CHASE on micro-schools

How are you doing? Well, man, how are you good?

It’s been forever.

It’s been a long time. I’m surprised we let it go that long. Ed,

well, I wanted you to be sure you were making money in your new business before I attacked you again. I have to be honest. I love your picture. I’m being honest with you. So I took this picture a couple of years ago. This is, of course, San Diego, downtown waterfront. I’m getting out of the way here so you can see it. And it was taken from the Sheridan airport hotel

from, yeah, hi,

I was higher up, and I just used my love it my phone,

really, that’s just a phone picture, yeah. Wow, that’s awesome, yeah. Photo,

yeah. So, yeah, I’ve got the Samsung 24 and it’s just super powerful. And then I know how to use the editing capability thing so, you know. So it’s enhanced with contrast and lens and tint and saturation and other bullshit. Yeah, so congratulations to you. So you you have a hard close at 830 30 past the hour, yep. Okay, that’s 26 minutes or so from now. So let’s so I invite you to use my screen share to upload slides that would augment your effectiveness here today,

so I started working on some but they’re not going to be ready, but I do have the stats, figures and data that’ll help.

Yeah, okay, if you want to just show what your logo is, or a picture of a micro school, that would be helpful. Now I want to tell you that I previously recorded a quick intro talking about you and your company name and the idea of micro schools. So let me ask you now. We’ll get started quickly here. What’s a micro school? It’s a private school, right?

It is, but it doesn’t have to be. The micro school does not designate where the funding comes from, but instead the size of the program.

So does that mean a one room school house that has multiple ages within it?

In some cases it can. Here’s the beautiful thing about micro schools, there is no agreed upon definition of what they are. And you could walk into five different micro schools and see five wildly different things. Sometimes it’s just one one room with a bunch of kids across different age groups. And sometimes, you know, it’s only K through five, and there’s five rooms, and so there’s a kindergarten room, a first grade room, a second grade

room, etc. That’s very interesting. Now, tell me, how is this different from the school that you introduced me to with a young woman as owner in the Phoenix suburbs?

Yeah, I think, think that was Julie, if I remember right, that we had come on and talk several years ago, and that was a charter school that was a hybrid format, and so the term charter designates where the funding comes from, and the compliance requirement that they have to abide by. So charter schools, and I know we talked about this, but it’s been a couple years, and so I’ll review it just for the listeners, a charter school is a public school. They receive public funds in order to make that school operate, and because they receive those funds, they have to follow specific compliance requirements, such as state testing, student teacher ratios, in some instances, different things like that, but they still are held to the same student accountability metrics as the traditional public schools as well,

but the method of instruction is private school oriented as opposed to general public school orientation. Is that correct? I

mean, it can look like that kind of however, what I’ve seen, and you know, we’ve talked about this before, I’ve worked in schools across the nation and supported schools across the nation, and what we’re seeing is the majority of the charter schools, which, again, reminder, charter schools were launched to be hubs of innovation. That was the whole purpose behind it. And what we’re seeing now is that charter schools are really leaning back into looking and feeling more like traditional schools, which is just so wild to me, considering they were supposed to be so different, and they’re really becoming very similar in most instances,

So therefore the level of education is declined,

potentially in some instances, sure there are some really good charters out there, just like there are some really good district schools out there. But you’ve got the turkeys in both camps. You’ve got the turkeys in the private schools as well. So

okay, so now let’s talk about first and Ed and if you could briefly, just describe the brand,

sure, yeah. So first gen ed is an education firm that I launched back in 2021 so you know, we’re coming up on four and a half years now. And the idea behind it is, I’ve touched so many areas of education, school operations, testing and accountability, launching and scaling. I spent a lot of time in academic policy, right like government, public affairs, world born and partner relations, launching and leading nonprofits. And so all of those things came together to create first gen ed, which is an education firm. And then this last year, out of first gen ed, we burst our first micro school, which it is its own separate 501, c3, but it is a a micro school in the Dallas Fort Worth area.

Yeah. Well, good. So we are recording this thing, as you can see, the AI note taking. And I thought I had pressed the button earlier, but I just press it again. So some of this is going to record nicely, and others will just throw out, I guess, but, but, and then do it again for real, but, so the micro schools now they, I want you to describe for the audience. It’s a partnership with the parents.

