So, you’re thinking about starting a school.

Well, you’re not alone. The past few years have been a fertile time for new school creation. Whether it was the disruption of the pandemic forcing families to improvise as their traditional schools struggled to cope with the challenge of the coronavirus, or the sweeping new private school choice policies passed in state after state, it has never been a better time to be an educational entrepreneur.

That said, starting a school is a challenge. Not only is it a challenge in the ways that most people think—securing a space, hiring teachers, recruiting students, fixing the air conditioner when it goes on the fritz—but it also requires compliance with a host of regulations and requirements put forward by states. These requirements are not always clear and are not always easy to find.

Enter The School Starter Checklist.

The purpose of this guide is to put in one place the state level regulations on private schools so that potential school leaders (and frankly anyone else interested in knowing about private school regulations across the country) can easily find what they need to do to get started in their process. To be 100% clear this is not and should not be understood as legal advice. Exactly how to comply with these laws is outside of our remit. But we hope it is a good starting point in the school creation journey.