Running Online Middle And High Schools: Caprice Young, CEO of KC Distance Learning (Part 5)

SM: It sounds as though your private school is catering to a very non-traditional group of students.

CY: In our private school that is very true. Many of our students are extremely accelerated. We have 13-year-olds taking calculus. It is hard to get calculus in seventh to ninth grade.

SM: Do they get transferable credits if they want to attend a public school as well?

CY: Yes. They can either transfer the credit or they can use it toward a diploma granted by us.

SM: How many non-standard students do you think are out there?

CY: That number seems to be growing. The more people who have needs that our program can meet find out about us, the more flexibility they discover they have over their education. There are a lot of kids who would have had to give up their passion to attend regular school. We enable them to follow their passion.

SM: Let’s switch to the public school situation where I assume you use the same curriculum. How does your public school model work?

CY: The best way to describe it is that we support educational renegades. We support people who are passionate about creating very individualized solutions for students. Our IQ public schools and charter schools are contracts with non-profit partners or school districts who create a complete online program for their students.

In Wisconsin, we have more than 1,000 kids in a school which is in partnership with a school district. The teachers there are school district teachers. We run the program and provide our curriculum and technology. They do the teaching.

SM: You offer various school districts your curriculum as the driving force and you use their teachers.

CY: Sometimes. Other times they say that they do not have a Mandarin Chinese teacher available and we provide the teacher. Sometimes they have teachers who are simply utilized to capacity and they need our teachers. Additionally, we have experienced online teachers. Many times their teachers do not have the skill set to teach online. We provide that expertise.

SM: What is the business model behind that? Do school districts pay you?

CY: School districts typically get a sum of money per pupil. That can range from anywhere to $3,000 to $20,000 in places like New York City and Washington, D.C. We come to an agreement with them regarding what proportion of funding they receive for that pupil will come to us based on the services that we are providing.

SM: How do you reconcile the cost differences between states?

CY: It is a challenge. In some places like South Carolina, where the money is so low, this makes it difficult for us to provide a comprehensive program. There we are working with a non-profit school which raises money through philanthropy. We are only involved in the curriculum and hosting of the program. They use their teachers and guidance counselors. Our piece there is narrow. In other cases we do a full, comprehensive program. In those cases we receive more. There are other cases where we are not running the program and we only provide the curriculum.

This segment is part 5 in the series : Running Online Middle And High Schools: Caprice Young, CEO of KC Distance Learning
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