More questions and answers on setting up co-ops that offer academic classes.

Q. Where do you meet?

A. We rent facilities in a church that used to house a Christian school. These folks view the use of their building as a ministry to the home-school community. So their rental costs are very reasonable. However, we do provide all the set-up and the clean-up of the facility every week. While the rent isn't costly, the time commitment for use of the building is. You will usually find that to be true. If the church has a maintenance staff that takes care of preparing the rooms for use and tearing them down, you will be asked to pay a lot more in rent.

We've looked at a number of other facilities over the years, but stay where we are even though the classrooms are small. This has prevented us from growing our enrollment. However, what this church has that we wouldn't want to give up is a gymnasium. Here, we can serve our hot lunches, and kids can play basketball or socialize during periods they don't have classes (very few kids take a class every period - it's just too intense of a day.) We have two other areas designated as quiet study halls.

The church also gives us storage space, and other places could not provide this. After six years, we've accumulated a lot of equipment - especially for our science labs. It would be too much to drag this stuff back and forth every week. We've also bought class sets of texts used for courses offered regularly, and it is convenient to leave all these materials at the site. So don't overlook your need for storage when evaluating sites

Q. What kind of fees do you charge?

A. Before you set your fee structure, make sure you know all your expenses.
That's your starting point for determining the cost of your classes. Here are the kinds of expenses we have:

	Facility costs
	Administrative costs, including payroll services, printing, mailing, billing, copying of class handouts, etc.;
	Teachers' salaries
	Administrators' salaries

You might want to set up an initial budget, and then add an additional 15 percent to cover the expenses you don't realize you will have until you get your co-op under way.

In our situation, we charge $150/class, plus a materials fee. The materials fee varies from class to class, but they are highest for our science labs and our art classes. Students buy or rent all their books on top of this. This cost per class is lower than most fees charged at other co-ops I've surveyed. It is not unusual to charge up to $350/class. However, our co-op meets only 30 weeks out of the year. Other co-ops I've surveyed tend to meet up to 36 weeks per year.

Cindy McKeown, the director of CHESS family school, has a wonderful heart for our families. She pays her teachers fairly, but does everything she can to hold down costs for our members. I know folks really appreciate this, and it is one reason we are able to attract the very best kids for our classes. Cindy does have a discount fee structure and payment plan in place for kids taking multiple classes and families enrolling multiple children. But again, don't set up special rates without knowing what your true expenses are going to be.

Q. What do you pay your staff?

A. Teachers are paid between $15-$25 per hour, depending upon our experience and the success of our classes (i.e., enrollment is consistently high). In addition, we receive one free class for one of our children per course we teach. Cindy also waives the registration fees and gives us first pick of the courses when scheduling. Everywhere she can offer a benefit that doesn't cost her anything she does.

I've been offered a lot more to teach elsewhere, but I continue to teach at CHESS because it is of such benefit to my own children and because I love the students I teach. Cindy does a supreme job of enrolling the most deserving of kids. I am very much appreciated as a teacher, so it is the intangibles that keep me satisfied at CHESS. I know the other staff members feel the same.

Also, we have an executive director and several administrative assistants as well. At a number of co-ops I know of, the administration is not even paid. They are all volunteers. However, these women have the most responsibility and most labor-intensive positions. Your executive director, at least, should be compensated more highly than the teachers, and perhaps other administrators as well, if their responsibilities more greatly impact the success of the co-op.

It's all well and good to use folks who volunteer their services. However, it is easier for a volunteer to withdraw her services or fail to follow through than it is for someone being fairly compensated for her contribution. Again, bartering classes and other benefits that do not cost money is often a good arrangement.

Cindy has wisely elected to make teachers her employees. I've seen other situations where the co-op administration simply serves as a broker of sorts for anyone in the area wanting to offer classes. These teachers then set their own fees, determine which students they will take, and function fairly autonomously. Cindy wanted to have final say on class content and the philosophy of education that permeates CHESS. This has allowed for a consistency throughout our program and, I think, long-term satisfaction for our families. It also gives Cindy the latitude to ask teachers to make adjustments where necessary, because she is clearly the person in charge.

Next time, I'll conclude with an overview of how we select students for our classes and what requirements we make of parents.

