This report was first published by The 74a nonprofit national education newsroom.
In August, Kelly Romanishan thought she had found the right school for her son – a novel startup in a rented two-story home that promised STEM classes, arts activities, and “the tools necessary to take on the world.”
The mother from West Virginia paid the operator an advance of $2,200 Hope Scholarship – an education savings account that provides families with government funds for tuition or homeschooling costs.
But things at Hive Learning Academy quickly got out of control. Instead of having regular meal times, the children simply grabbed their lunch from the fridge when they got hungry. Her son “came home hungry because he was too shy to just go to someone else’s refrigerator,” Romanishan said.
Kathy Dailey, who enrolled her 13-year-old son there, had a similar experience. When she visited the school in the Eastern Panhandle town of Martinsburg, students were just “hanging out” and engrossed in their cell phones.
An enraged Romanishan said she “I quickly realized that The Hive was actually just a glorified babysitter.”
By Christmas, they joined several parents demanding their money back and trying to find other arrangements – requests that the Republican Treasurer Riley Moore calls for the school to be included in a “An official said there were “ongoing reviews and investigations” into ESA-funded programs.
The investigation is believed to be the first government investigation of a self-proclaimed micro-school, marking an unpleasant milestone for a movement that has mushroomed during the pandemic and 125,000 schools across the country, according to the National Microschooling Center.
Hailed by Republicans and fuelled by the proliferation of ESAs, microschools operate out of private homes, storefronts and churches, free to some extent from government control. But the West Virginia episode shows that preserving that freedom while maintaining public accountability can be a hard balancing act for even the movement’s most ardent supporters.
“We’re in a transitional market,” says Jamie Buckland, who runs the nonprofit West Virginia Families United for Education, which advises both parents and providers in the sector. She believes states with ESAs should do a better job of preparing school founders and helping families navigate their options.
“If we don’t want the government to set the guardrails and framework,” she asked, “what is our movement doing to provide our own guardrails?”
As confirmation that they “Allegations of specific violations of the Hope Scholarship,” the Treasurer’s Office, which oversees the ESA program, declined to comment on the scope of the investigation or when it would be completed. In an email shared with The 74 in November, a deputy treasurer told Romanishan that the office was considering “possible involvement of law enforcement, if appropriate,” but had not yet filed charges.
In an interview with The 74, Hive founder Kaela Zimmerman explained that she lacked the cash flow to get the project up and running and that she struggled to get answers from the state after the program failed. She said she has since paid the state back over $15,000 in Hope funds.
Romanishan described the experience as “not only painful but also disturbing.”
“It makes it hard to trust anyone else, which is sad because the area needs a good micro-school,” she said.
“We did our best”
Zimmerman thought so. The homeschooling mom opened The Hive with co-founder Kristin Volpe to give her own three children more opportunities to make friends. She rented the space, hung maps on the walls and selected teaching materials from her favorite homeschooling programs.
When 30 families signed up last summer, she had high expectations. To assist get things started, in August she asked parents to pay most of their tuition up front — about $2,000 to $4,000 per student. But she had to reach out of pocket for furniture and materials, and when fall came, only eight students showed up.
She said she and Volpe never intended to “avoid our obligations.” With their earnings far below what they expected, they were not enough to cover their costs and pay themselves. To save money, Zimmerman moved out of her rental house and into the second floor of the microschool. She and Volpe took jobs at a Macy’s warehouse to assist pay their bills, and Zimmerman began working as a bartender a few nights a week.
But juggling multiple jobs made an “unreliable schedule” for students, Dailey said.
“It was a fun environment,” she added. “But there was no homework or set curriculum.”
The state does not require prospective providers to submit a business or educational plan in advance. Anyone who wants to be an authorized Hope “service provider,” including a microschool, must sign a contract agreeing to obtain criminal background checks of staff working with students and to notify districts of enrollment. To receive funds, providers simply need to submit a W-9 form, a tax form for independent contractors, and document Hope funds received from parents.
Her downfall, says Zimmerman, was a lack of start-up capital. She applied for a scholarship from the Vela Education Funda foundation-funded initiative that has helped start and expand microschools and other alternative education programs. However, they declined, saying they had received more applications than they could fund.
When she realized she couldn’t continue the program, Zimmerman asked state officials how she would repay the ESA funds but received little assist, so she was surprised by a registered letter in November threatening criminal charges. She said she has since repaid over $15,000, which is all the scholarship money she received, minus payments for the days the students were in the program.
“It was very stressful and upsetting for us,” she said. “We’re just two working-class mothers with a great idea but no means to make it happen. We did the best we could.”
But running a high-quality program requires more than just good intentions, says Rachelle Noble, founder of Microschool Solutions, an Arizona-based consulting firm that advises aspiring school leaders.
Noble previously led the growth of the model at Prenda, a microschool network. Two years ago, she made what she describes as a hard decision to close two programs that operated with a Kansas school district’s virtual program. Both schools served families in low-income neighborhoods near Wichita.
“We did it much too late,” she said. The environment was not unsafe, she said, but “it got to a point where it was clear that this was educational neglect.” Schools lack “an emphasis on academic instruction,” she said.
The reality is that many novel microschools don’t last more than a year, says Amar Kumar, CEO of KaiPod Learning, another microschool network. Before he accepts potential founders into the organization’s “catalyst” program, he makes sure they have a solid financial plan.
“It’s the same as any small business or startup — the likelihood of failure is very high,” he said. “Even with the best intentions, if your microschool doesn’t make ends meet, you’re going to end up disappointing families, and nobody wants that.”
Using public money in the form of ESAs raises the stakes. While most microschools don’t take ESA funds, Don Soifer, CEO of the National Microschooling Center, said his group’s upcoming report will show that 32% of microschools now accept ESA funds. State funding for free school choicecompared to 18% last year.
After the ordeal with The Hive, Zimmerman said she still loves the concept of microschools. But she doubts she’ll try to open another one.
“They require more resources and business knowledge than most ordinary workers [and] parents,” she said.
Fulfill your duty of care
For this reason some critics don’t think they should be supported with public money.
Chris Stewart, CEO of Brightbeam, an education advocacy network, once saw himself as an evangelist for ESAs, hoping they would provide better educational options for marginalized children. But he now believes the laws lack accountability and have the potential for Fraud and “a market full of crooks who see ESAs as a business opportunity.”
Last year, for example, a grand jury in Maricopa County, Arizona, decided three women charged of fraud and theft of over $87,000 in connection with that state’s ESA program.
Although it is unclear whether any of their businesses operated as micro-schools, the women allegedly produced educational certificates and demanded reimbursement for “false services,” according to one Report of the Public Prosecutor’s OfficeInvestigators’ review of one woman’s account found that she used ESA funds for “daily living expenses at retail stores and restaurants” and spent money at Amazon, Uber and Airbnb.
Many in the movement take a “buyer beware” attitude toward bad actors. They believe it is the parents’ responsibility to do their research before choosing a school.
“Some parents are overly careful,” said Noble of Microschool Solutions. Others, she said, “enroll their children without even seeing the place.”
Proponents believe that the market will eventually eradicate Fraud and inferior options.
But that is little consolation for parents like Romanishan, who eventually received a refund of $1,340 for the days her son was absent from school. While she waited for the scholarship refund to hit her account, she subscribed to a Online curriculum for home schooling and enrolled her son in a cooking class. In the meantime, she said, he lost his friends and had to adjust to a novel routine.
“I feel like I failed my son,” Romanishan said. “I should have seen the warning signs.”
Disclosure: Stand Together Trust provides financial support to Vela Education Fund And The 74.
