and provide teachers and others interested in starting a microschool with the framework for doing so. "As someone who's been a student of history, a lot of this comes from the American tradition of the schoolhouse," Joseph Connor, COO and cofounder of group tutoring company, told Business Insider. "[T]here's this long tradition of a single teacher working with the community and helping to educate their kids.
SchoolHouse had initially planned for the pods to operate out of storefronts. The company's business plan called for slow growth, but when COVID-19 hit things changed. "When I had my oldest son, I was on childcare waitlists in my neighborhood and I wasn't getting off of the waitlists. I realized that I should have put him on the waitlists when I was just thinking about getting pregnant," Causey said. "Fast forward to him entering preschool — again I'm finding myself on eight different waitlists, and all of the options were center-based, where he would be in a classroom with 20 different kids.
"Parents will put their microschool group together, and they'll need the admin support, the structure, and usually the microschool lead, so we offer all of that backend structure and administration, from liability insurance to the paperwork to a payment platform to enrollments when they have an opening to a COVID-19 agreement, as well as the teacher and the microschool lead," Causey said.
Tam said that families started approaching the company directly in mid-to-late June and, at first, the Selected team would accommodate them by manually searching their platform to make a match for each group with an appropriate teacher. Tam said that the higher salaries these teachers are now earning in micropods may show that they're finally getting some long-deserved recognition.