LiberatED Podcast

Ashley Franz is a homeschooling mother of 5 who founded Cross Creek Academy as a PreK-12th Charlotte Mason-inspired hybrid homeschool program in rural central Arkansas. It currently serves about 100 learners with daily programming. Taylor Guy is a parent of three students at Cross Creek and a staff member.

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Today's guest is Tanisha DaCosta, founder of Kingdom Kids Empowerment Academy, a K-12 microschool with a project-based, Montessori-inspired approach that operates on the campus of Barber-Scotia College, an HBCU (historically black colleges and universities) in North Carolina.

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Mary Jo Fairhead is a former public school teacher and principal who in 2021 founded Onward Learning, an affordable, child-centered PK-8 school in rural Martin, South Dakota. As her enrollment climbs, she plans to open additional schools throughout South Dakota.

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Vince and Tiffany Torres are the cofounders, along with two other couples, of Santa Fe Christian, a low-cost private school in New Mexico that they launched in 2022. It began with 20 students and has tripled in size over the past two years.

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Sabrina Reynolds is the founder of Mastery Learning Academy, a first through twelfth grade microschool in Taylorsville, Utah outside of Salt Lake City that focuses on core academic content within a classical-inspired, project-based learning environment.

Sabrina has a Master's degree in secondary education and taught in both public and private schools for almost 20 years before launching Mastery Learning Academy in 2019. Her school was almost shut down last spring for a zoning issue, but a new microschool bill passed by the Utah legislature saved it.

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Candice Hilton left her job as a public school teacher last year and just opened her K-8 microschool, Hilton Horizons Academy, in Kingsport, Tennessee. Tuition for the three-day program is $4,900 a year. All 12 of Hilton's students are legally homeschooled, with the vast majority of them new to homeschooling this academic year after being in public school.

Check out Kerry's new article at The 74 on "New Microschools for a New School Year," featuring Hilton Horizons Academy.

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LiberatED Education Associate Nasiyah Isra-Ul interviews Sumay and Aila Lu, the cofounders of the WEquil App educational platform and its virtual school, WEquil School.

For Sumay and Aila, ages 15 and 12 respectively, creating a virtual school, and later a wider community platform, was inspired by their journey from public school into unconventional education during the pandemic. Their edtech platform currently has over 2,400 registered users.

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Tobin Slaven is an educator, entrepreneur, and author who has joined our team as an Entrepreneur-In-Residence. He is the co-founder of Acton Academy Fort Lauderdale in Florida, which is part of the fast-growing Acton Academy network of hundreds of learner-driven schools across the US and globally.

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Michelle Lee Thompson is the founder of Hand In Hand Christian Montessori in Minnesota. She launched Hand in Hand in 1999 as a small summer camp and today it has three campuses serving infants to teens with both full-time private school options and part-time homeschool programs.

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Dr. Erin Flynn is a longtime educator and founder of the Hedge School Cooperative, an inclusive, secular, LGBTQIA-welcoming microschool for homeschoolers in Austin, Texas. The school offers two to four days of in-person instruction for 8th-12th graders.

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