Is there a market for a cheaper no frills private school

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OK, but for the time being, most parents don't want their kids to be the first at any school, especially those that might be experimental.

This is Robert Gold, co-founder of Feynman School. I agree that most parents (my wife and I included) would not prefer their children to be the first to attend a new school. Feynman School, however, cannot be considered "experimental," and Susan and I are hardly pioneers! In fact, there are long-successful schools with similar missions and approaches to ours in a number of major U.S. metropolitan areas. Prior to opening Feynman School, we visited Hollingworth Preschool in New York City, a school serving children with similar learning profiles to those at Feynman, operated by Columbia University. We spent several hours with the Director, Assistant Director and Lead Teacher, and were frankly impressed. The students appeared so advanced, engaged and happy. We said to ourselves, why isn't there a school like Hollingworth in Montgomery County? We had a similar experience when we toured Hunter College Elementary School and met with its outstanding leadership team. Luckily for us, schools like Hollingworth, Hunter, and other gifted schools including Open Window School in the Seattle area, Ricks Center in Denver and Quest Academy in the Chicago area were willing to share information with us, including proven identification / admissions methods and proven curriculum, including units and lesson plans. We believe we have adopted best practices from these programs, and our teachers have availed themselves of many hours of training from the country's most accomplished experts in early gifted education. The most novel aspects of our program are: i) making science the cornerstone of the curriculum (although we do not give short shrift to any key area of curriculum), and ii) incorporating part-immersion Spanish into the day. But we cannot take credit for either of these "novel" approaches; the former was suggested by Professor Joyce VanTassel-Baska of the College of William and Mary, the latter by Professor Alison Mackey of Georgetown University. In sum, the program is not at all experimental, just new to Montgomery County. Thank you for reading this post.

Ok - thanks Mr. Gold. Now to address the original reason for this thread - are you willing to keep the tuition for Feyman school at $15K/year for two kids? Can you confirm or refute the hypothesis that you could run a school with good teachers for that price range?

[Anonymous]

PP - Don't be so disrespectful. It's unwarranted.

[Anonymous]

I went to a bunch of really good restaurants in different cities and watched them cook. I saw people eating the food at these restaurants and they were very happy. So I wrote down the recipes and opened my own restaurant right here! It's not new -- it'll be just as good as all the great restaurants I visited elsewhere! I know this even though I don't have any experience cooking or running a restaurant. But I hired people who do. And I've used the same suppliers to buy all my equipment. So, really, it's like all the best restaurants rolled into one and right nearby. Check it out!! Escoffier's great-grandkids sold me the right to use his name and boy did that guy know recipes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I went to a bunch of really good restaurants in different cities and watched them cook. I saw people eating the food at these restaurants and they were very happy. So I wrote down the recipes and opened my own restaurant right here! It's not new -- it'll be just as good as all the great restaurants I visited elsewhere! I know this even though I don't have any experience cooking or running a restaurant. But I hired people who do. And I've used the same suppliers to buy all my equipment. So, really, it's like all the best restaurants rolled into one and right nearby. Check it out!! Escoffier's great-grandkids sold me the right to use his name and boy did that guy know recipes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I went to a bunch of really good restaurants in different cities and watched them cook. I saw people eating the food at these restaurants and they were very happy. So I wrote down the recipes and opened my own restaurant right here! It's not new -- it'll be just as good as all the great restaurants I visited elsewhere! I know this even though I don't have any experience cooking or running a restaurant. But I hired people who do. And I've used the same suppliers to buy all my equipment. So, really, it's like all the best restaurants rolled into one and right nearby. Check it out!! Escoffier's great-grandkids sold me the right to use his name and boy did that guy know recipes.

You have unresolved issues...

[Anonymous]

Why do you posters feel the need to be so rude and push back. Clearly you are not in the market for Feyman...so just let it be.

Thank you Mr Gold for your post. I am sure it will be helpful to parents who may be more of your target community.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My kids are at New Hope in PG County. We find it to have good academics, small classes, very personal staff, etc. It does lack the beautiful buildings, endowment, full range of extra curricular. For less than $10k (including before/after care) we find it to fit our needs perfectly.

Ditto!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Ok - thanks Mr. Gold. Now to address the original reason for this thread - are you willing to keep the tuition for Feyman school at $15K/year for two kids? Can you confirm or refute the hypothesis that you could run a school with good teachers for that price range?

Mr. Gold, thanks for coming on here to talk enthusiastically about your school. Please ignore the troll. You need to know that there is one quite nutty poster who comes on gifted threads just to insult people. Her style is to phrase her insults in the form of questions, she's a bit like a buzz saw and, to give you an idea, some posters refer to her as the "whack job." The best strategy is to ignore her and respond to the serious-sounding posts.