RRRRINGGG! RRRINGGG! The jarring sound rips through the cocoon of concentration in the class. Without batting an eyelash, Abby Rice hoists Tyler to one hip, takes Gootsang by the hand, and asks Kimberly to lead the way. �Is this a real fire? No!� Abby calls out emphatically. �We will walk out on the grass and just wait until someone tells us to come back in.�

Groups of small children file out from various doors of this elementary school. Abby leads her class of preschool children across the parking lot to a grassy field about 150 feet from the building. Gradually the emergence of an anomalous group becomes apparent from one door at the far side of the school. It�s a line of adults, filing slowly toward the grassy field.

�Mommy!� a gleeful voice breaks through the mellow September morning. It�s Kimberly flying across the grass toward a sturdily built woman in blue jeans and flannel shirt.

In a moment another woman approaches, slim and fine-featured, long brown hair pulled back from her face. She lifts Tyler. �Have you been a good boy?� she murmurs, braces lining her smile as she draws the child tenderly into her chest.

A black-haired man, just over five feet tall, grasps Gootsang under the arms. He lifts her like a doll baby high over his head. �Ring! Ring! Ring!� Playfully he imitates the fire alarm for the giggling girl, a ring of keys jangling out over his back pocket as he circles in the grass.

Such magic moments occur because community leaders in Chandler, Wisconsin, have worked for years in a complex collaborative to achieve a multi-dimensional family literacy program. The challenge was to bring adult education and early childhood education into proximity with one another; and doing so with limited resources has tapped the creativity and good will of key persons in several social agencies in Chandler. Currently, the partners in this collaborative strive to continue providing educational services to families during the transitional phases of welfare reform.

About ten years ago Jessica Collins first began thinking of bringing parents and children to school together in Chandler. �They can even ride the school bus together!� she dreamed.

To make the dream a reality, Jessica worked from her pivotal position as executive director of the Evergreen Valley affiliate of Literacy Volunteers of America, Inc. This national network of not-for-profit organizations is dedicated to helping adults achieve their personal goals through literacy, by using the services of trained volunteers. From its main office in Chandler, the affiliate provides one-to-one tutoring and other literacy services for adults in three counties. Locally, the Literacy Volunteers of America�Evergreen Valley is known, for short, as �LVA.�

An energetic leader with a vision of a new kind of school, Jessica planned how to pull from the community what she needed�teachers, furniture, books, tutors, a school bus, a social worker, classroom space, and swimming privileges at the YMCA. �The emphasis will be on families,� she said. �The family is the important thing.�

The point was to �break the intergenerational cycle of illiteracy.� If parents learned to read and write better�and, at the same time and in a nearby place, if their children got a head start in building a base for literacy�and if the adults were also coached in parenting�and if the parents and children had opportunities to use their acquired skills together�the illiteracy cycle could be broken, and families would be growing toward self-sufficiency.

So here they are on a September morning, adult basic skills students and their preschool children�all enrolled in the family literacy program, which has been granted space in the Sims Park Early Education Center in Chandler, Wisconsin. Classrooms on the first floor of this public school are occupied by groups of small children, including a bilingual group, a class for the hearing-impaired, and the family literacy daycare. The single classroom upstairs has been fitted with furniture big enough for adults, who sit at tables arranged in the shape of a horseshoe.