If I won the Lottery

The joke use to be, if I won the lottery I was building a gym for the girls’ former school…a big gym, with air conditioning and some nice soft seats with a mezzanine.  However I’ve since had a change of heart.  No Gym.  I’m gonna build my baby school…
 

Reality is if Mama won the lottery nobody would know…until the crushed ice machine was installed…that would be my dead giveaway.  After paying some bills, buying a really large (used, I know always cheap) diesel motor home, I would give a lot to charity.  Then I wondered what charities?  Then later that day I watched a 27 minute video about the amazing Dr. Ben Carson. 

And then I decided…I would build a school.  That’s right, an LD school, South of Macon.  It is amazing at the resources that are available north of Macon, especially if you have deep pockets.  But nowhere in the rural south is there a Bedford school for children who learn differently.

Click here  to learn about Bedford….http://www.thebedfordschool.org/

So if money and budget weren’t an object or I had the money in the bank, how would I do this? So I thought some more.  I would partner with an existing independent, preferably parochial school.  Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have an LD school on the same campus with an existing school?  A school within a school…

The students would get the best of both worlds…an established campus and infrastructure along with a learning environment specifically designed to assist with their learning. 

I would build a separate wing with 8-10 classrooms.  The classrooms, much like the ones at Bedford would have state of the art technology and be very organized.  The teachers would be trained just for LD kids and the curriculum and daily schedule would reinforce methods that will allow them to succeed.

Class size would be limited to somewhere between 6-10 kids per class and would have grades K5 through 9^th grade.  The goal:  to equip students to enter high school with the background and skills to be successful while also provide services to transition through high school and on to post secondary education.

Would this be expensive?  Most certainly.  Bedford is about 17G a year.  But in south Georgia this education could be offered much more economically.  And y’all know I’ve crunched the numbers.  Let’s say that typical private education tuition averages 5 grand per year with a targeted enrollment of 15 per class.  That class would generate 60,000 in revenue to cover teacher pay and overhead.  This is revenue per student NOT cost per student.

 

If half that enrollment would be optical for a LD classroom, say 8 students, then an LD school class would need to generate $7500 revenue per student.  Compare that to 17,000 per student.  Now look around.  Would a school with this type of student population be able to draw full enrollment for K5-9^th grade?  That is a total of 80 students. 

I would have happily either commuted or relocated to this type of school had this been an option for my child.  Now I want to know are there 79 more parents and students that are would do the same?

And I also want to know where is a school that has a heart for LD kids and a vision to offer this very needed service in South Georgia? 

Very sadly and very regrettably, I have realized that my child could have had that Bedford education…and had it near her family and friends.  I didn’t crunch the numbers…the cost is actually small, the tuition even though more than the average independent school in South Georgia is still attainable for many families with LD students. 

For less than a million bucks we could have a Bedford South.  If you are interested in building this dream, if you have a vision of an alternative other than moving your entire family or if you have that million (or a few hundred thousand), please let me know.  I’d come back for that.