Colleen Hroncich
In December 2021, the Friday Feature highlighted KaiPod Learning, an innovative organization that was providing in-person learning communities for children who homeschooled or attended cyber schools. KaiPod centers are staffed with a learning coach who can support students with their chosen courseloads. And they incorporate a lot of flexibility with daily offerings and prices pro-rated depending on use.
The success of KaiPod led founder Amar Kumar to branch out and create KaiPod Catalyst in 2023. “We were inspired by two factors: the number of educators looking for alternative career paths and the number of families looking for alternative education options,” he explains. “We knew that we’d never be able to open enough KaiPod Learning locations to satisfy that demand, so we needed to find a different way. Thus, Catalyst was born. We took everything we learned in building the largest owned network of microschools in the country and created a launch playbook for anyone to benefit from.”
KaiPod Catalyst is a program that helps people create, run, and grow microschools. It includes support for marketing and outreach, community engagement, finance and fundraising, finding a location, hiring, operations, and more. The initial phase of the program to get a microschool off the ground is free. After launch, KaiPod supports the new microschool for three years in exchange for a per-student fee. The KaiPod website also includes a variety of free resources to help potential microschool founders focus their vision and learn about finances.
Several microschools that have been previous Friday Features have participated in KaiPod Catalyst. Alexandra Batista, founder of Steps Learning Center in Florida, raved about the program. “In my lowest moments, when I’m about to lose my mind, I say, ‘What do I do?’ And there is not one situation that I’ve brought up and they haven’t found a solution for me,” she told me. “It’s having a backup at all times because what I’m doing is risky. When I started, I did it all with Google searches. Asking Google, ‘What is the process for a permit?’ and ‘What permit do I need for this?’ That’s how I did it. And just having somebody to tell me, ‘This is the blueprint of how you do everything’—it was mind-blowing. And it made my job so much easier.”
While the Catalyst program goes beyond Amar’s initial vision, he points out, “The KaiPod of today is true to the same principles in my original business plan: the value of small groups, intense personalization for students powered by technology, and new career paths for teachers. But, in other ways, we’ve learned and adapted as the market has evolved. Coming out of the pandemic, the diversity of learning options has really multiplied and we’re so excited to be able to accelerate this transformation even further.”
Amar acknowledges that the huge variety of educational models has been a huge surprise. “We have really come to appreciate the wide diversity of this movement and the importance of microschools created by people from the community for the community,” he says. “Microschooling’s strength is its diversity, and no amount of top-down control would achieve what we’ve been able to achieve in just 18 months.”
More than 100 founders have already participated in KaiPod Catalyst, and a new cohort is about to begin—the deadline to apply is August 31, 2024. “I encourage people to think of three educators in their life…how are they doing? Are they happy in their career? Do they deserve more? If so, I’d encourage you to send them a link to our site, so they can learn more,” Amar says. “Starting a school isn’t right for everyone, but we hope that everyone will at least take a small step to learn more about the innovation happening in American education.”
