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.

Administration in a hybrid school

Many of us who have grown grassroots hybrid programs have had to make adjustments to our job descriptions and roles every year. Part of this is because of size adjustments and resource limitations at the start, and part is because it is the learning process that comes with building something new. However, administration in a hybrid school is very similar to administration in a full-time school.

Let’s breakdown what some of the key administrative jobs needed. All of these are essential from the start in some capacity, but what is most likely to happen is that the same one or two people will do multiple jobs when first launching, and then the jobs will be separated out and delegated to new hires as resources and size grow.

• Education Director: This person is going to oversee teacher training and management. The job will involve hiring (which should be done with others’ input, either board members or fellow administrators), planning and leading teacher training and ongoing staff meetings, some form of feedback and evaluation to teachers, and should always include constant presence and ongoing conversations. Being on campus is essential.

• Curriculum Development: This may be the same person as above, but if not, they should work closely together during training to make sure curriculum is delivered by teachers effectively. Sometimes accommodating curriculum to the hybrid model takes some trial and error, so open communication with teachers is key! Theory and practice are not always the same :) This job can often be done off-campus, however, as long as there is good communication about implementation.

• Business Director: This person works closely with the Treasurer (or alone if not a nonprofit) to oversee budgets, bookkeeping and accounting, insurances, payroll, tuition management, and legal paperwork, as well as any fundraising. This doesn’t mean they have to do all of these things alone, but they do need to make sure it is getting done correctly. This person should also be part of communication with landlord (in conjunction with the education director). Always have proactive meetings regularly with your landlord!

• Admissions: This job may be just collecting registrations in the beginning, but can quickly grow into giving tours, creating a selection process for admissions, evaluation of new students, et cetera.

• Program Logistics: Field trips, events, volunteers, sign-ups…the bigger you grow the more time-consuming it becomes to keep this organized!

• Secretarial: There are often time-consuming secretarial tasks such as printing handouts, creating classlists and signs, acquiring supplies.

• Executive Director: At first, the founders will likely do most of the above jobs while also doing this one. But once the organization has grown, an executive director can really help manage the program as a whole and act as a liaison between the board and the administration and teachers. This person should be very good at keeping focused on the mission of the organization and translating it into good management of the above positions and the organizational structure as a whole. Being sure that everyone is communicating, processes and systems are being revisited and adjusted as needed, personality strengths are being used well while weaknesses are supported are management tasks that sometimes fall by the wayside as founders do all the things out of necessity in the beginning. However, a well-run organization takes care of its administration as well as its teachers and families. A director can help hold all the pieces together and make sure the organization is kept in top-notch condition.

Again, it is not likely each of these jobs is going to be its own person, at least for the first few years. But it is helpful to categorize the job descriptions even if one person does two or three of the jobs. The same person may do Curriculum and Education, another may do Business and Admissions, and a third may do Programs and Logistics. Don’t be afraid to change things as you grow, and always keep in mind that clear expectations and job descriptions (and frequent meetings!) are going to help with efficiency and productivity!

Hiring Teachers and Creating Culture

Teachers in a hybrid school are your most valuable resource. Just like in any school, these are the people implementing the vision and spending time with the kids on the front lines. Teachers should be trained well, supported throughout the year, and paid fairly. Applications should be thorough and interviews long enough to get a feel for the applicant’s strengths, experience, and personality.

What should you look for in a teacher?

• Loves kids and have the emotional and physical energy for them.

• Has experience teaching the age or subject in some capacity.

• Has managed groups of children.

• A willingness to learn new things and be part of a team.

If these things are in place, nearly everything else can be trained. So, what is less essential?

• Familiarity with exact curricula or philosophy

• Certification (unless you are following Education law. In a home-school supplement model, there is usually no regulation on teachers).

What to avoid?

• A sense of burn-out.

• A very independent personality that is not willing to implement your vision.

You are the one setting the culture of your program. You will do this with clear expectations, clear curriculum and schedule guidelines, support for easy communication, trainings (before school starts and during the year), staff meetings, and plenty of supportive presence. Your teachers should see you as the director, at the door, in the hallways, at recess, peeking into their schoolroom…and always with a sense of you being their helper/leader. You are setting them up for success by troubleshooting with them and communicating the goals of your program effectively, and you know what is going on because you are present!

Do these things and your hybrid school will be a place of camradarie and high standards, and your teachers will be happy to bring your vision to life!

Organizational Structure

Teachers, boards, administration, aides, paid employees, and volunteers. What do you need and where?

There are many options for setting up your daily operations and it helps a lot if you can keep your vision focused on what you want a day to look like. Even more important is where you, as the visionary, see yourself in the picture. You may be able to work backwards from your longer term vision and start pretty close to where you want to end. Or, you might know what you want down the road, but you may need a temporary plan to get you there.

