Most of my qualification comes from building a program from the ground up, but I also have Masters degrees in Economics and in Educational Leadership. Providence Hybrid Academy was very much a grassroots program start-up! I didn’t do it alone, but I was there for every step and detail and am still the one who oversees the budget, compliance, admissions, et cetera. That said, I am NOT a lawyer or accountant, and sometimes I will refer you to one for some questions!

Well, that depends on how you define ‘school’. As a program that educates kids in a group with a teacher, yes. As a legally filed and recognized entity by the Department of Education…maybe. The program I built is not. It is a business that serves homeschoolers. (Some hybrid schools ARE legal schools with home as a ‘satellite campus’. The regulations are quite different for these).My specialty is in starting a business that serves homeschoolers.

Definitely not! In fact, the course was written to be applicable to various pedagogies because the vast majority of the set-up and infrastructure is unrelated to pedagogy. However, my experience and passion is for a pedagogy that is encapsulated very well by Charlotte Mason so I like to talk about it :) Any resources such as schedules, booklists, and curricula are Mason-inspired.

Childhood is a short period of life. Children are persons and to flourish as such, their minds and experiences should not be treated as assembly line production items to pass quality control standards. They need to experience, imagine, and be inspired by thoughts and ideas that feed their souls. Mason said that “Education is an atmosphere, a life, a discipline”. Atmosphere and life are often missing in hurried, scheduled, pressured hours and days of the modern culture and schools. I would love to see more children experience a childhood of nature, books, family, and play.

Hybrid schooling certainly isn’t the only way to change childhoods, but it can be an excellent tool. Because children are home about half to two thirds of their school days and the ‘discipline’ of the educational skills is far more efficient at home, they can spend significantly more time playing or pursuing their own interests. At the same time, hybrid schools days have the advantage of focused teacher time, expertise, and gifts (let’s face it, being parent and teacher is hard for a lot of us!) and this can take a huge burden off the parent to “do it all well…all by yourself”. Just as importantly, in school, kids learn to advocate for themselves, be kind to friends, deal with different sorts of people, listen to other adults, and many other things.

Parents at our hybrid school are very often what I call 1-plus income families. In order to homeschool part-time, it is certainly simpler if one parent is able to be home part-time. However, having children in school two or three days a week opens up many hours a week to work part-time. While many of our families have a stay-at-home mom and full-time working dad, many (like mine!) have one full-time working parent and one who works part-time/flexibly.

Our parents come from a range of socioeconomic classes from white collar professionals to tradespeople and business owners. It is true that having any tuition, even low tuition, makes a private program un-accessible to some. However, this can be remedied in part through scholarship programs and tuition of $300-400 a month is still far more accessible than the $900 or more that many private schools charge.

Our program does not attract very many parents who have two full-time working parents since the homeschool/child care commitment of home days makes full-time schooling more convenient for most of these parents.