Private school and start small?

I would LOVE comments on this, as well as people telling me if they would want to send THEIR children to this type of school.

 

Today our sermon at church was about sacrifices that we have to make to do the right thing.  I was thinking AGAIN that this school is really something I would like to get off the ground, even though I keep hitting brick walls and do not know how to get past those problems.

 

So, it occurs to me that since I cannot seem to get the public school people involved, it might have to be private.  And since I can’t know yet about getting the building I would really like, it might have to start someplace else.  I think perhaps I will try to get together a “board” and do the nonprofit thing.  And start writing to foundations to get money.  I started wondering how we could start small.  I will approach the pastor (although it would probably have to also involve the Trustees, as Methodist pastors don’t stay around for years and years, especially with the new bishop) again about whether we could perhaps do a school at the church.  He said before that it would be okay for us to do a homeschool coop in the building, as long as we checked that we were following any laws.

 

We would need a Principal Teacher, I think.   Someone who has experience as a professional educator, who could be the last word for discipline and tuition collection.  So, if we could just get enough money to pay ONE full time person a decent salary.  Someone who wants to help implement a project-based curriculum.

Doing the homeschool coalition WITH a principal teacher and meeting at the church might be enough to get started.  With some grant money we could keep the tuition low.

 

It would be handy to have more computers and other science equipment, like microscopes.  If the church would let us use space, they might also let us use a few computers–there is a small computer lab with 5-6 PCs.  But more would be good.  If we couldn’t get the money for more, maybe we could require students come with a laptop.  I just got an older Mac laptop with wireless internet for under $200 and I am guessing people can find older microsoft-running laptops for less.  They would just need to do internet and wordprocessing.

 

Private schools in Huntington seem to be $2-$4k per year for tuition.  I would still prefer a tuition-free school, but am thinking perhaps we could have a sliding scale with “sweat equity” from parents to decrease tuition from those who have more time than money.

 

We would need an application process, with at least a small fee to apply for admission (could be waived as necessary).  We would need to make it clear we could not, at this time, serve physically challenged nor much in the way of mentally challenged students.  We will NOT keep students who are discipline problems.  Parents who do not pay tuition and/or sweat equity will have their children removed from the school.

 

I’m starting to bang my head about how to provide all of the coursework needed, but I’ll get to that.  Maybe if we start small and get some grants and do well, we could attract more grants and more teachers, more students, a bigger facility.  Maybe we could figure out how to get ahold of a real school building.  I will ask Suzanne Oxley again about what she thinks about the Miller school building and if it has already been “promised” to another organization.

 

Please comment or contact me off-blog!  I would love to hear what you think!!