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Little White Schoolhouse looks to bridge pandemic education gap

The educational center is a place where students, pre-K through college, can get extra help from teachers in the area — and the owner says the need has only grown.

ANKENY, Iowa — At the Little White Schoolhouse, teachers and tutors are helping students piece together the learning gaps caused by the pandemic. 

"These are amazing people that are doing full time jobs all day in our metro classrooms. And then they're coming here because they know kids are behind and they want to help them," said Megan Schmelzer, the owner of Little White Schoolhouse.

The educational center is a place where students, pre-K through college, can get extra help from teachers in the area. Schmelzer said that after the pandemic, the need for their services has only grown.

"We're in the classrooms working with these kids. And we're seeing the impacts," Schmelzer said. "Not only are we seeing academic impacts, we're seeing the social-emotional and the mental health impact."

Jennifer Soulinthavong says she's seen these affects in her 13-year-old son, Daniel. According to Soulinthavong, her son's special needs learning journey has had many bumps in the road.

"From the fourth grade until last year, he was not able to do any form of school, he would be removed from even the special education geared private schools that we tried," she said.

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As soon as Daniel stepped foot in the Little White Schoolhouse, his mom knew they'd finally found a good fit. 

"He has covered two grades. And by the end of this year, we'll be caught up to his grade level as a 13, soon to be 14-year-old. It's restored hope with us," Soulinthavong said.

Schmelzer said she hopes more kids come to visit the center and have success stories like Daniel. 

"We can prove to them that every kid is smart. And they know that we're here and we're going to help them," she said. 

The Little White Schoolhouse will celebrate its first year as an institution in October. Just like the kids it helps, the schoolhouse will be growing too by adding more classes and resources for kids in need.

But the Little White Schoolhouse is not the only organization seeing these problems — Joshua Iverson, the executive director at Huntington Learning Center in West Des Moines said they are seeing their students need more help with declining scores since the start of the pandemic. 

"The one thing that we're seeing is not necessarily an uptick in the amount of students that are looking for help, but the ones that we're seeing are ones that need quite a bit more help than what we've seen in the past," Iverson said. 

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