COLUMBIA — As parents and families make final preparations for the start of the new school year, classrooms across mid-Missouri will look different this year. Not because of a change of homeroom, teacher or dry erase boards, but because a staple program that allowed older adults with low incomes to come to elementary schools across mid-Missouri to mentor students and help teachers is no more.

This stood to mark the end of a 23-year journey for Phillis Jones.

"I think it's important for the kids. You don't know what kind of home life they have, and you might be the only smile they see that day," she said.

Jones is the longest serving foster grandma in central Missouri. She's been working with Vernetta Cowans in her kindergarten class at Benton Elementary School in Columbia for the past 1

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