Free, by email
The opening checklist, built for your school
What kind of school is it?
It comes from Lee, who builds Pearspark, within a minute: your own copy, to check off as you go and print when you want paper. It is useful whether or not you ever use Pearspark.
What every school gets
Before you sign anything
What your school is · 5 steps
Decide how your state will see you: as a private school, or as a learning center under the state's homeschool rules. The two carry different duties.
Before you sign a lease
The building · 4 steps
Ask your city's planning department which use class covers a school of your size in that building, and whether you need a permit for it.
Before the first family enrolls
What you promise families · 6 steps
Write the enrollment agreement: what tuition covers, the withdrawal and refund policy, and what happens when a payment is late.
A month before the first day
Paperwork from every family · 7 steps
A signed enrollment agreement.
Before the first day
Money · 4 steps
Send the first invoices before the first day. Collecting in week three is much harder.
Ready on the first day
Records and routines · 6 steps
Take attendance every day from the first day. Find out whether your state requires a daily register, and how long to keep it.
The week before
Families · 5 steps
Choose one channel for messages between school and families. Not five group texts.
After the first bell
The first week · 4 steps
Take attendance every day, the chaotic days included.
What your answers add
- Your kind of school
- Microschool (3 steps), Homeschool co-op (5 steps), Hybrid school (4 steps), Classical school (4 steps), Montessori school (5 steps), Preschool + elementary (4 steps). A co-op's list is written for a co-op: a membership agreement, dues and service hours instead of tuition.
- ESA and scholarship money
- Registering with the program, how it pays you, what your invoices must show, and what a family owes when the program pays late.
- Where you meet
- A home, a church or shared space, or a leased building each bring their own questions: the insurance, the agreement with the host, the lease's permitted use.
- Your state
- For Florida, Texas, Arizona, Ohio, Indiana, Utah, Georgia and North Carolina: the filing deadlines, what the school-choice program asks of a school, and the statute or rule behind each line, with the day we last read it. For every other state: the five questions to ask your department of education.
Where Pearspark fits
Most of the list is yours to decide: the building, the agreements, the policies. 18 of the 41 steps every school gets have a Pearspark tool behind them, and each is marked with a short video of that tool. Setup takes about twenty minutes once you sign in, and a school moving from another system takes a weekend.