Springfield superintendent: When it comes to schools, weeding is fundamental

In this part of KOLR's wide-ranging interview with first year Springfield Superintendent John Jungmann, he talks about some items which should be of interest to those who are paying taxes in the Joplin R-8 School District, especially what he has to say concerning grant money. In Joplin, we receive grant money to start programs, but when the money is gone, the programs just go on and on.

Brett Martin, KOLR10 "In the past, have you gotten creative with ways? Obviously there is a lot of bonds, grants, things out there that could help."

Dr. John Jungmann, SPS Superintendent: "Not a ton of grant because, unfortunately, grants go away. They are often seed money, they start a project but when they walk away, you still have to have the ability to fund. I think the best place to start is really looking hard at your original budget and saying what have we been trusted with and what can we reallocate and what can we stop doing so that we can start doing something else. You know, in education, often, we just plant another seed, we add something, add something. We are having a lot of conversations about how do we weed the garden, how do we pull things out that were planted at one point right? As productive ways to improve the system but when you just continue to plant, continue to plant and you never weed, some of those flowers just continue to choke out the life of your system so I think that's when you have to look at your budget with that philosophy, how do we weed so that we can really focus on the things that we need to focus on."