4 ms·

I've lamented the fact that we are such small thinkers today. Our neighborhood public school is among the worst in the state. Local private schools cost about

by mml 16y ago

I've lamented the fact that we are such small thinkers today. Our neighborhood public school is among the worst in the state. Local private schools cost about 1500/mo for gradeschool. I was looked at as a wild man for suggesting we should start our own school. 20 kids' worth of parents can afford to employ a teacher at a very attractive rate for both parties I suspect.

patio11 16y ago
Don't beat yourself up too badly: the unions have already thought of this, and it is likely illegal in your jurisdiction. After you get past the homeschool exemption, which was a brutal battle to get approved in many jurisdictions, you'll enter a heavily regulated industry against an entrenched competitor who has a legal moat and a team of lawyers who will file papers contesting each and every one of the seventy three different approvals you'll need to open for business. This is why actual private schools in the US require strong institutional backing (i.e. a church willing to subsidize them to the tune of millions) or effort commensurate with opening a new factory rather than a new salon.
- sethg 16y ago
  I call bullshit. I send my son to a private religious school (http://www.jcdsboston.org/ http://www.jcdsboston.org/) which is not sponsored by any synagogue of millionaires. The Supreme Court declared in 1925 (Pierce v. Society of Sisters) that parents have the right to send their children to a private or religious school, and upheld in 1972 (Wisconsin v. Yoder) that parents could even get religious exemptions to state compulsory-attendance laws.
  - patio11 16y ago
    Your school's annual operating budget is $4.5 million dollars. (Of which ~$1.2 million is subsidized by your synagogue and other fundraising.) That lets them afford a staff to do things like, e.g., keep immunization records and shuffle them around when students transfer. If they didn't, they would be shut down. One issue down, seventy two to go. I am not seeing how this makes my contentions false.
    - crystalis 16y ago
      It took you less than ten minutes to notice the reply and debunk its false claims. Don't you wish people would bother to see if they were, you know, right, before they tried to call you out on something?
      - llimllib 16y ago
        and ten minutes after you posted this the guy posted a defense that at the very least passes the sniff test. You think maybe you should let an argument happen before you, you know, make snarky comments?
    - sethg 16y ago
      We are not sponsored by any synagogue. (Trust me, the synagogues compete with the Jewish schools for donations.) “Other fundraising” is our fundraising. I don’t have a breakdown of my particular school’s budget, but a sample budget for a Jewish day school (http://www.peje.org/docs/samplebudget.pdf http://www.peje.org/docs/samplebudget.pdf) estimates that about two-thirds of a school’s expenditures are going to be for personnel, and about a third of the personnel expenditures are going to be for administrative staff. I really don’t think my school spends $500K a year paying someone to shuffle immunization records around.
  - shpxnvz 16y ago
    Neither of which address his point that creating a school is very costly, in part due to regulation and (possibly) external interference. In fact, your example supports this - the website for the very school you cited announces over $1M in annual donations to their scholarship fund alone - which is precisely the level of funding patio11 suggests is necessary.
  - boredguy8 16y ago
    You underestimate the power of entrenched interests over municipalities, the largest of which is often zoning. Zoning regulations are fun in part because the government can (and often does) make ad hoc exemptions for public schools but provides very little leeway for public schools. http://reason.org/news/show/127456.html http://reason.org/news/show/127456.html discusses a bit of the problem. But to delve a little deeper: in California, nearly every municipality of any size requires a special-use permit or conditional use permit (CUP) to build a school. There is no "school" zoning code. Almost never are such permits granted in industrial use areas, despite sometimes being locations that might have little to no risk. That means the school functionally has to get a CUP in a residential zone. Which residents often don't like because, even for a small school, it means a substantial increase in traffic. This is doubly difficult because not only does the school have to fight to receive zoning, but trivial-to-place legal challenges can lead to a huge expense. For instance, challenging zoning for environmental reasons is nearly trivial but an extended environmental impact report alone can cost millions of dollars. So there's a substantial risk involved in the launch without any option for a quick buyout. Remember, these are almost all 501(c)(3) institutions (I don't know of any that aren't, but I could imagine there are).
