Launch HN: KaiPod Learning (YC S21) – A physical place for online schoolers

My name is Amar Kumar and I’m the founder of KaiPod Learning (http://www.kaipodlearning.com). We provide a physical place for middle- and high- school students who go to online school to work on their classes, to interact with other students, and to get support from teachers.

Over the last 15 years I have been a school teacher, a principal, and most recently the Chief Product Officer of Pearson Online Schools. I have come to understand the unfortunate link between residential property values and educational outcomes. There are tens of millions of parents in poor quality school districts who can’t afford to relocate or pay for a private school. Online learning can help solve this problem for many kids. With public online schools, you can live anywhere and have access to a high-quality education.

For millions of kids, online school is the best school they’ve ever had. They get to study at their own pace without feeling rushed or bored, work without distractions, and not fear bullying. However, they lack enough opportunities to interact with other kids or get real-time help from their teachers. In addition, parents of online students usually have to stay home with them and support them with academic work, something that not all parents are able to do.

At Pearson, my team supported 150,000 students who went to school completely online before the pandemic even started. In conversations with many families, I came to understand what brought them to our schools and what could make their experience better. The idea to run small-group learning pods as supplements to online school was the highest-impact idea we studied. It was popular with parents and students and we knew we could improve customer conversion, student outcomes, and school retention if we did it. However, Pearson is a curriculum company and I couldn’t get this off the ground. As the pandemic started and the floodgates opened for online schooling, I decided to quit my job and build a startup to solve the problem.

We provide a physical place for online students to meet every day, interact with other kids, and get support from instructors. We match them to a learning center within 20 minutes of their home with 8-10 other children of similar age. These students come to our center anywhere from two to five days a week. While they are at our centers, they are supported by a “learning coach”, a former teacher who loves working with kids (but not grading homework or creating lesson plans!). Our coaches interact closely with the online school teachers and create strategies on how to support each child. This team approach is highly effective at addressing the academic, social, and emotional needs of each child.

During the day, kids set goals for themselves; work on their online courses; take part in enrichment activities such as art, music, and coding; and have plenty of time for free play and independent learning. Our centers are open until 5:30pm every day so families with working parents do not have to worry about arranging for after-school childcare. At the end of the day, our students go home without any homework to do or tests to study for. All academic work happens on-site with the support of the coach. When the family gets home, they can truly spend time together rather than nagging kids about doing homework.

We have a video showcasing some of our students, parents, and teachers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ujx_TAUP7uw

Getting feedback from parents is really critical and I would love to get your ideas on what makes for a great school experience for your children. And, if you have experienced some form of remote or online learning in the past (i.e, before or during COVID), I’d love to hear more about what you liked about it and what could have been better!

Thank you in advance!

It's probably worth a mention here that the pilot location is the greater Boston area.

Given how many passionate undergraduate and graduate students are there, the depth of the talent pool for coaches is second to none!

I'm not familiar enough with Massachusetts' home/online schooling rules to comment, but when you're ready to extend north, there are robust communities of non-traditionally schooling families in southern New Hampshire!

Thanks so much for your questions. To get started, we are talking to parents who have already opted into an online school or even an online homeschool program. Those families have already made the transition to the learning model; and many of them are looking for greater opportunities for socialization and academic support. When we describe the model to them, they see its value pretty quickly.

As you are pointing out, we do have trouble reaching the parents in a more traditional education who aren't actively seeking out alternative options. Our hope is that as we show the value of our model, the word will spread and more parents will opt in. In the meantime, we are doing whatever we can to lower the effort required for families to transition. Any suggestions are most welcome!

Homeschool co-ops are an excellent comparison. For those who may not know what those are, a co-op is a group of homeschooling families who come together (often on a voluntary basis) to support each other with their kids' education and other needs (e.g., meals, childcare, etc.). They've been around for years and, in the pandemic, they started to get mainstream as 'learning pods.'

In some ways, you can see us as making the concept of 'co-ops' more available to more people.

My son will be ready for Kindergarten next fall. Would we be in your target market?

If so, how would we find out which online public schools are an option for us? Presumably not all online public schools in the US would be able to get funding from SFUSD for an SF-based student?

Right now, we are starting with 4th to 12th graders. The reason for this is that online learning is a bit more self-paced at this age group.

For kindergarten-aged students, online schools typically require heavy 1-on-1 support from a learning coach (typically a parent or guardina). Since our model typically has 8-10 students per learning coach, we haven't figured out how to support younger students yet.

In terms of which schools are an option, if you're in California, there are several options available to you to opt in to online schools (both public and private). The one I know best is called California Connections Academy (https://www.connectionsacademy.com/california-online-school). These schools are funded by the state and operate as charter schools.