You know? It is the way that we look at it is the parents are the sole responsibility for that child, right? They’re the first and best teacher that child will ever have. And we look at it, and many micro schools look at the relationship with the parent as a partnership. We are going to do some, you’re going to do some, but you as a parent are the ultimate authority. So instead of looking at us as a school to kind of drop your kid off and then come pick them up at the end of the day, no, no, we don’t want that. We want you to look at us as a micro school, as a tool in your tool belt, right? We can make it as easy as possible. We can pull together a curriculum, content, opportunities and activities, all these things, but at the end of the day, we view ourselves as that tool in your tool belt to make you as a parent, successful.

So do you give counseling or tips to the I know you have to be careful, tips to the parents about what to do. What are they what are the kids learning that week, and how the parents could better understand, comprehend what your the school’s intent is, and how they can enhance the education experience after school.

Yeah, so again, each each one looks a little different, and I’m probably going to say that 10 more times, because it’s just so wildly different for us. We absolutely do parent training because we are the tool that brings together the learning management system, we are the one that’s bringing the content and curriculum, and so we want to make sure that the parent understands how to use these tools effectively and not get frustrated with them. But how we operate is pretty unique. We have a digital spine. That’s what we call the digital spine, right? And I can see you on the screen, and I know you have a spine, not because I can see your spine, but because everything is aligned. I can tell that right for us, the digital curriculum is our spine. We have this digital spine. Hopefully we don’t see it. That’s not the goal. I don’t want kids behind a computer for six, eight hours a day. Instead, it’s a spine where we come log on, look at, oh, that’s what I need to do today. Okay, now push the computer aside and get to your fingers dirty, doing some learning. And we want the parents to know how to use this spine so that they can check in on what are the kids learning today? How do I reinforce this learning? And how do I help? Especially those younger kids, right? They need a little more help than the older kids, because they’re still learning to read, and they still need help clicking through some things, and so we want to make sure that they’re as supported and ready as possible. So with that, anytime a parent has a question, we have someone on standby that they can shoot an email off to. They can jump in a Zoom Room, chat through it with a teacher. But yeah, I think that that’s such an important part is making the parent successful will help that child to be successful.

Now, you mentioned that you are all over the place, all over the country, advising, being a consultant to other school owners.

Yeah, yeah. So we do a couple different things. We work with with other schools and companies like education management organizations and things like that, where we do help them and give them advice and guidance. But I really have a desire to help micro school founders specifically get their micro schools up and off the ground all over the nation. And I know you’ve had Tamara Becker on the program at least once or twice in the past. She’s got two micro schools in the greater Phoenix area, and we actually do have an education entrepreneurship mastermind specifically focused on helping small businesses, micro schools get up and off the ground and help the next generation with a really unique type of learning.

Now, the owners of this and managers of these various independent micro schools here and there, do they have a similar or better record of kids progressing better because of the nature of the care?

Yeah, so that’s a great question. I’ve got some stats I’m going to show here. If I can figure out how to get my screen to share. And there’s just several pieces of this puzzle that I think help tell the story. So if it’s okay,

yeah, my door is open for you, but, but you have to do it. I don’t have the skills to do it.

All right. Can you see that screen there?

Yeah, it’s perfect. Yeah, if you can make the make the scene a little bit larger, so the type is larger.

That would be good see, if I can figure out how to do that.

Okay, perfect. That’s it.

Yeah. So micro schools are super unique. You can see here. These are the types of facilities that they’re meeting in. And a lot of people think, Oh, well, it’s inside a someone’s house. And there are some micro schools that are in someone’s house. So you can see if a person lives there, it’s only 17% of the time, if it’s a home, but not a residence, 7% of the time. Well, that’s only a quarter of all micro schools are in a house, which means that they’re meeting somewhere else. And you can see that about 40% are meeting in some type of nonprofit or commercial space. And we have both of our campuses. We got two campuses in VFW, one in Frisco, one in South Lake. They both meet in the commercial business space. But then you’ve got a donated space or employer owned and these are oftentimes someone who owns a business, and they have unused square footage, and so they’ll have a small micro school in that unused square footage, and then some type of a house of worship. We see them in churches, synagogues, all kinds of different things. But they meet at a church or something like that. And then you can see that weird little 4% over there is government controlled space, and a lot of times these are public micro schools. And that was one of the questions we talked about earlier on. Are they private, or are they public? Well, micro schools can be both, but the vast majority of them are privately owned. Fascinating

