A Scalable K-12 Education Solution: K12 CEO Ron Packard (Part 2)

SM: Basically, you make it possible for parents to enroll their children in an online school?

RP: Correct. It is a K-12, full-time online school.

SM: What is the relationship with the public school? They get it for free?

RP: They get it for free because the state pays for the child’s education. Parents get it for free as well.

SM: Do you establish your relationship with the state?

RP: My relationship is with the not-for-profit schools that have the relationship with the state. All the schools we serve are not-for-profit schools that are legal in the states in which they operate. K12 establishes relationships with the school itself.

SM: You are not enrolling people in K12, they are enrolling in a not-for-profit school, and you provide the curriculum for that school?

RP: We provide the curriculum, technology, management services, and training.

SM: So it would be correct to say that people are not enrolling in your school?

RP: Technically, that would be correct. They are enrolling in various not-for-profit schools.

SM: You are a technology and services provide but not an online school?

RP: That is true in the public school market. In the private school market, we have our own school.

SM: So the business plan that you raised your initial round of funding was based on a support role to public schools while having a private school that you run?

RP: Correct, and the first $10 million was from Knowledge Universe.

SM: What did you do with that $10 million?

RP: We invested in developing the technology and curriculum required to allow us to open schools in the fall of 2001. We raised another $40 million in the summer of 2001.

SM: Could you explain to me what that curriculum and your systems consist of?

RP: We have built 21,000 hours of content. We developed online lessons to cover every learning day of school. We have a lesson for every single day, from kindergarten to 12th grade.

SM: That is a lot of content.

RP: That is an enormous amount of content.

SM: So you spent the initial funding developing content?

RP: We also built the systems to deliver that content. Those two projects, the content and the systems, were achieved with that initial investment.

This segment is part 2 in the series : A Scalable K-12 Education Solution: K12 CEO Ron Packard
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