Teaching Reading in the Hybrid School

If you are launching or running a hybrid program for early elementary kids, you are going to have to decide how to teach reading. Like math, this skill-based subject can be a little tough to teach if you don’t have a good plan. Unless you are following a schedule where days are short and parents have time to teach reading all five days at home, you will likely need to cover it in some capacity.

More and more parents are coming to hybrids because they want strong guidance in academics, so many wary homeschoolers will be reassured if you offer reading instruction. I’m always a fan of good, old - fashioned phonics taught systematically! It certainly can be done in the hybrid model, so let’s talk about how.

• Require all your parents to use the curriculum your school chooses and uses at home. This is the most seamless method, theoretically!

• You can also teach what you can and rely on them to do their part at home, or

• You can just reinforce and review.

The most school-led method is obviously the first. You require your parents to purchase (or provide them with) the pieces of the curriculum they will need at home. Then the teacher will pace out the year and divide the school and home work up predictably, communicate it clearly, and parents must follow along. This last part can be the sticky piece! If parents do NOT follow along, students end up working at different paces and it can be quite frustrating for the teacher. If they do follow along (and how successful this is is an admissions, training, culture thing!), it can work beautifully.

The second method keeps school days self-contained. The teacher chooses certain topics to teach and both presents and practices those with the students. Work at home is parent-chosen. This method can also work well as long as the pace is realistic and the parents are using a good phonics curriculum as well. This format allows parents to choose what they want to use and can afford, which is appealing to many of them, and also keeps the teacher from having to rely so heavily on parents keeping pace.

Lastly, the teacher can just work on word building and basic skills. The best way to do this is usually to have the teacher work on skills the student should have learned the previous year. A kindergarten may just work on letter recognition, rhyming, etc… This allows the teacher to not be reliant on what the parent does at home (not very much anyway!) and to work with the class where they are at. However, it may not feel like the best use of time and parents who want primary instruction from school might not be thrilled with it.

To ease the tension some, I recommend:

• Ask parents in the application process what curriculum they are going to use for reading or if they will use the school’s recommendation.

• Choose something solid for your teachers to work off of! A systematic teaching of letter sounds, CVC words, and then the phonics blends can be spread over three years and the students will learn a lot.

• Train your teachers! Make sure they know how to use the curriculum, what they are and are not expected to accomplish (many full-time school teachers have a hard time realizing they are not solely responsible for teaching the kids to read!), but give them some leeway to adjust to their class as well.

• Give assessments either during admissions or at the start of the school year. Do this a couple more times during the year. This helps you know if there are any potential concerns such as learning difficulties or parents who are just not doing anything at home, and gives you something objective to talk to the parent about.

• Give strong recommendations for home curriculum and maybe even incentivize through bulk ordering/discounts the curriculum you would like them to use

Parents and teachers work closely together to educate a child in the hybrid model and the skill subjects can certainly be done very well in this partnership.

The Grassroots Hybrid School Founder: Part 2-Your Market

Once you have your vision clearly defined, you want to take a good look at your market.

Your goal in doing this is to make sure your vision fits your market from a business standpoint.

ECONOMY

Your delightful dream of 250 kids paying $3,500 a year for a 2-day program might have no trouble coming to fruition in a well-populated area with a pretty good average income, but in a rural area or poorer area, you may need to cut some expenses or hours/weeks to get your tuition under $3000, or even $2,000. You might need to rely more on volunteers or get a building that will give you a very good deal.

COMPETITION

A very robust program might thrive in a place where there are no other private schooling choices, but not in a place where a local charter or religious school costs $0-$5000. What other choices do people have and how much do they cost? Remember that defining your niche clearly is one of the best things you can do! If you are the ONLY school of any type around that has Nature Study class and multiple recesses… or a classical curricula, etc.., it may not matter that there are four affordable private schools within an hour. Differentiating your offering is one of the best things you can do!

Once you have taken a bit of time to think about what your community will support, take your vision and make any modifications you need to to make it fit reality. This is most likely going to mean a change to your tuition, schedule, or further clarification of your uniqueness.

Assessing your market does not have to be a science. Even economists make an awful lot of guesses and get things all wrong :) But if you know who your competition is, how much they cost, and what they offer; what your potential customer can support financially and practically (think distance of driving and length of day), you will have taken a very useful step toward making sure you make any practical modifications early on in your planning.

Some questions to ask

• What differentiates my program from my competition?

  • Price?

  • Philosophy?

• How far do people need to commute to my program?

  • A lot of people driving far might favor fewer but longer days

  • Dense population might support shorter days

• What is average income?

  • An area with a good economy is more likely to afford a little higher tuition which may translate to more hours of school time

  • An area with a poorer economy or lower average income may need a one day program or shorter days

Good luck!

