I'm often asked how we can keep our tiny high school going--23 students this year, our largest number in our eight years. We have no capital, no cash reserve, and no primary source of funding other than tuitions.
The answer has a few parts. First, we're not paid much. Our salaries are based on $40,000 per year, and all teachers (except me) are part-time. I'm full time but, for now, taking only a part-time salary. Our teachers are sometimes shared with our local elementary Steiner School, each school contributing part of a salary and benefits (we don't offer any benefits through our school; we can't yet afford to). Through our brief history, we have been fortunate to find teachers who are willing to work for less than they're worth; in at least three cases, teachers have donated a year of teaching time.
Some of these teachers will move to full-time when numbers of students and numbers of dollars allow this, but many will continue as part-timers, and that's the way we have planned it. Our potter and our blacksmith, for example, work as professionals most of the year and take time out a couple of afternoons a week for part of the school year to teach our students. These men are not art teachers in the conventional sense; they're working professionals who enjoy teaching what they know to adolescents. The students respect their skill and knowledge, and look forward to their classes.
Second, we use community resources. We're an academic school from 8 a.m. to 12 noon most days, and then a "school without walls" in the afternoon. Students head out to Dan Bellow's pottery studio, John Graney's blacksmith's shop, "Mixed Company" theater, Berkshire Pulse dance studio, Mike Bissaillon's BizFit gym, Simon's Rock College library or chem lab or athletic center--Simon's Rock has been extraordinarily generous, allowing us to use facilities for little rent. To rent or pay community use fees or have these venues donated saves a bundle. How much does it cost to build and maintain a studio or a library or a gym? A lot more than the hourly fees we contribute to most of these places. (It has long struck me that we build and operate tremendous facilities for our public and private school students, and then they sit unused most of the year--school is in session about 180 days, and facilities may be used only a few periods of each of those days. It seems so wasteful.)
Third, we combine classes. We believed initially that mixed-age, mixed-ability classes were a necessary compromise to keep the school going. Now, although we may grow, we will work to maintain at least a few combined classes. Older, more advanced students help younger, less advanced students. Class distinctions blur; the artificial divisions of age--where else in your life except a school classroom do these things matter so much?--recede. Math classes--math is sequential and cumulative, no matter how you teach it--are not combined. But all other classes are likely to be, including English, foreign languages, history, science... This requires us often to teach a curriculum over two years--a course offered one year is not repeated the next; something else is taught in its place. But, over the course of four years of high school, each student receives each required course, often in the company of students older or younger than he or she.
We are growing and we plan to grow--we are in the second year of a five-year plan to grow to 40 students, and we may reach our goal early. We grew this year, in a year when most private school enrollments decreased. And interest for next year is already greater than ever before. About half our new students come from a Steiner or Waldorf school background, and about half come from prep school, public school, or homeschool.
We broke even last year, for the first time, with 20 students. We won't show a surplus this year because we will use any extra revenue to improve our program.
We won't grow too large, however, even if we receive more applicants than we plan for. According to our analysis and our methods, a school can make money up to around 60 students. It can also make money with, let's say, 180 students. Between these rough boundaries, however, lurks a "deadly middle ground," in which a school requires facilities and resources that would enable it to educate larger numbers but that cost more than the revenue it generates. It's interesting to us that many Waldorf high schools fall in this middle range.
We plan to cap enrollment at 56 students--that's four classes of 14 students each, exactly enough to fit in a 14 passenger school bus. And a 14 passenger bus is the largest that a teacher can drive without a commercial license. A full enrollment of 56 would allow us to send each class to a different location each day, each in its own bus. More than that, and we'd have to add teachers and resources (including a bus) that would cost more than they're worth.
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