LiberatED Podcast

Libertas Institute education policy analyst, and former public school teacher turned homeschooling dad, Jon England joins me on the podcast today to talk about removing regulatory barriers for education entrepreneurs. Jon describes new zoning legislation in Utah passed earlier this year to make it easier for microschool founders to launch their programs.

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Dominique Paloma Bible was born in Brazil and raised in Brooklyn, eventually dropping out of high school. That experience led Dominique to discover the importance of personal agency and self-determination, as well as the possibility of alternative learning models outside of traditional schooling. Dominique earned a GED and enrolled at Goddard College. After collecting undergraduate and graduate degrees, Dominique launched Off Da Beaten Path Learning in 2020. It provides personalized guidance, encouragement, and mentorship for young people who are looking to take control of their education in creative, authentic ways, often outside of the traditional K-12 system.

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Bountiful Microschool is a home-based microschool in Bountiful, Utah created by edtech entrepreneur, David Blake, cofounder and CEO of Degreed, and his wife Mikel, cofounder of Tech-Moms. The couple wanted to bring the innovation and personalization they were seeing in the larger tech sector to the K-12 classroom to benefit their own children and others in their community.

"Utah's Emerging Education Ecosystem Is Diverse and Accessible" (Forbes.com)

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The podcast's very first guest, Jill Perez, joins us today to celeberate our 200th episode! She gives us an update on her journey as the founder of Tranquil Teachings Learning Center, a pandemic pod turned microschool, in New Jersey.

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Jenson "Fig" Newton is the founder of Empigo Academy, a faith-based high school focused on career technical education (CTE) that is opening this fall in Des Moines, Iowa. He expects to launch with 50 students, all of whom will attend tuition-free thanks to Iowa's new universal school choice program.

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Kanesha Adams is a former public school teacher and founder of The Learning Lounge, a tutoring center and new microschool in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, a low-income community outside of Little Rock. In this episode, Kanesha shares her founder story and explains why Arkansas's new universal school choice program propelled her startup decision.

In Arkansas, School Choice Is Encouraging Education Entrepreneurship (Forbes.com)

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Angela Watson is an assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Education and the creator of the new Homeschool Hub at the Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy, providing in-depth data on homeschooling, regulations, and research across the US.

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On the podcast today, Heather DiNino, a former public school teacher and founder of Elements Academy just outside of Boston, talks about the challenges of running a microschool.

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Jennifer Kempin taught for more than a decade in public schools in Pennsylvania before launching her home-based, Waldorf-inspired microschool, Fáilte Microschool, earlier this year.

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Jen Granberry is the founder of ARROWS Christian Academy in Phoenix, Arizona that she launched in August 2023. ARROWS is fully-integrated K-8 private school blending neurotypical and neurodiverse students with a focus on individualized learning, meeting each child where they are at academically and developmentally. She currently has 23 students enrolled with 3 teachers and 3 aides with plans for incremental growth.

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