With no federal funding, the closest town with a grocery store 17 miles away and some of the lowest-paid teachers in the country, this school district offers child care for teachers to improve retention rates.

“We have one elementary hallway, one high school hallway, and so there’s a lot of interaction between our ‘littles’ and our big kids. We have high school kids who do tutoring, and they go into the elementary classes and work with the elementary kiddos. We are pretty unique, I think.”

A small south-central Missouri school district provides daycare services for its employees to help with staffing shortages.

Perhaps a daycare isn’t the way to solve all of the school district’s challenges, but it is a way to help support its people and mission in a way that keeps it relevant in the lives of its people, and for the future of a place that is part of who they are.

“We have one elementary hallway, one high school hallway, and so there’s a lot of interaction between our ‘littles’ and our big kids. We have high school kids who do tutoring, and they go into the elementary classes and work with the elementary kiddos. We are pretty unique, I think.”