Everyday Heroes: Jennifer Jones

Jones knows well the challenges parents of children with special needs have.

“We adopted five kids with special needs in six years. That’s the path God took us on,” said Jones, whose children range in age from 14-29 and have a variety of medical and developmental conditions. “It wasn’t an easy thing to do. Then God put it on my heart to start Apparo. I knew what I needed to do to help the children because I was a therapist and educator. I know what parents need and I know what’s lacking in the community.”

Jones has worked as a therapist for 30 years. At one time, she ran a preschool for deaf children in Augusta.

Over the years, Jones grew frustrated as “Medicaid and insurance started dictating what children could receive for therapy,” she said.

In some cases, children were relegated to one 30-minute therapy session a week. If the child or therapist was sick or a conflict came up with the appointment, that time was never made up and that session lost.

“There are one million neural connections every second in children under the age of 3. Their brains are 90% developed by the age of 5,” she said. “Why are we not doing more when they are young —when we really have the capacity to change their trajectory in life instead of waiting to 7 or 8 and giving them 30 minutes of pull-out once a week? It’s not going to change anything. You can’t learn anything in 30 minutes a week.”

She took matters into her own hands. At first, she started providing extra therapy for free, then her brother suggested she form a non-profit. She did that about 15 years ago and started raising money to help pay for extra therapy sessions for children.

Around 2015, she said she felt God putting the school on her heart. She traveled to different schools with similar concepts, but none of them was run by a therapist.

At Apparo, children receive as much therapy as they need, regardless of insurance, and services are integrated with therapists and teachers working together. Speech therapists, for example, have keys to pull out language skills in children while reading a book, she said.

Apparo started with three classrooms and 32 students. After raising $5 million in only five months, more classrooms were constructed. In September 2022, seven additional classrooms were opened to more than double the student population. In March, two more classrooms opened, bringing the number of students to 84.

In August, Apparo opened a transitional kindergarten.

“We have 200 children in our clinic, and 103 enrolled in the school. In one year, we’ve tripled our capacity from a therapy standpoint and the school,” she said.

But there’s more to be done.

“My biggest goal for Apparo is to grow into being a bigger resource of help after they leave here,” she said.

She wants to add an afterschool program and a summer camp because the need is there.

Jones said the bulk of Apparo’s $4 million annual budget is earmarked to pay the salaries of the teachers and therapists the school employs. There are three teachers for every 10 children. Many of the children receive scholarships to attend the school. She cuts down on administrative costs by acting as the school’s CFO, CEO and head grant writer, among the many hats she wears.

“If I get money, I want to spend it on another teacher or therapist,” said Jones.