools getting a ton of money and working through that. there was talk last year, president biden's proposal for his big bid -- build back better plan that is languishing in congress. part of that proposal had 100 billion dollars in funding for school modernization. it is complicated but school construction is funded separately from the annual operating fund that schools are dealing with in terms of the daily operation. so those funds would have been geared towards improving the state of schools around the country. a lot of them are poorly -- pretty dilapidated and in need of significant repairs and some of them are 50 to 100 years old, and in some cases they might be unsafe for students and adults to be in on a regular basis.

that funding has fallen out of the package negotiations, so advocates are looking for congress to fund a school modernization in a separate bill that has been introduced in the house, but i do not believe is imminently moving forward. at the moment that he does not seem to be particularly optimistic prospects for emergency funding. there are some conversations at the state and federal level about expanding funding for schools on a more permanent basis, those conversations are ongoing. host: mark lieberman reports for "education week" and you can find his work at edweek.org. thank you for your time. we will spend about the next half hour returning to the question that we started with this morning. in the spirit of the state of the straight -- state of the state addresses we want to ask about the major issues facing

your state and here is how you can let us know those issues. 202-748-8000 for those in the eastern and central time zones. 202-748-8001 in the mountain and pacific time zones. you can text us at 202-748-8003. we will take those calls when " washington journal" continues. ♪ >> >> exploring the people and events that tell the american story on american history tv, on the presidency, two programs about how presidents influence the early space race. first, a look at eisenhower's administration and the creation of nasa in the 1950's. and then mercury rising. john glenn, john kennedy and a new battleground of the cold war and the history of the filibuster in american politics from the national execution --

constitution center. watch american history tv every weekend and find a full schedule on your program guide. >> sunday, february 6, on in-depth, georgetown university law professor will be our live guest to talk about race relations and inequality in america. join in the conversation with your phone calls, facebook comments, texts and tweets, live, sunday, february 6, at noon eastern on book tv on c-span2. ♪