# Business Idea - Study Hall/Tutoring



## from_wa (Mar 10, 2014)

Wanted to get some feedback from homeschoolers or from people that want to homeschool but can't.

My idea is to provide a Study Hall style environment for homeschoolers. I would be targeting grades 4-6 on the low end to 12th on the high end. I would provide a quality place for study, (desks, wifi, etc), tutoring, and general study help. There would be no fixed program, but I would help a child stay on task with their preferred program and provide general guidance and resources.

This would not be a day-care as each student would be mostly responsible for their own progress. I would serve an education and guidance resource.

In addition I would provide classes in Biology, Math and other areas.

I would have a drop in rate ($5/hour) and monthly rate ($500 - M-F 6AM-6PM).

I was a credentialed teacher at one time (But never formally taught in the classroom, pursued engineering instead) and have degrees in Biology with minors in Math and Chemistry. 

I would like to know if this would be attractive to homeschoolers, any ideas on additional features to provide.

Thanks in advance for the input.


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## offthegrid (Aug 11, 2009)

Some friends and I created a not-for-profit organization this year as a resource center for homeschoolers in our area. We initially tossed around a lot of ideas of things we could do to serve the communities, and after a bunch of revisions, are not targeting homeschooling high schoolers by attempting to work with local community colleges to better serve homeschoolers.

But...we considered a variety of classroom opportunities for kids, and the biggest obstacles were -- space, and insurance.

I'm not sure whether you plan to work from your home or from a rented space. In our case, we needed to rent space, which required insurance. We were shocked to find that insurance ranged in the $3-4,000 range. Why? Protection against claims of sexual abuse by caregivers or by other students. There were possible ways to reduce this -- for example, finger printing and background check -- which might work for you; but since we had a group of parent volunteers working on the project, it wouldn't have been helpful.

Our other thoughts - and again, we were talking about the possibility of having over 50 kids at a time - what if parents don't come back to pick up their kids? How do we keep track of who gets dropped off, and all their emergency contact information? And -- what if kids get dropped off and are disruptive or walk out?

So...again, your scale would be smaller, but some of these might still apply.

In your case - my biggest fear would be people who use your services as a "hang out" place for kids to socialize with their friends, not for tutoring. My kids took an art class this year and a group of the kids in it were clearly coming to socialize with their friends more than learn art. The price was very reasonable ($10 for the first kid, $5 for a sibling), so parents might not have cared that much if their kids got much "art" out of it at all, and I felt that the teacher didn't want to lose the students, so she allowed them to be annoying.

If I had a child that needed tutoring, I'd probably try to arrange private tutoring before considering a study hall atmosphere...mostly because I could easily imagine it being more of supervised chit chat and homework with friends than tutoring. However, if you go into it expecting that and don't mind - it could be successful. You would need to establish your own set of "ground rules" before you start and stick to them. E.g. perhaps designating a "quiet space" for kids that need to work quietly, and an "open" area where talking is permissible.

If you are considering doing this at your home - I would think long and hard about the arrangement and ask your friends and family to come up with the worst case scenarios so you can appropriately "child proof" your home - for their protection and yours. You don't want to find kids smoking pot behind your house or making out in the bathrooms...or rifling through your bedroom....or accusing you of inappropriate behavior.


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## Mrs. Thankful (Dec 4, 2013)

I don't know if you know about online schooling but that is the option that we chose for our child. Many of the parents hire a learning coach that have the same set up as you described.

Although you are not considering this child care, your state or city may. I would call and find out all of the reqs.

Good luck to you!


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## Ohio dreamer (Apr 6, 2006)

It's going to come down to your location and why people in your area home school. Here, all my friends home school because we want to be the ones teaching our kids and for some "political" reasons. We all are single income families....we have sacrificed mom working so she can be home with kids. $500 a month would not be do-able for any of us. Now I know there are people out there with 2 full time working parents, they might be able to afford such a service. But many of the kids I know of with 2 working parents are older (high school maybe younger siblings in middle school), and stay home alone doing their work. $5 an hour tutoring might go over well, price seems reasonable assuming groups of only 2-4 at a time. Could see $15 an hour for private tutoring. I know a few people that have tried to set up tutoring for home schoolers, they never got any takers in our region. Our public schools are begging for tutors, though.

Just to give you an idea of what we have here in my area: 

High school science co-ops run $50-$100 per year. Classes are 2 hours long one day/evening a week - one hour of review and one hour of labs. Those classes often have 6-15 kids in them. We will likely do Chemistry that way this year. Last year we did Biology, $50 for the year....done at a local university, labs run by university staff and grad students, review done by a home school mom with a degree in Biology (she's the one we paid the $50 to.....university did labs and provided the space for free). 

Gym co-ops are $10 a month, that's class on Friday for an hour. Grades are divided out into 3 age ranges: elementary, middle and high school. Those classes are always full with a waiting list (I think they do about 30 kids per age range)


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## halfpint (Jan 24, 2005)

In the state I am in what you list above would be considered day care, and you would need to be licensed as such. I don't think there would be many takers either. Our home school cover is through a church and provides a tutorial program - but for limited classes and there are no 'study halls' if your student is not in a class. Insurance is provided by the church, but was an add on for our program so wasn't as expensive as listed above. 

One suggestion is to go to just tutoring. I have a friend who retired from teaching a few years ago and began tutoring. She makes more now than she did as a teacher and only works part time, and said if she knew she would have done this well she would have quit her teaching job years ago. 

I used to tutor in a public school which was offered by the company that I worked for (ie the school didn't pay me, but it was during work hours so I was still paid), but I have since been offered jobs at private schools as a tutor.

Another option is to find if there are home school tutorials in your area that need teachers with your abilities. It might be hard to get in with the home educators in your area though. 

Dawn


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