Moberly School District recently opened its new “Little Spartans Clubhouse," an embedded, in-school daycare option for district teachers.
The new daycare is also giving opportunities to local highschoolers who want to learn more about childcare and child development.
Vicky Snodgrass is the director of the Little Spartan Clubhouse and spoke about how this new resource benefits students, teachers – and the community as a whole.
Missouri Health is spending January 2025 speaking with community members in Moberly and Randolph County. If you have a story you'd like to share, contact us at smithbecky@missouri.edu.
Vicky Snodgrass: We've been up and going since January 6. This actually was a vision of the Central Office, superintendents, and – well, it happened fast. It happened in six weeks.
They hired me as the director – I have worked in the district for 10 years – they hired me as the director, and said, “Okay, we would like to have this up and going by first of January when we come back from Christmas.” So, I hit the ground running and here we are.
The vision was phenomenal. I just loved what they came up with and this vision – it's for teacher retention and also a drawing factor for new staff. So, I look at it as a very positive thing.
Earlier, I had an interview with someone local, I said, you know, “When you work with students, sometimes you have to give them a little bit of honey to get what you want out of them.”
I look at this as we're giving our adults and our staff a little bit of honey to keep them, you know, our goal is to keep and retain awesome staff, and this is just that little bit of honey that helps. It's just a little perk.
They don't have to pay for summer breaks where[as] a lot of daycares do. They don't have to pay for Thanksgiving, Christmas breaks when we're not in session. They don't have to pay.
So, if you look at the savings that can add up to about $9,000 a year that they're getting to save. What a phenomenal thing. $9,000. That's a lot, that's a lot of savings.
And it's great for the teachers who's right here in this building, they can come down and see their kids if they have a break.
So, the high school staff, they're in a flex program where they actually get credit – high school credits, but also, they get paid.
So, they're a phenomenal staff. They have the energy. They want to be with these kids. They are learning.
It's just, all around it's a great opportunity. If they want to go into teaching, if they want to go into nursing, anything as a service – I think that it's, as far as teaching or nursing or anything like that, I think it's just a good way for them to learn, and this is a good way for them just to learn about being a mom.
I'm most excited about being able to see these kids grow up and growing up together and bonding together and just being in a family environment, because I look at this as we're family.
