August 20th is the first day back to class for Union Public Schools.
And there will be some new faces.
That's because the fast-growing district has hired 178 new teachers to keep up with the roughly 16,000 total students.
Hartzler says they're wrapping up renovation of the 6th and 7th grade center, started an expansion for the 8th grade center, and completely revamped the high school track into what he says is a state-of-the-art facility.
"We were able to really maximize our finances to be able to hire more teachers this year so that we could intentionally lower class sizes, really at ALL levels," said Superintendent Kirt Hartzler.
He says more Union kids are enrolled in fine arts classes than ever before.