The Grassroots Hybrid School Founder: Preparing Part 1-Vision

Vision

What is your vision for a hybrid school? As a founder, you need to have a vision…fuzzy though it may be…of what you want to build in order to build it. That might sound obvious, but sometimes a vision can be so fuzzy, you lose your way trying to get to it. The realities of the decisions that need to be made, people’s opinions, and even convenience(or panic!) can all contribute to lessening the zeal that may have first gotten you started. The clouds roll in and you can’t see where you were going. Don’t let it happen!

Are you building a hybrid school because of the hybrid model itself? Because of a philosophy of education that is not easily accessible? elsewhere  Both?

Is your driving motivation affordability? Flexibility? Community? Enrichment? Core academics? 

You will get input and opinions as you build your program. Someone won’t like some piece of what you want to build. If your vision is clear, you can take opinions for what they are. Just opinions.  

Write out your vision statement. Who do you want to serve and with what?  Be specific. Make it focused. Make it succinct.

You DO want to match this to the realities of your market and we will discuss this next. But start with your vision and then fit the market and vision together proactively and carefully.

What is a hybrid school anyway?

Hybrid schools are private* programs that combine part-time school attendance with part-time homeschooling. Unlike the homeschool cooperatives of the last few decades which require volunteer time exchange and have low fees, hybrids employ teachers and a typical school staff and parents pay with tuition instead of their time. 

Many hybrid programs run two days a week with three days spent at home, but they can run one or three days, full days or shorter days. They can run for an average full school year of 36 weeks or a longer or shorter school year. Assignments may or may not be required for home days and all academic subjects may or may not be covered at school. 

There are no rules!

However, good business sense says that  it behooves a founder to have a good read on what support families are looking for and what they can afford as far as both money and time. A founder who has a good handle on what homeschool law requires in his or her state as well, can craft a program that serves the local community with a quality program.

I have seen more and more young families whom I am dubbing  functional ‘hybrid schoolers’, not ‘homeschoolers’, despite the fact that they are legally homeschooling. Many of these families want the program to be the driver and guide of their child’s education because they want alternatives, but do not necessarily want to homeschool. For this reason, programs serving young families may want to build a robust program that gives at least the option of thorough guidance in all required subjects. 

In any case, a founder wants to build a program that fits his or her own vision and passion, but also takes into account the local market. Some geographic areas may support a three-day program, while others may only support one or two days. More hours will cost more, so socioeconomic averages and population density should both be considered when crafting a plan. 

Next time, we will discuss some different options for a hybrid school schedule.

*While theoretically a hybrid could be licensed with the state as a legal school with home as a satellite campus, grassroots founders generally organize as an LLC or Nonprofit and offer their service as a supplement to  families that are legally homeschooling and this is how I am defining hybrid schools. 

Budgeting the hybrid model

Having a good planning budget to work off of is one of the most essential pieces of groundwork for a solid hybrid program. As in any business, you will want to make sure costs are covered by revenue and there is a cushion of some type built in. The major expense categories are not too complicated, so let’s take a look at them:

Building: Rent and Cleaning. Depending on your situation, you will almost certainly need to budget for rent. Many hybrid schools will utilize churches as landlords, but unless the church is treating your program as a ministry that it funds, they will probably want a ‘donation’ to cover costs. This could be anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousands dollars per month. You will want an agreement in place before you decide on tuition. Make sure you discuss cleaning! A small program may get by with volunteers, but it is smart to at least plan on some sort of cleaning expense in your budget to prevent burnout. Nothing burns staff out faster than having to stay late to wipe bathrooms and sweep hallways every week!

Payroll: Administration, teacher, and aide pay will likely be your biggest total expense. Set your salary amounts based on a competitive pay for the skill set you want, and then add 10% for payroll taxes. I would recommend using a payroll company which will cost $50-100 per month (usually a set fee plus $6-10 per employee). It is very wise to also add in a category for substitutes if you teachers get any paid sick days. Paying subs on top of regular payroll can add up quickly! See the article preceding this one on Administration for the positions you will want to budget in for administration. Having an aide or assistant per 2 classes or so is also very beneficial (and some classes may need an assistant of their own). I can’t say often enough that planning for all these things from the start will keep you from having to find the money for them later on!

Curriculum and Supplies: If you purchase all your books and supplies used at school out of your budget, you will need to set aside several thousand dollars per year. A supply fee can also be useful for this, but keeping fees to a minimum usually makes families happier.

Training: A quality program will invest time and resources into training teachers. Especially if your philosophy is not standard fare, you may need to put quite a few hours into training time and/or resources. One way to do this is through books and podcasts, but you will find it beneficial to also pay your teachers for at least an inservice week.

Insurances: You probably will need Workers’ Compensation, Directors and Officers', Liability, and Property insurances. These will be a few thousand a year.

Miscellaneous. Always put in a category for surprises. A few thousand dollars extra to catch anything you didn’t think of or unexpected expenses will keep you in good shape when inevitable things come up.

After you have these totals, you should add another 10% as a cushion, and then work backward from that total for your tuition and class sizes. Low tuition and small classes rarely works, but there can be a nice sweet spot where classes are not too large and tuition isn’t either.