Creating a PMA and the Successful Start of the School

Today's guest is Ariel Maguire, an accountant and mom of 4 who lives in a rural area of the Big Island of Hawaii. In early 2022, she and a group of local moms got together to create Kulike Learning Garden, a Waldorf-inspired microschool structured as a Private Membership Association, or PMA, to help with the care and education of their children in an area with severe child care shortages. They hired an experienced teacher and were successfully operating the program for about a year until state regulators shut them down, and fined Ariel $5,000, for running an "unlicensed" school. 

Local Hawaii news coverage of Ariel's story.

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