The Future of Education Is Already Here — It Just Doesn’t Have a Lobbyist

“What do you do again? ”It’s a question many small-school founders hear from friends, neighbors, even parents, a sign of how invisible this wave of innovation still is. Across the country, microschools, pods, and community-rooted learning centers are serving children in ways traditional systems can’t. Yet they operate quietly in church basements, living rooms, and shared spaces—with little fanfare and even less political support.

While debates about school choice and ESAs dominate statehouses, the people actually building these new schools are rarely in the room. There’s almost no organized advocacy shaping the funding models or legal frameworks that directly affect them. As a result, founders are left navigating policies written for large, traditional buildings, rules that make little sense for a program serving 10 or 15 students.

I’ve seen this gap up close through my work with founders across states. Jessica Benjamin, who runs Arrows Learning Academy in Indiana, started by pulling her own children from a top-rated school that wasn’t serving them. Word spread fast. “Other parents just started knocking on my door,” she told me. Today, her small environment supports neurodiverse learners and kids who struggled in traditional settings. The difference, she says, is immediate and human: “They start to thrive socially. They make friends, they start group chats—things that never happened before. Parents tell me, ‘My child finally loves school again.’” Demand is so strong she now has a waitlist.

In New Orleans, Arianne Craig-Jalla founded Hype Academy after realizing the job she loved was being hollowed out by compliance. “I began feeling like I was only hired to teach the test… that was not what I had in mind,” she said. In her small setting, the relationship comes first and behavior changes as a result. “In a smaller environment I know my students. If Sean walks in with his head down, I can say, ‘Come walk with me.’ He learned to tell me, ‘Ms. J, can I sit in your office for ten minutes? I just need a break.’ You don’t get that in a big system.”

This is what policy often misses: smallness is not a luxury; it’s the mechanism that restores dignity, attention, and growth. And yet the path to funding or legal recognition for these models is frequently accidental, not designed. Arianne didn’t find a roadmap—she got a phone call. “A parent said, ‘Have you ever thought about becoming a private school so families could use scholarships?’ I hadn’t. We were just serving kids. That one call sent me to Baton Rouge, and the next year we were approved.” That’s not a strategy; that’s a scavenger hunt.

Meanwhile, one-size-fits-all rules built for big systems can crush small ones. A regulation that’s sensible for a 500-student building may be misapplied to a 12-student learning space with a fire plan, multiple exits, and trained adults on site. When founders aren’t at the table, laws and guidance don’t flex and kids lose access to environments that work.

Representation is the missing infrastructure. Political strategy is pricey, time-consuming, and unfamiliar terrain for most educators. “Educational entrepreneurs are ten toes down when it’s time to do good—but many of us don’t do well in the process,” Arianne told me. “It’s hard to do good when you’re struggling personally and financially.” Jessica echoes the urgency from the family side: “When a child finally loves school again, you can’t tell that family to wait two years for policy to catch up.”

So what would it take to align policy with what’s already working?

• A Founder Alliance: a national coalition of microschool and small-learning leaders that can brief legislators, flag unintended consequences, and propose right-sized regulations.

• State Founder Advisory Boards: official seats for small-school operators when departments craft rules tied to ESAs, scholarships, facilities, and reporting.

• Capacity Support: micro-grants for compliance help, legal guidance, and basic lobbying literacy so founders can show up prepared and unified.

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The future of education is already here. It’s being built in kitchens, gardens, church halls, and community spaces where children are known by name and seen in full. Until the people creating it have organized power, not just passion, policy will keep lagging behind innovation. If you’re a founder, educator, or ally ready to change that, let’s connect. We can stop waiting for a lobbyist to appear and become our own.

Felicia Wright is an educator, founder, and host of the Founder 2 Founder podcast. She works with families and policymakers to expand educational choice and amplify small school voices.