Execution

Once we pass the first hurdle of getting together a group of interested families, the next challenge is to work out the details. We've envisioned a few different scenarios, and the group of parents would have to decide what would work best. Here is our basic thinking:

Having a single adult alone with kids seems like a bad idea for several reasons. We think it's important for there to be two adults at all times. One of these adults (the "lead teacher") should be someone who is there all day, every day. For the second adult (the "assistant"), it could be a single person or two people (perhaps parents) splitting the duties. Two people should be enough to manage 6-8 kids well, and still be able to go places with them (with the kids riding in a buggy and a stroller).

Planning curriculum/activities would be done by a subset of the parents, with input from the lead teacher. Other parents would take on the tasks of collecting supplies, managing funds, and doing other administrative work, according to their interests and talents. Parents would also rotate filling in when teachers are on vacation or sick (I calculate this to be likely to be ~7 days per family per year, based on 3 weeks of vacation and 8 sick days per teacher). This represents a lot of involvement on the parents' part, so this would have to be something families were interested in committing to and working on. The benefit (other than excellent care for our children) would be having a real sense of community with the families of the kids your child spends his or her days with.

After deciding what basic setup we'd like, the next task would be to choose a location and hire people. The location could be someone's home if that comes up as an option, but more likely it would be a house that we rent. The location of the house would be important to ensure that it is within walking distance to things that we want the kids to be able to visit regularly. A small house would provide ample space for the kids, with cots set up for naptime in a bedroom, access to a kitchen for storing food, and at least two rooms for play and activities (two rooms would allow space to split kids into two groups by age at times). A yard could contain some playground equipment and space to play.

Clearly a big factor in determining feasibility would be cost. My current estimate is the following:

Two teachers, $15/hr for the lead teacher, $10/hr for assistant (this doesn't sound like a lot, but from what I have learned it is quite a bit more than is standard!). 9 hours per day (thinking that we'd be open 8-5ish), 22 days per month. Add in some possible social security/unemployment/etc. requirements to pay for the lead teacher, and this totals $5750 per month for human resources. Add to that $800/month in rent and $300/month in supplies. This works out to $1150/month for 6 kids or $850/month for 8 kids. No doubt these numbers would need to be adjusted, but this is a starting point. My conclusion is that this may not be a good venture for families who are extremely cost sensitive, but that it should be possible to do it for something similar to what other high quality care costs.


Another important detail is legal requirements and state licensing rules. Depending on how we arrange to do the care and how many kids we decide to have together, we would potentially fall into one of the state's two categories that require licensing. This definitely puts more demands on us, but as far as I can tell, they are possible to meet. We'd also have to decide whether/how to form a legal entity, likely as a form of non-profit in which the parents would be the board of directors. These are things to consider after we've decided how we want the care arrangement to work.