In His Sovereign Grace,

Debra

Debra Bell Wit and Wisdom Family Schools (Part 3) Here's the wrap-up on family schools, my name for co-operatives that provide academic classes for home schoolers. Q: How are students selected for CHESS? CHESS (Creative Home Educators Support Services) family school will start its seventh year in the fall. Teaching there has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my home-schooling life. And the students I teach are the reason. I am routinely humbled by the gratefulness of my students; their Christian maturity; their standards of excellence; their dependability and their delightful sense of humor. I can also count on full parental support in working through inevitable moments of conflict and misunderstandings. CHESS is not an opportunity for the bright student; but it is an opportunity for the focused student. If you are going to invest the amount of time required to organize co-operative classes, then selecting students carefully is a critical key to long-term success. If you accept students without qualification or a commitment to clearly communicated expectations, your teachers and your administrators will likely burn out quickly dealing with problems. Now before anyone thinks I'm advocating an elitist approach, let me assure you that the qualifications for enrollment at CHESS are all about maturity and Christian character; and not about brains. Cindy, our director, has learned over the years the best way to predict student success at CHESS. We are now in the enviable position of having more students signing up for classes than we can accommodate. Our family school provides many wonderful and wholesome social activities for kids, so it's a place students want to be. And it can also be a source of motivating kids in a positive direction during high school because they want to be accepted at CHESS. I know many a parent grateful for the "positive peer pressure" CHESS has provided for their kids. Enrollment for each school year is first opened to current CHESS families. Cindy now has her classes and teachers lined up by mid-March each year, and she then gives current families first dibs on courses. We've also developed a scope and sequence for science and English classes, so folks know what our rotation will be and when they need to seize the options available. Once that is completed, Cindy begins reviewing applications from new families. If room is available in courses requested, she sets up an interview with the student and a parent. The interview has become an important component of student selection. We do have an application that is first submitted and this does include the family's philosophy of education, test scores, writing samples, etc. that give an indication of the student's background and preparedness. Then during the interview, Cindy addresses questions equally to the student and the parent. One thing she wants to observe is the relationship between the two. We know that CHESS is not equipped to solve family problems, and for this reason Cindy rarely accepts a student transitioning out of public school directly into home schooling. We've found it is best for this family to home school for a full year so that the parent-child relationship can be strengthened. CHESS is not trying to replace parental authority or responsibility -- we don't want to become a surrogate parent. Again, that just isn't our philosophy of education and we aren't equipped for that kind of burden. Cindy goes over as clearly as possible the expectations we have for parents and students and she has a contract that students must sign if they want to be accepted. Because we are into our seventh year, we've learned how to clearly communicate expectations. At first plenty of us thought we were signing up for one type of experience, and then got into a class only to realize too late it wasn't a good fit for our kids. The same thing happened with teachers, who made a commitment and then realized they just couldn't fulfill the commitment. You can expect those kinds of miss-fires in setting up any kind of co-op. But stick to it, work out the bugs, and then be as clear as possible in letting families know what the vision, scope and purpose is of your co-op. You'll have far fewer misunderstanding then during the actual school year. Q. So what are the expectations for students? At CHESS, we expect students to be self-governing. In other words, we don't want to put a lot of rules in place to control student behavior, nor do we want to have a lot of punishments to deter kids from bad behavior. Rather, we want kids who are motivated by the grace of God already evident in their lives to be responsible, to be considerate, to be appreciative, thoughtful, and committed because they want to please the Lord in what they say and do. We also want students, teachers, administrators and parents who are committed to humbly pursue reconciliation and resolution when our sinful natures or human folly or unintentional offenses threaten our unity. So, CHESS is looking for the truly converted teen. In other words, Mom and Dad have already laid a solid foundation at home and they aren't expecting us to fulfill that duty. While we do have students who fall along quite a generous continuum in terms of maturity, CHESS maintains an atmosphere of relative peace and joy. There certainly are plenty of administrative snafus to work through in terms of scheduling, assignment load, etc. but for the most part they are worked through in a real spirit of co-operation. And I feel Cindy is a woman with an immense capacity for grace and mercy. We really do look to give kids every opportunity to change and mature before taking drastic steps, such as expulsion (though that has occurred on a few occasions, and it is an important step to be willing to take. And it can often be a means of grace for kids as well). The student contract does spell out our expectation that assignments will be completed and turned in on time. We also expect that student not miss more than three of 30 classes. Many of our classes depended upon student presentations; students are expected to fulfill their responsibilities in being present and prepared. If families appear to not have time for this level of commitment to CHESS, then Cindy usually asks them to re-evaluate their involvement. CHESS definitely takes away a lot of the flexibility we home schoolers enjoy - and that is something families need to decide if they are ready to give up. If not, then the co-operative classes are probably not for them. And they shouldn't expect these classes to accommodate their spontaneous lifestyle. Q. What are expectations for parents? Parents are ultimately responsible for seeing that student work is completed in a timely manner, that kids arrive on time for classes, that student behavior is addressed quickly when necessary. If young children are not self-governing, then parents must remain with the child during class and during breaks. We also ask parents to help out with several events during the year that help keep our costs low. We serve hot lunches at CHESS that cost $1.50 each. We ask families to provide the lunches at their expense once a year. Thus, CHESS can keep all the proceeds from our lunch program. This has been used to help fund our volleyball and basketball team, yearbook, science equipment, and other such benefits for the kids. We also ask for help with set up, clean up and other administrative duties. But these are kept to a minimum as much as possible. In the past three articles, then, I've covered the key points of our particular co-op. During my travels, I've seen a lot of different co-ops in operation, and we all organize ourselves a bit differently. We can really benefit from sharing our experiences with one another. The important point, though, is that co-operative classes, especially on the high school level, are an excellent way to meet genuine academic needs without giving up parental oversight of our children's education. In His Sovereign Grace, Debra