stuff. Thank you very much for doing that. I want to just bring back something from history, our history together. You know, a few years ago, when we were doing that long series of broadcasts, I brought up the idea of moving into empty office buildings with the help of the employer. I saw that was one of your categories there. So that rang the bell that, yeah, okay, so I’m going to bring back this idea that employers need to get women back into coming into the office and so, but they’ve gotten used to being at home, homeschooling almost, or being close to the kid. So here’s a way for the employer to attract women into the office and elevate or ride away from checking in on the kids and then going home together at 3pm or 4pm or whatever, so that there’s a modern, cutting edge way to solve the problem of empty space or unused space, just like I saw in that chart you had and women in the office some of the time, and hybrid, you know, perhaps you and customer service approach to employee care and and then kid learning and getting the kid there, maybe the kid comes in with mom and pop in the car, and then dropped off at floor the three instead, and they go up to 15 or something, and then they go home together,

right? So I remember that conversation Well, and I took it to heart. And this was back during covid, when there was just a ton of available space. And we actually went and talked to a lot of different players in the Dallas Fort Worth area, and said, Hey, here’s what we’d like to do. Number one, we would like to be an HR benefit to you. We will start a school in your buildings for your your family students. No takers. Ed, and it all came down. All came down to insurance. They were afraid of the liability of kids in their building, and we said we tried it 100 different ways. Hey, we’ll sublease this space. It’ll be completely off. We’ll have our own certificate of occupancy and insurance and all these different things, nothing. So I think it’s a great idea, if there’s someone out there listening and you want to have a really cool HR benefit, call us at first Gannett, and we will make that dream a reality.

What’s your phone number?

Hey, that’s a good question. I’m gonna give up. Can I give my phone number? Yeah,

I gotta look

it up, though, because I never called Yeah? Here, I’ll do that here. Let me show it and I’ll read it out. Yeah,

show your logo,

yeah. There we go. You can see our logo. There’s a picture of me speaking to a group at the Oklahoma Ministry Center. Our phone number is right here, 682-292-8709, and our website is firstkin ed.com firstkin ed.com we would love to talk to you about something like that’d be great.

Great. All right, so we have about nine or 10 minutes remaining in this first go around, and I thank you very much for this information. So you, you mentioned in the email earlier that you’re in Utah today,

I am. Yeah, it’s not hot here like it is in Texas. So I’ll take it. The mountains are beautiful.

Now, you have family in that area, don’t

you? I do? Yeah, I grew up about 20 ish minutes north of Salt Lake City. We now live in DFW, but I try to get out of Texas in August and September. So

yeah, I don’t blame you, yeah? Well, yeah, Joanne and I got a house in Palm Desert, which is about a three and a half hour drive north of here, and about 100 miles east of LA. And so it’s in the low desert, and which means that yesterday, it was 109, high temperature. And it’s just now coming into the August, of course, and the winds shift. So rather than dry air, it becomes soaked from Mexican humidity. And the part of Mexico where the winds are coming from is the Gulf of Mexico, now called Gulf of America, but anyways, down there, so the Coachella Valley, which is between two mountain ranges, and as I mentioned, lower desert, brings in all This humidity, and it can’t go anywhere because of the high mountains all around Palm Desert, Palm Springs. And so not only does the temperature hover around 109 even 112 but the humidity now goes up. So that’s a good place to stay away from at this time of year, and and all of the all of the renters for the property stay away too, unfortunately, but we make up for that from October 15 to about June one.

Yep, exactly. So

it’s a great world we’re in. So I’m really super interested to have you come back and have a series of broadcasts, one a week, one every two weeks, on topics related to micro schools and on the new way, the better way to educate kids, but not just young kids, but what high school?