Maybe you want a multi-age science and math group that has 15 kids and one teacher and you are plan on staying that way forever. One room, one group, done, thank you very much. Perhaps you plan on organizing and teaching this yourself because that’s what you love.

Maybe you want an entire graded ‘school’ feel that covers all the core subjects and you plan on starting with 7 classes of K-6 or maybe 3 of K-2 and then growing with your kids. However, you just want to make it happen. You don’t want to teach.

So how do you set up? There are a few things you will want to know.

Board and Administration

If you establish as a nonprofit corporation, you will need a Board to ensure compliance with the law and to establish operations and oversight. Make note that these people will be volunteers. It is a conflict of interest for the Board members of a nonprofit to be on payroll*!

This can be the sticking point because the Board is the legal oversight of the organization, but administrators do the daily hard work (in combination with teachers, who are accountable to them). Where do you want to be? This may seem easy, but the problems arise when the visionary is the Board is the administrator is even the teacher. Volunteers can only do so much before they realize why time is money! A successful program takes a LOT of work! And the people doing the brunt of it should be on payroll so the structure is sustainable and not built on one or two persons’ good will.

A Board may meet monthly or quarterly and talks mostly about upper level decisions. A step closer to daily operations, you may have either committees and/or employees that meet more often and address some of the details that need more discussion and attention.

Someone will need write handbooks and decide policies, create admissions forms and plan open houses; perhaps search for buildings and set up physical space; handle finances, bookkeeping, and payroll; hire and train employees; do some marketing; choose curriculum; and any number of other details. These things can be handled by committees if you have enough willing volunteers, but much of this work is ongoing, especially for a larger program, and, to be done well, should be done by employees.

The best way to handle this tension is to choose one of two options. You and your fellow entrepreneurs may choose to be the Board and hire the administration (probably one or maybe two people). I’ll remind you once again that you should NOT be paid if you are on the Board. So carefully assess how much you can do as a volunteer, how LONG you can sustain it, and how well you can delegate. You may be able to ‘direct’ as the Board and hire and oversee teachers if the program remains small. One or two teachers can likely be answerable to the Board only, however, you must think through the physical logistics of who will be present to deal with any problems, check in with teachers, offer support and training, etc…This is ‘director’ work and very often is a big time commitment. That is why budgeting for a director position is always a good idea!

Another option would be to BE the administration yourself. If you do this, you can be on payroll and run the day-to-day, and the budget is there to replace you if needed, which removes the structure and longevity of the program from one particular person.

If you choose this option, I highly advise that you create a board of supportive people, propose yourself as director and place yourself under them. The Board will approve your job description and pay (although you may be the one telling THEM what is needed, you will not be officially voting on the pay or positions).

In any case, as a nonprofit your Board will be a group of volunteers that oversees legal compliance and high level decisions. A director is on payroll, reports to the Board, and oversees teachers. Teachers do the actual teaching, and any aides provide support. Any program over 1 class will benefit from planning with this structure in place, with number of teachers and aides (and often an administrative assistant) scaling accordingly.

Examples

An example of structure from a program of 2 classes and 25 kids might be 2 teachers hired and trained by 1 director who is on campus. The director oversees the program and answers to the Board. Most daily decisions are made by the director.

The Board and any relevant sub-committees acting as volunteers to help with daily decisions. This may look like monthly Board meetings where the Board helps the director make decisions, or it may look like quarterly Board meetings with sub committees meeting with the director monthly to make decisions. Practically, the director will bring up relevant issues to the Board or committees for votes and oversight, but will do most of the work her/himself.

Another example may be a larger program of 7 classes and teachers. At this size, there should be the paid director, administrative assistant (or perhaps pay the director to work full-time and not just part-time), the teachers, and an aide or two. Every 30-40 kids or so, you may find it helpful to add an extra set of hands, especially if there is a lot of outdoor time and/or younger kids.

Summary

There are several options for structure, but it is key to remember that while a hybrid school runs part-time, for the people launching it, it can be…and sometimes will remain…a full-time job. This is a-okay as long as the budget allows for smart business organizational decisions so that no one gets burned out and the organization isn’t built on one or two people’s good will.

One of the biggest problems a visionary can run into is starting out on enthusiasm and heart, and then crashing into burn-out. This is not good for the health of your program! You likely want your hybrid school to be bigger than you and it is essential to step back and take off your hobby hat (did I just make that up?) and put on a business hat once in a while to be sure you have a sustainable model.

If you leave, is there a structure and job description in place to replace you? A budget for a qualified person? Is there a position description and budget for both teachers and directors?

Start with your vision and work backwards. Don’t shortchange your program or yourself!

*For a wealth of information on legal compliance, Boards, bylaws, and paying employees, check out the blog posts and ebooks from CPA, Carol Topp at homeschoolcpa.com.