For owners of for-profit independent schools across the United States who want their school to keep going, and to be paid fairly for what they built. If your school is a nonprofit, start with School Management.
An independent school is built around a handful of people and the families who trust them. When we acquire a school, our first job is to understand what made it worth choosing, usually the name on the sign, the teachers families ask for by name, and the program that set it apart, and to build the plan around keeping it.
Our second job is to bring what a founder usually can’t build alone. An admissions and enrollment operation, a central team behind the head of school, and the resources to grow the campus when the school is ready.
We’ve done both at the schools we serve. Our family opened its first school in a converted warehouse in 1990 and has spent every year since running schools in Florida.
Three things a large operator can’t offer you, and one thing it can that we can too.
The same family that opened our first school sits across the table from you. We know what it took to build yours, and what you’re afraid of losing when it changes hands.
A group with a hundred campuses has to run a playbook, because that’s how it stays profitable at that size. We don’t, so decisions about your school get made by people who have met your families.
Enrollment, facilities, and people. The schools we serve have grown 191% since 2018, and both campuses have been expanded to keep up.
The resources of a group, brought by people who have used every one of them on a school of their own. This is how we approach it; the specifics are agreed in writing, school by school.
Brand, website, advertising, inquiry follow-up, tours, and re-enrollment, run by our in-house enrollment team. Each campus we serve now sees more than 500 qualified inquiries a year.
Budgeting, payroll, benefits, hiring, compliance, and reporting, handled centrally so the head of school can lead the school instead of running its back office.
When the school is ready to grow, we plan and build. A 20,000 square foot athletic and performing arts center opened on one of the campuses we serve in August 2026, and a 25,000 square foot expansion is in pre-construction on the other.
Professional development, a benefits program, and paths to leadership across more than one campus, so the people who make the school what it is have more reasons to stay.
Our starting point is that the name, the culture, the traditions, and the program families chose stay in place, and that our job is to strengthen what works rather than replace it.
Heads of school and teachers across our campuses compare notes on curriculum, signature programs, and admissions, without a head office telling them what to teach.
Quiet, in order, and timed to the school year. Nothing about a first conversation is shared with staff, families, or anyone else.
A call with Peyton. You tell us about the school and what you’re hoping for, and we tell you honestly whether we’re the right fit.
A simple confidentiality agreement, then the basics: enrollment, the program, the team, the lease or the property. Then a visit, arranged so it doesn’t raise questions on campus.
What we’d pay, how it’s structured, and what your role would be, in plain terms and with the reasoning behind the number.
We verify what we’ve been told, you verify us, and lawyers put the agreement in writing. Your own advisors are welcome at every step.
Staff, families, and the calendar: who hears what, when, and from whom. Timed to the school year, not to our convenience.
In almost every case the name on the sign is the same on Monday. Our team steps in behind the head of school, and the founder’s role, if there is one, starts as planned.
A conversation with Peyton Flanders, Chief Operating Officer
The shape of the agreement follows the owner, not a template. Some owners want a clean break and some want a slower one, and either can be planned. And if you’d rather not sell at all, we can run the school for you under a management agreement while you keep it. That’s our School Management page.
A clean handoff on a date that works for the school calendar, with the transition planned before anyone announces anything.
Keep teaching, lead the school for a season, or advise through the first year. Founders who want to stay involved are welcome to.
If you own the property, sell it with the school or keep it and lease it to the school. Both can work.
Most owners sell a school once. These are the terms that come up, in the order they come up.
For-profit independent schools across the United States: Montessori programs, preschools that have grown into elementary schools, K-5 and K-8 schools, and PreK through 12. Usually founder-led, with a program and a community worth carrying forward. Size matters less than the school’s character. If your school is a nonprofit, the path is a management agreement with your board, and that conversation starts on our School Management page.
It depends on enrollment and where it’s heading, the program, the team that stays, the lease or the property, and how much of the school runs without you. We don’t publish numbers, and we won’t quote one before we’ve seen the school. If we go forward, we put a written proposal in front of you with the reasoning behind it, and we’ll tell you honestly if we think you’d do better with someone else.
In almost every case the name stays, along with the culture and the traditions families count on. Changing a school’s name tells its community the school they chose is gone, and that isn’t what we’re buying. If a change ever made sense, it would be decided with the founder, not announced to them.
The program is the reason families chose the school, so our starting point is to strengthen it rather than replace it. Where our own schools have something worth sharing, from STEM labs to agriculture and culinary programs, it’s offered, not imposed.
We work to keep the teachers and leaders who make the place what it is, and every school we serve has kept its leadership through the years we have worked with it. What a larger team can offer them is a benefits program, professional development, career paths, and a central office that takes the paperwork off the school.
Often, yes, and it’s one of the first things we talk about. Some founders keep teaching, some lead the school for a season, and some advise through the first year and then step away. We plan that with you rather than for you.
Either can work. You can sell the property with the school or keep it and lease it to the school, and we’ll talk through which one fits your plans.
Together, and from the school. We plan who hears what and when, starting with your leadership team, then staff, then families, with the founder’s voice first. The goal is that no one hears about it from a rumor.
No one, unless you decide otherwise. A first conversation is between you and us. We don’t share it with staff, families, or anyone else, and if the fit isn’t there, it ends there.
It varies with the school’s structure and with who has to approve it, so we don’t quote a timeline. What we can tell you is that a transition is usually timed around the school calendar, so families see continuity instead of a change in the middle of a year.
It depends on what was arranged in advance. Some schools have a successor ready and a board prepared to hire them. Others drift for years while enrollment slips, and a few close. A third path is a transition to an operator who keeps running it as a school, and that’s the one we’re built for.
It depends on how the school is organized. A for-profit school has an owner, and the owner decides who comes next: a family member, a long-tenured head of school, another school, or a company that runs schools. A nonprofit school has no owner. Its board decides who leads it, and the board may engage an operator under a management agreement while the school stays what it is. This page is about the first path; the second is our School Management page. Either way, we’re founders ourselves, so we start with what you want the school to still be in ten years.
“The point of a school isn’t to fill a child with answers. It’s to make them hungry for questions.”
Robert A. Flanders, Founder1950-2002Owners and founders of for-profit independent schools across the United States. Nothing you tell us is shared with anyone.