grellas 16y ago
Local caring and local responsibility are key to any system of quality education. The public schools I grew up with in the American midwest (all lower middle class) were uniformly good but this was 50 years ago when such schools were widely funded by local sources (e.g., property taxes from the community), did not have to account to the distant bureaucracies or have to focus on prepping kids to meet minimum proficiency tests by which educational results could be measured with mirrors, and did not have to deal with unions whose goals seem to be as much about promoting the interests of their members via ever-expansive forms of public funding as they are about helping kids learn. The public high schools I attended in California in the late 1960s were also good, and it was naturally expected in that day that the vast majority of the kids would not only graduate but would also be literate and reasonably taught once they did so - there too, all funding was purely local. The key is to have the schools, whether public or private, in the hands of people who care really care about what the kids learn and that means local people who know them and know their families. This element has largely been lost in modern America's public schools, and it is a real tragedy. It is nice to see the resourcefulness of parents who seek to overcome the resulting mess but this is a struggle that is often just plain desperate in light of the overwhelming problems that now beset the public schools. This piece reminds us that there is always hope where people really care.
- DrSprout 16y ago
  >this was 50 years ago when such schools were widely funded by local sources This is really the only significant part of the equation. The system is basically designed to fail. You pass a tax levy for X mills, which brings in X amount of money for the school system, and never a dollar more. Property values go up, but property taxes do not. The budget therefore shrinks every year due to inflation, and every 10-15 years the situation gets so dire that the district has to put a ballot issue up for a tax "increase" to get funding back up to the levels of 10-15 years ago. In most areas of the Midwest, this poor voter understanding of how schools are funded has resulted in a steady decline in school expenditures, even as actual costs of education have outpaced inflation.
  - tokenadult 16y ago
llimllib 16y ago
> Once upon a time there were four smart women named Louise Sivy, Helen Braun, Ethel Rew, and Patricia Troy who saw a need for an independent early childhood and elementary program offering small classes and a challenging multi-faceted curriculum. They had been colleagues at Wroxeter-on-the-Severn School and opened Chesapeake Academy in 1980, with just 36 students. They held classes at a space previously occupied, believe it or not, by a beauty parlor. The next year classes were held in a local church before moving to our present location in Arnold, MD just a few miles from Annapolis. > The four smart women were resourceful. Moving from the beautiful castle-like school building at Wroxeter they found they were in need of basic furniture for classrooms and bartered for desks and chairs with local schools. They were conscious of fiscal needs and worked with generous families to administer the school’s financial resources. > They wrote curriculum, taught classes and worked with their faculty to lay the groundwork for the individualized curriculum and the active learning philosophy Chesapeake Academy champions today. The four smart women were visionary. They embraced technology as an educational resource, while Apple® computer company was just finding its' way into the school marketplace. http://www.chesapeakeacademy.com/podium/default.aspx?t=103674 http://www.chesapeakeacademy.com/podium/default.aspx?t=10367... Patricia Troy is the mother of Dave Troy, a local entrepreneur, and she did exactly what you're proposing.

