EXCERPT FROM: KY3 News
By Abby Wuellner
SPRINGFIELD, Mo. -- More than 24,000 students headed back to class in the Springfield School District this week; 300 students, however, will wait until next Monday to start classes. For now, their teachers are the students.
Jill Scruggs is among the Wonder Years instructors who is spending her mornings this week in an auditorium, then filing into the classroom in the afternoons. Next week, they'll turn the tables in a total of 22 district sections of Wonder Years, a federally funded pre-kindergarten program..
They've added six classrooms this year thanks to stimulus funds. The program now employs a dozen more teachers and paraprofessionals, and serves 90 more 4-year-old children.
The expansion comes at the same time the district had to cut Parents as Teachers services.
"When one of those pieces gets cut, someone else needs to pick up the slack," said Missy Riley, the district's director of Early Childhood Education.
Scruggs is experiencing both sides. Her job as a parent-educator was one of 15 eliminated in the last year.