Playing the long game

It appears there is money to be made on this school bill. One would need to open a chain of pop-up K-6 private schools across Arkansas. You could call them “The 3-R Academies.”

The slogan could be, “We’ll settle for whatever your voucher amount is.”

There aren’t many private schools in the hinterlands. The established ones tend to locate in larger communities and charge a lot more than the voucher will provide or the typical Arkansas family could afford even with the voucher.

So, to serve this void, one would need to acquire vacant buildings at good prices and remodel them into a few classrooms.

The hassle would be hiring teachers because the state has suddenly priced that at a minimum of $50,000.

One could either match that or try to get by offering less by pointing out that private-school teachers don’t have to bother with as much regulatory busy work as public school teachers. One could remind faculty recruits that the state is doing away with any job protections for public school teachers, and offer them some, or the appearance of some, since there is no state regulation of private schools.

Another slogan might be, “Why burden yourself with homeschooling when we can do it for you probably as well?”

All one would need after that is a bank account to deposit $7,000 or so — whatever the voucher amount turns out to be — for every kid one lures. Seven first-graders would pay nearly for the teacher. The eighth and after would be gravy.

Just do the math. At $7,000 a kid, with seven classrooms of 20 kids, minus seven teachers at maybe $50,000 per, plus a principal maybe looking for a little post-coaching retirement money and agreeing to carry a gun to double as the security staff, and assuming one could open six of these around the state, multiplying everything by the four years before the state requires one to acquire any kind of accreditation … well, yes, it would take a while to pay for the buildings and rudimentary remodels before the gravy stopped oozing and started pouring.

Remember that this new law acknowledges the reality that a pop-up private school couldn’t be instantly accredited, so it grants a four-year free ride as long as the pop-up private is “on a path to accreditation,” which one is on by saying one is.

Still, one would need to make as much money as possible for four years in case one might not get accredited.

But imagine the earnings if one clears the fouryear hump.

One also would need to design an easy-peasy annual student assessment test to turn in to the state Board of Education.

One could, if one chose, accept at first only the smarter kids who’d probably learn a little every year by mere inertia.

But all one really would need is to get first-graders able to count to 10. Then, when they can count to 20 after the second grade, one could report 100% improvement in student performance year-to-year.

In fact, one might want to start with the low-achieving kids. Any improvement would produce a higher percentage of improvement.

That’s what the politicians are looking for. They’ll need these instant private schools to show good numbers.

The governor is ambitious and a talking-point automaton who intends to go on Fox from time to time to say she’s transformed education in Arkansas. So, she’ll have one’s back as long as one produces results that are spin-worthy, if not good or successful.

One wouldn’t have to run any buses. That’s old-school, literally.

Another slogan could be, “You deliver them here and pick them up. We’ll do the rest.”

Or one could provide that, for an additional sum in the form of a surcharge, “We’ll send a pickup.”

Those buying premium plans could get picked up first and enjoy first dibs on sitting in the cab in case of cold temperatures or rain.

Cafeteria costs might be a problem. But there’s lunch money to be taken in. The help shouldn’t cost much, especially in the hinterland market, and frozen tater tots bought by the ton and served six to a kid might last years, especially if parents would do one a favor and pack a kid a PB&J once in a while.

These would be elementary schools, so there’d be no necessity to divert academic money to a fieldhouse and ball teams.

The point is that these reigning right-wingers seem embedded for a while at the state Capitol, where they seem clearly determined to privatize education. But they can’t do it at the prices these elite private and parochial schools charge.

They need private econo-schools. Somebody is going to have step up and provide those.

The grace period of four unaccredited years is the time to establish oneself on the ground floor of that long game of discount private education.