by mml 16y ago

patio11 16y ago

Don't beat yourself up too badly: the unions have already thought of this, and it is likely illegal in your jurisdiction. After you get past the homeschool exemption, which was a brutal battle to get approved in many jurisdictions, you'll enter a heavily regulated industry against an entrenched competitor who has a legal moat and a team of lawyers who will file papers contesting each and every one of the seventy three different approvals you'll need to open for business. This is why actual private schools in the US require strong institutional backing (i.e. a church willing to subsidize them to the tune of millions) or effort commensurate with opening a new factory rather than a new salon.

sethg 16y ago
I call bullshit. I send my son to a private religious school (http://www.jcdsboston.org/ http://www.jcdsboston.org/) which is not sponsored by any synagogue of millionaires. The Supreme Court declared in 1925 (Pierce v. Society of Sisters) that parents have the right to send their children to a private or religious school, and upheld in 1972 (Wisconsin v. Yoder) that parents could even get religious exemptions to state compulsory-attendance laws.
- patio11 16y ago
  Your school's annual operating budget is $4.5 million dollars. (Of which ~$1.2 million is subsidized by your synagogue and other fundraising.) That lets them afford a staff to do things like, e.g., keep immunization records and shuffle them around when students transfer. If they didn't, they would be shut down. One issue down, seventy two to go. I am not seeing how this makes my contentions false.
  - crystalis 16y ago
    It took you less than ten minutes to notice the reply and debunk its false claims. Don't you wish people would bother to see if they were, you know, right, before they tried to call you out on something?
    - llimllib 16y ago
      and ten minutes after you posted this the guy posted a defense that at the very least passes the sniff test. You think maybe you should let an argument happen before you, you know, make snarky comments?
  - sethg 16y ago
    We are not sponsored by any synagogue. (Trust me, the synagogues compete with the Jewish schools for donations.) “Other fundraising” is our fundraising. I don’t have a breakdown of my particular school’s budget, but a sample budget for a Jewish day school (http://www.peje.org/docs/samplebudget.pdf http://www.peje.org/docs/samplebudget.pdf) estimates that about two-thirds of a school’s expenditures are going to be for personnel, and about a third of the personnel expenditures are going to be for administrative staff. I really don’t think my school spends $500K a year paying someone to shuffle immunization records around.
- shpxnvz 16y ago
  Neither of which address his point that creating a school is very costly, in part due to regulation and (possibly) external interference. In fact, your example supports this - the website for the very school you cited announces over $1M in annual donations to their scholarship fund alone - which is precisely the level of funding patio11 suggests is necessary.
- boredguy8 16y ago
  You underestimate the power of entrenched interests over municipalities, the largest of which is often zoning. Zoning regulations are fun in part because the government can (and often does) make ad hoc exemptions for public schools but provides very little leeway for public schools. http://reason.org/news/show/127456.html http://reason.org/news/show/127456.html discusses a bit of the problem. But to delve a little deeper: in California, nearly every municipality of any size requires a special-use permit or conditional use permit (CUP) to build a school. There is no "school" zoning code. Almost never are such permits granted in industrial use areas, despite sometimes being locations that might have little to no risk. That means the school functionally has to get a CUP in a residential zone. Which residents often don't like because, even for a small school, it means a substantial increase in traffic. This is doubly difficult because not only does the school have to fight to receive zoning, but trivial-to-place legal challenges can lead to a huge expense. For instance, challenging zoning for environmental reasons is nearly trivial but an extended environmental impact report alone can cost millions of dollars. So there's a substantial risk involved in the launch without any option for a quick buyout. Remember, these are almost all 501(c)(3) institutions (I don't know of any that aren't, but I could imagine there are).

grellas 16y ago

Local caring and local responsibility are key to any system of quality education. The public schools I grew up with in the American midwest (all lower middle class) were uniformly good but this was 50 years ago when such schools were widely funded by local sources (e.g., property taxes from the community), did not have to account to the distant bureaucracies or have to focus on prepping kids to meet minimum proficiency tests by which educational results could be measured with mirrors, and did not have to deal with unions whose goals seem to be as much about promoting the interests of their members via ever-expansive forms of public funding as they are about helping kids learn. The public high schools I attended in California in the late 1960s were also good, and it was naturally expected in that day that the vast majority of the kids would not only graduate but would also be literate and reasonably taught once they did so - there too, all funding was purely local. The key is to have the schools, whether public or private, in the hands of people who care really care about what the kids learn and that means local people who know them and know their families. This element has largely been lost in modern America's public schools, and it is a real tragedy. It is nice to see the resourcefulness of parents who seek to overcome the resulting mess but this is a struggle that is often just plain desperate in light of the overwhelming problems that now beset the public schools. This piece reminds us that there is always hope where people really care.

DrSprout 16y ago
>this was 50 years ago when such schools were widely funded by local sources This is really the only significant part of the equation. The system is basically designed to fail. You pass a tax levy for X mills, which brings in X amount of money for the school system, and never a dollar more. Property values go up, but property taxes do not. The budget therefore shrinks every year due to inflation, and every 10-15 years the situation gets so dire that the district has to put a ballot issue up for a tax "increase" to get funding back up to the levels of 10-15 years ago. In most areas of the Midwest, this poor voter understanding of how schools are funded has resulted in a steady decline in school expenditures, even as actual costs of education have outpaced inflation.
- tokenadult 16y ago

llimllib 16y ago

> Once upon a time there were four smart women named Louise Sivy, Helen Braun, Ethel Rew, and Patricia Troy who saw a need for an independent early childhood and elementary program offering small classes and a challenging multi-faceted curriculum. They had been colleagues at Wroxeter-on-the-Severn School and opened Chesapeake Academy in 1980, with just 36 students. They held classes at a space previously occupied, believe it or not, by a beauty parlor. The next year classes were held in a local church before moving to our present location in Arnold, MD just a few miles from Annapolis. > The four smart women were resourceful. Moving from the beautiful castle-like school building at Wroxeter they found they were in need of basic furniture for classrooms and bartered for desks and chairs with local schools. They were conscious of fiscal needs and worked with generous families to administer the school’s financial resources. > They wrote curriculum, taught classes and worked with their faculty to lay the groundwork for the individualized curriculum and the active learning philosophy Chesapeake Academy champions today. The four smart women were visionary. They embraced technology as an educational resource, while Apple® computer company was just finding its' way into the school marketplace. http://www.chesapeakeacademy.com/podium/default.aspx?t=103674 http://www.chesapeakeacademy.com/podium/default.aspx?t=10367... Patricia Troy is the mother of Dave Troy, a local entrepreneur, and she did exactly what you're proposing.