Yeah, K through 12k. Through 12. And in fact, Ed, can I wet Can I wet the people’s whistle? I’ve got one more graph to show, please. And I think this is a really interesting thing, because what you hear a lot of times, specifically from the district opponent, is the micro schools are stealing all of our best kids, and they’re stealing all of the rich kids, and they’re stealing all of this and that, right? Well, this is one one chart, and this is done by a group called the National micro schooling center. They’re out of Las Vegas, and they did a lot of research here, and you can see that half of all kids who come to micro school are at the average income. They’re not the rich kids, they’re not necessarily the best kids, right? They’re just the average income, average families. And that’s at 50% then if you look at the slightly below and significantly below the average income, man, we’re at 40% roughly right. 39% whatever, and those are people who are below average income levels. So the thing that people say, Oh, the micro schools are stealing all these rich best kids, which you can’t really align those two things. There’s so many different variables in life, but only 12% of all students in micro schools are coming from those high income households, which is really interesting. It’s not what you’d expect,

right? Let me ask you two questions. One about physical Ed. Do you does a micro school offer phys ed sports and do the next question is, do you offer some kind of educational scholarship?

Good both. Both questions are great questions. So what I have found across not just our micro school, but micro schools, not always, but generally, right. There’s a lot of students who are high performing athletes, specifically from club sports. They love this model, and I’ll say our family benefits from this model, and we’re we’re that family, because I’ve got three kids, and all three of my kids play ice hockey. Two of them play competitive ice hockey, which means we’re out of town a lot at hockey tournaments. This model works perfectly because we never have in person school on Friday, we meet Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, which means Wednesday and Friday are remote. Now when we travel, instead of my kids getting an absence, they take their computer and they take their schoolwork and they do it on the road, on the way to a tournament, what we found as high performing athletes and then performers, whether that’s musicians or artists or actors, they’re really drawn to this type of model. With that said, our school does have a PE course, but if you’re in a high performance sport or dance or something like that. You can use that as your credit for that. Now there’s a list of things you’ve got to make sure that you’re meeting in order to get that. But if you’re not involved in a high functioning sport with lots of training and things like that, then you would take our PE course. Some of that work would be done on site. Some of that work would be done remotely. Then the follow up question that you asked was tuition assistance, right? These are tuition based schools, and so that means the family has to pay for their student to come. And yes, absolutely, we offer tuition assistance. We have great folks who are donors. If you’d like to donate to the cause, we’d love to be able to put more dollars into that. Not you Ed, but anyone listening, I guess you too, if you really want to. But we have donors that help provide tuition assistance. And then we actually have what we call our kingdom fund, and it’s how, how we build the Paragon Ed kingdom and beyond. And so some of all tuition dollars that go in go into that fund to help families who couldn’t afford it, have that tuition assistance and so absolutely yes.

Fascinating stuff. I also want to drop this that my grandson, James is 12, and live in Pittsburgh, and he is into hockey, ice hockey, he started when he was much younger. He’s now 12, and he’s a terrific skater. And so I get it, I understand that they, they recently drove from Pittsburgh up to Detroit and then over to Long Island, New York, Long Island, to attend these kids playing in tournaments.

Yeah, oh, it’s wild. It’s wild to me that they have 10 year olds traveling that much for a sport. When I was 10, the farthest we would go is, like the next town over. You know,

I was watching cowboy movies.

Yep, Ellen, definitely. No, I

think that I’m going to talk to Jeff and fair the parents about what school they’re in. I think he is in some kind of a private school, but I’m not sure he was in a charter school, okay, and they spoke French. He’s fluent in French, so dual

immersion. Very cool.

Yeah, well, yeah. His mother is very highly educated PhD and an ordained Presbyterian minister, and she started speaking French to James when he was in the cradle.

How cool. I love that.

Yeah, and so. And dad is, Jeff loves to ice skate also, and so he’s very much into that. Oh, it’s just a wonderful experience. We have to let you go because you have another obligation. But I’ll follow up with you in writing with the proposal. Thank you for awesome.

That sounds good. Thank you. I always enjoy it.

Thank you. Me too. Love what you do, and I love your energy and your fresh approach, and you know, I want to be a part of it, and this will be really good TV, which makes a good marketing thing.

Cheers. I’m going to send you this program later today.

Awesome. Thanks, Ed. We’ll see you. Thank