Why did you feel it necessary to start a private school in your area?
We felt it was necessary to start our own private school for many of the same reasons that other parent groups start a school, we could not find a suitable position in a suitable school for our children. We were a group of families that broke away from an established school that offered a great education for our children, but the board approached the parents for more money, and we felt that the money would not dealt with wisely. We lost any faith we had in the business side of the school.
We had had a taste of what a private school education meant for our children, and we would not give that up. In the process, most parents explored the alternatives that were in the area, and we determined that we were not comfortable with them. We have as one of our founding tenets to be grass roots, down to earth, etc. even though we have a pretty sophisticated parent group--(company presidents, lawyers, doctor etc). In our process, we found that we moved from being consumers of an educational product to being a community.
Where did you get your seed money?
Our seed money came from the founding families, with a capital contribution based on a per student basis. In our parent group, we had a lot of resources that we could draw on, with expertise in many areas, so that the proceeds could be used for all the right things-like teachers, textbooks and the like.
What pitfalls, hurdles, challenges can you list which others will have to deal with or might possibly be able to avoid?
The challenges that we faced were not unlike other groups starting a school, trying to find a Head of School, premises, and seed capital. We found that the most effective thing that we did was narrow down the decision making to one or two people for each particular area of concern, that came from different skill levels, and who were not afraid to say "I don't know, let's get the answer." We also kept our focus on the kids, and what was in their best interest. We had some minor discontent with some of the decisions, but in the end, most were happy with the overall picture. As one parent said to me, in every group there will be people who will have an issue with 10% of whatever decision you make, so you cannot focus on the 10% but focus on the 90%. And this has worked for us.
How many years before opening the doors did you start the process?
We started the process in February of this year, and worked very hard to get everything ready for this September. If I had it to do over again, I don't think that we would have been able to accomplish it if we had lots of time, because parents would have had time to second guess their decisions, and we might have died from attrition.
