Q&A for How to Start a School

Launch your school and start to have open houses one year before the opening date. This is when parents start to look around for new schools. You will want to have open houses every month until the school is full. If you need pupils to help encourage the "feel", ask friends if they would consider letting their children attend your school at free or reduced rates, as your first pupils.

When you hold an open house, it means letting people walk around the place and see what the place has to offer. If it's a school, as in this case it is, you let people walk around the school and see what classes the school has to offer, including some demonstrations and talks about what happens there.

A rose by any other name would smell as sweet! The name is not so important as the content, but you could consider asking prospective parents and families their ideas for names and getting people to vote! You will then need to check with your city to make sure the name is not taken when you file your business.

A background in business and/or education would probably be most useful.

You can post on CottageClass, Greatschools.org, Noodle, Yelp or other marketplaces. Other effective techniques are inviting families in the community to regular open house events via Yahoo parent groups, Facebook parent groups, and the like. It is highly recommended that you make your friends promoters. It's always good to get a couple of early adopters (parents who are your friends) who will get the word out about your school to their friends. You can also contact local press to announce the opening of your school.

You can earn income for your school through earned income (money parents pay you directly for their children to attend) or through fundraising (grants, or events like raffles or bake sales that you host) or a combination of both. Find out about government and private grants before setting up.

Many of these criteria differ, depending on how much need there is for a school in your area. Certainly, if there is high need, you will require less marketing. Laws also vary significantly from state to state. Also determine the potential for payment from rural areas where things are already very tight for members of the local community. That doesn't mean it's impossible but you might need to look more widely into grants, including ones targeted at helping rural communities to thrive.

Laws vary from state to state, so you will want to start your local department of health and/or department of education. You will need to file your business and get the proper insurance. Afterwards, the vision and curriculum development remains a vital piece of the puzzle. Its sometimes a great idea to start with an afterschool class or two before moving on to a fully fledged school.

Not necessarily. If you plan to build a privately-funded institution, you will not need to join the local school district. However, your local school district may be able to help if you plan on opening a government-funded school. You may need them in that case, depending on your state's laws.

There are many experienced accountants who work specifically with small schools. However, don't be daunted by all the accounting work. There is great software available to help schools with accounting. If you're luck, a parent in your community may even be willing to do accounting in exchange for a small tuition break. Don't let the accounting element get in the way of you realizing your dream of starting a school!

Only as long your school is a merely private entity (not likely) or the director/chairperson takes full responsibly and offers private collateral for the loan (most likely). Or you could open a for-profit school (all the paperwork and maybe a building from private funding) and then apply for a business based loan using either private or school's collateral.

That's entirely up to you. Usually there are primary/elementary schools that go up to grades 5 or 6, middle/junior high schools for grades 6-8 or so, and high schools for grades 9-12.

That is up to the director of the school. If you are the director, you could try making the admissions requirements a little less stringent, or you may have to cancel the opening.

To make your own school you need to complete your graduation with teaching courses and then you will be ready to make an impact on society.

There is no profit for not for profit organisations like school. The excess of income over expenditure of such an organisation is called surplus. There is no legal limit for making surplus by not for profit organisations. The surplus in those institutions cannot be distributed as dividend or share of profit to the founders, and all these amounts are meant for development of the institution. Thus surplus is really a development fund.