By ERIC ADLER, The Kansas City Star

OLATHE, Kan. (AP) — Court adoption hearings tend to be intimate family affairs. Not on Monday morning, when 48 Olathe first-graders, teachers and a principal rose in a standing ovation for their friend and classmate, 6-year-old Tyler Jones, as he was adopted out of foster care.

Three full classrooms of first-graders from Havencroft Elementary School arrived inside Johnson County District Court, having filled a yellow school bus to be with the boy they knew as Jaxson, reports The Kansas City Star.

Aside from getting a new family and, what is hoped to be a far better life, Jaxson also got a new name — legally now Tyler Jaxson Jones, with his former first name becoming his middle name. That’s something Laura Jones, his new adoptive mother at age 54, has done with the five previous boys she has adopted out of foster care over the last 21 years.

“The reason I do that,” she told The Star prior to the adoption, “is because, in that way, their birth mom that loved them so much — and did the hardest thing in the world by giving them up so they could have a better life — that name stays with them. And then the mom that’s going to love them and care for them for the rest of their life, me, gives them their first name.

“With the new first name they are able to say, ‘I don’t have to be that person that I was anymore. I can be a new person. I can be a new me.’ And so they always will have with them the two names of the two women that loved them more than anything in the world.”

Judge Kathleen Sloan, 16 years on the bench, entered the courtroom shortly after 10 a.m. and took her seat.

“Welcome to the very best hearing I get to have in this courtroom,” Sloan told the crowd. “Welcome to the very best hearing that any judge gets to have in this whole courthouse. Welcome to the very best hearing any judge gets to have in the entire state of Kansas. And welcome to the very best hearing any judge gets to have in this entire country.

“There is nothing better than an adoption, in part, because you all came to the courthouse happy. I get to let you leave happier.”

Certainly that would be true for Tyler, who came to Jones for foster care slightly more than two years ago. In her 50s, Jones had not been sure that she was ready to adopt again.

ABUSED AND NEGLECTED

She was 33 when she and her then-husband, Bob Jones, began taking in foster children, planning on it leading to adoption.

“I wasn’t able to have children of my own,” Jones said. The couple have since divorced but remain close friends.

Over the years, Jones would take in more than two dozen foster children, some short-term, a few days, other much, much longer. She would adopt six, although Jones prefers to call it seven, also claiming the brother of one of her adoptive children as her own. “He calls me Mom,” she said. He is 34 now, and she has watched him go off and return from tours in Iraq.

Her adopted kids now range in age from 6 (Tyler turns 7 in August) to 34. In order of adoption they include Thomas, also known as T.J., who came in 1999 when he was age 2 and is now 22. Austin who came at age 10, Bryan also at 10 and Austin’s brother Michael at 18. Ian and Samuel came at ages 8 and 6 and now are in high school.

The Kansas Department for Children and Families said foster parents who are not relatives are compensated $24 to $90 per day, depending on the nature of the child’s needs. If parents adopt a foster child, their compensation ranges from nothing to $500 a month, usually until the child turns 18.

A vast range of abuse or neglect brought the boys to Jones’ door. One was so neglected, she said, “the dust floating in the air was his entertainment.” He was left to languish, unattended and without stimulation in his stroller so long in his early years, the first 18 months of his life, that he developed muscle and bone disorders. He weighed 15 pounds at 17 months.

Others suffered mental abuse, physical abuse or both.

“I don’t get mildly neglected children,” said Jones, who works as a paraprofessional at Havencroft.

Her now youngest son had just turned 4 when he arrived. He needed so much care.

“He would give you the shirt off his back if he knew that would help you,” Jones said. “Just because of the trauma he had been through, the only way he handled things was to yell and scream and act out.”

Jones knew the boy needed stability, a place and family that he knew would be permanent. Another upheaval and move to yet one more foster home was not going to help him. She spoke to her other boys. All were onboard to have a new brother.

“It will give him a sense of peace,” Jones said. “Oh, like, ‘I’m good. I’m forever. I’m never going to have to pack my bag again unless I’m going to visit a friend.’”

‘WE’RE STOKED’

The legal adoption took minutes. The gallery rose in a standing ovation. Tyler was asked to come up and sit in the judge’s seat and sign the official papers. She handed him a book, “Oh, the Places You’ll Go!” by Dr. Seuss. She inscribed an inside page.

It read:

“For Tyler Jaxson Jones! What a great day! What a wonderful family! What a happy day! Oh, the places you’ll go! All the best! Kathleen L. Sloan, District Judge, March 2, 2020.” She ended with a smiley face.

“We’re stoked,” brother Austin Jones, 30, said. We’re all close. He’s a good fit.”

In December, ABC News broadcast a story about how an entire kindergarten class attended a Michigan classmate’s adoption. Jones said the story gave her the idea to invite Tyler’s entire class. Sloan, the judge, said she had an entire fourth-grade class last Friday, the first time that had happened.

Before Tyler’s schoolmates left, the judge invited the students into the side room where she keeps 19 bins full of stuffed animals for any child in the courtroom. Everyone chose one; Tyler would walk away with a large, soft beagle.

The class gathered around the judge’s bench, Tyler in Sloan’s seat, for a photo, flashing thumbs up on a new life.