In many states, it is more straightforward to launch your own microschool than you might imagine. Indeed, you might be able to bootstrap the school with no upfront capital of your own.
How is this possible?
The first insight is that a child is the most important focus of a parent’s life. Entrepreneurs solve problems. If you can provide children in your community with a better educational option than currently exists, then you will find parents to be profoundly supportive. A group of supportive parents is your key to bootstrapping a microschool.
If you can get 20 parents in your community to pay $15,000 in upfront tuition, then you have $300,000 in startup capital. If you assume that 15 percent ($45,000) will be devoted to rent and 5 percent (another $15,000) to insurance and software, then you have $240,000 for salaries. If your supportive parents (or their extended network) include lawyers and accountants, try to get these services provided pro bono to the school.
You can start with a skeleton crew. If you are opening, say, a middle school for 20 students, you can get by with one Humanities guide, one STEM guide, and an administrative assistant, plus you as founder. If you have a budget of $60,000 for each of the guides and $40,000 for the administrative assistant, that leaves $80,000 for you. With health insurance and benefits, each actual salary will be much smaller, perhaps as little as $40,000 for the guides, $30,000 for the admin assistant, and $60,000 for you. One option is to share the work, getting parents to volunteer as receptionists, elective teachers, etc.
These ballpark figures are subject to regional variation. It could be that in your particular community (e.g., on the coasts) all of these costs will be much higher—perhaps in New York City or San Francisco you have to charge $30,000 in tuition even in lower-cost neighborhoods, so double (or quadruple) all of these figures in high-end neighborhoods. Or perhaps there may be some communities in which even lower prices might work.
The broader point is that when I advise aspiring school founders on starting up a school, the first step is to begin playing around with spreadsheets. Start with rough numbers regarding rent, salaries, and tuition that would be appropriate for your area and circumstances. Perhaps you need to get space for free, in a home or a church basement (which may or may not be possible). Perhaps you need to pay less in salaries or offer a shorter school day. Perhaps you need to charge more in tuition. Perhaps you do need a high-net-worth parent, or a group of professional parents, to subsidize your efforts the first year or so. If you can get a gorgeous campus donated, do it!
My general strategy for launching projects consists of four phases:
- Fantasy
- Vision
- Plan
- Action
Let’s walk through each one.
1) Fantasy
Many people have had a fantasy of starting a school. There are SO many different dissatisfactions with existing educational options. Do you believe that there should be more hands-on activities? More academic rigor? More freedom of choice for students? More vocational education? More outdoor activities?
Whatever it is, enjoy thinking about how cool it could be if you could do it YOUR way.
2) Vision
As a first step towards your vision, write as specific a statement as you can regarding your pedagogical goals. What is non-negotiable for you? You are almost certainly creating this due to some convictions you have about education. As you build the project, you will need to work with many different stakeholders, many of whom will have different visions. What can you compromise on? Which compromises would undermine the project for you?
To begin making it real, you need to begin to be more concrete about the project. Are you going to raise $5 million and spend two years on curriculum research before you get started? Or are you going to create a microschool and bootstrap as outlined above? These are very different projects, regardless of your ultimate pedagogical vision.
I recommend the spreadsheet exercise above because it helps you to become considerably more concrete with respect to the financial realities of starting a school. It is very easy to have a fantasy about starting a school. It is different to look at the numbers and think, “Wow, I might have to work really hard for years for very little money to make this happen?”
Often the possibilities for your vision are constrained in other ways by financial realities. Wouldn’t it be cool to have a full makerspace with metalworking and woodworking? Yes, it would—and is that possible given your budget constraints?
3) Plan
Once you have a clear pedagogical vision and a basic financial model that is realistic, then you can begin to plan. Your financial model is the foundation for your business plan. Osterwalder’s Business Model Canvas is a great structure for contemporary business model planning.
Create a timeline for recruiting students, identifying and leasing a site, recruiting staff, etc. Figure out drop dead dates: “If I don’t have enough students by June 30th, we need to wait until the next year.” “If I don’t get the zoning approved by May 15th, we need to find another site.” And so forth. Plan backwards from your school’s opening date. Work with professionals in your network on realistic timelines for student recruitment, zoning, staffing, etc.
Research every element. What are the legal requirements for opening a private school in your state? In many states, especially in the West, it is really easy to do so. In other states, especially on the East Coast, it can be significantly more difficult and complicated. There are some states in which the legal obstacles are such that the simple microschool budget outlined above is completely unrealistic. It may be impossible to open a school without millions in hand.
What about zoning? Again, in some parts of the country, there are few or no zoning obstacles. Conversely, in some cities and neighborhoods, it may be difficult to obtain a site that is suitably zoned. I’ve known aspiring school founders who spent years trying to get a site suitably zoned and ultimately gave up.
The more concrete your plan, the better. As you get going, you will become so busy doing that you don’t want to get into a situation in which you forgot to consider a key element.
4) Action
Once you have a well-researched, concrete plan: Go do it!
