KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Operation Breakthrough education center is opening its doors Tuesday for parents and families needing help because of the weather.
The center was closed Monday for Martin Luther King Jr. Day, something very rare for Operation Breakthrough.
As snow began to fall Monday, a number of Kansas City area schools announced closings, meaning parents like Jennifer Howard had to think about where her four kids were going to go Tuesday.
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“I gotta be at work; I gotta be at school,” Howard said.
Howard first discovered Operation Breakthrough in 2019 and hasn’t looked back. The center provides a number of services, including educational, health and parental programming.
“It’s safe, it’s dry, it’s warm, it’s structured,” Howard said.
But beyond that, it’s a place she can rely on.
“It means everything, yeah. It’s like my lifeline,” Howard said. “If I didn’t have Operation Breakthrough, I don’t know what I would do. Probably wouldn’t have a job; probably wouldn’t be in school.”
In addition to working as a medical assistant, she also started taking nursing classes on the weekends.
Having a place like Operation Breakthrough doesn’t mean her days aren’t busy, but they are manageable, especially in a first-responder field.
“I need to be in clinic with my patients everyday,” Howard said. “They don’t close down for the cold, you know, either. That’s the biggest time when our patients come through the door.”
Mary Esselman, Operation Breakthrough’s CEO, says a large number of parents at Operation Breakthrough are essential workers like Howard, who have no choice but to go in during snowy weather.
“For some of them, a day of work could mean a utility bill that doesn’t get paid, rent that doesn’t get paid, so we always try to make sure that we’re here,” Esselman said.
This year, she says the center is implementing a smaller "emergency snow crew" of dedicated employees who can come in for parents who need a place for their kids to go.
“We always try to stay open, even when schools are closed, because we have a lot of families who don’t have benefits, so they don’t have the ability to take time off or have kind of that PTO,” Esselman. “Think about this last week, it’s been cold, it’s been snowy, a lot of kids have missed four days of school, and so on, we want to keep kids learning, we want to keep kids safe.”
Esselman says Operation Breakthrough serves about 450 families and that information about openings — which she says have an uptick in the summer — can be found on their website.
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