The ten boys gather in the front of the classroom as they do every morning. Bommarito presses play on her computer, and melodies from the song "Happy" by Pharrell Williams fill the air. Almost immediately, the boys start dancing around the room. Some grab each other's hands and hop around, while others bust out their best break-dancing moves.
This is how Bommarito begins her class every day before they dive into their required math and reading coursework.
Down the hall sits Julieta Rakover's class of 16 students who are in third through seventh grade. All of the students are sitting at their laptops focusing on their uniquely tailored math coursework. Some students are on Zoom calls in small learning groups with other students in Arizona or Florida, while others are using Khan Academy, an educational app, to complete their individual assignments.
The two classrooms make up the Primer Health District microschool in Miami.
As Florida public schools grapple with a worsening teacher shortage and the onslaught of controversial education legislation, families have turned to microschools as a new education alternative.
Often operating out of a single room in churches, community centers, libraries, or synagogues, microschools are small learning environments with mixed-age classrooms that offer personalized learning for students. According to Don Soifer, CEO of the National Microschooling Center, nearly 1.5 million children attend microschools in the U.S.
Primer, in particular, operates 23 K-8 microschools in Arizona and Florida, including locations in Kendall, Coconut Grove, Liberty City, and Fort Lauderdale. The company has raised almost $20 million in funding from investors like Peter Thiel's venture capital firm Founders Fund, Miami-based technology executive and venture capitalist Keith Rabois, and Sam Altman, chief executive of OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT.
Primer says its mission is to fix a broken education system where students are left behind in public schools and families cannot afford the rising cost of private schools.
"The current private school market is just completely broken," Ryan Delk, CEO and founder of Primer, tells New Times. "It's exclusionary. It's all about politics and who you know."
Launching Primer
Delk says that growing up in the Orlando area in the early '90s, he did not have many options for schooling aside from lackluster public schools. His mother — a public school special-education teacher— decided to team up with five other families across varying socioeconomic and ethnic backgrounds to create a small school at home.What she thought was going to be a one-year project until the family could save up enough money to move to a better school district turned into a 16-year endeavor teaching Delk and his two younger siblings.
"It was incredible," Delk says. "It was maybe the most valuable thing that anyone has ever done for me. It was truly transformative for us."
When it was time for Delk and his wife to decide where they were going to send their kids to school, Delk wanted his children to have an equally fulfilling education experience, although not at home.
He wanted them to be in a school with a small learning environment where they could have agency and autonomy. But he says his search came up short. The schools he encountered were either hyper-religious or exorbitantly expensive.
Using his experience working in technology in Silicon Valley, he decided to create Primer, where teachers run their own microschool. At Primer, the teacher, AKA "microschool leader," operates the facility with the company's guidance. They lead a classroom with no more than 28 students of varying grade levels. Once a classroom exceeds 19 students, Primer provides a "studio guide," Primer's version of a teacher's aide.
"Basically, what we do is very simple. We help really great teachers start schools in their communities," he says. "They're really small, so they can operate in community centers, libraries, churches, and synagogues. It's just the teacher operating, and then we built a bunch of technology that creates accountability for the students and teachers."
The students typically spend their mornings doing 100 minutes of math and 100 minutes of reading, working toward a five-week academic goal. In the afternoon, the students engage in "earnest work" where they can pursue a passion project, such as starting a podcast, designing an app, or creating a business on Shopify.
"It is much more about empowering kids to get excited about having agency than it is about the top-down, 'You have to do this,'" Delk says.
While homeschooling and other nontraditional teaching options have faced criticism for lack of oversight and regulation, Delk says Primer's microschools are registered with the Florida Department of Education, and all of its teachers adhere to state standards and must meet state requirements in order to teach. He adds many of its leaders are teachers who left traditional school systems.
"They love teaching," he says. "They were just kind of sick of the bureaucracy, the paperwork, and not making very much money."
To monitor their progress, Primer students complete the Measure of Academic Progress (MAP) Test three times a year. Parents are in constant communication with the microschool leader to track their children's learning, Delk explains.
"Every single microschool leader sees exactly how their kids are progressing," Delk adds. "And even in our schools where we have a lot of kids that came in far behind, on average, our schools are outperforming the average school in the U.S. The microschool leaders and the parents have total transparency."
As Primer's network expands in South Florida, Delk wants to ensure that wherever a new school opens, it reflects the neighborhood it is located in. The company is opening a location at Miami Shores Community Church for the upcoming school year after several families approached Primer about starting a microschool in the area.
Delk says Primer schools "never want finances to be a barrier for students." He says tuition is assessed on a sliding scale up to $24,000 and that the average family pays $9,000 a year for their child to attend a Primer microschool, though students can qualify for several scholarships through the Primer Foundation and state or city scholarships. Nearly 65 percent of the students at the Health District location come from low-income backgrounds, according to Delk.
Empowering Teachers
After graduating from college, Julieta Rakover decided she wanted to come back and teach in the school district from which she graduated: Miami-Dade County.Upon taking a teaching position, Rakover found herself toiling in a public school system where she felt teachers were constantly being micromanaged and disrespected. She says she was forced to assign coursework that was not responsive to the needs of her students, who exhibited tremendous gaps in their knowledge.
On top of that, she says, students were consumed by testing while higher-ups were focused on making students complete tasks just to get them done rather than ensuring skills were sufficiently mastered.
"I had a lot of students that were coming from really difficult situations, and some of them didn't know how to read or write in their native languages and didn't know English," Rakover tells New Times. "There was a sense of micromanagement, but that was very out of touch with the reality of what was happening in the classroom."
After three years working in public schools, Rakover wanted a fresh start. At that point, she began exploring opportunities in education technology and thought about leaving teaching entirely.
"I was like, 'Should I leave? Is this just a waste? Is it just doomed?'" she recalls wondering.
Then, she came across Primer, and its mission resonated with her. She says she found a model that was dedicated to empowering teachers while allowing students to explore their interests.
"Everything that I kind of wanted to solve — things I was brainstorming that dealt with more of the systemic, larger issues like teachers not feeling respected and students not having an outlet for creativity and not having a say in what they're studying — I felt like Primer was trying to tackle," Rakover says.
Bommarito, who has worked in education for 25 years, including jobs at private and charter schools in New York City, says her teaching career left her disillusioned with the education system. She worked primarily with students living below the poverty line whose needs were not being addressed.
"I saw the educator's side of teaching. I saw the principal's side, and I thought, I don't really like where education is going, with the testing, all the stipulations," Bommarito says. "There's so many kids that need exposure and creativity."
After she moved down to South Florida, she witnessed how teachers were leaving the profession at alarming rates. Until she learned about Primer, she, too, thought about ending her career in education.
"Primer is exactly what I've been looking for: giving kids the independence, the opportunity, allowing them to create their own path," Bommarito adds.
In addition to a teaching salary, Primer microschool leaders receive equity in the company and a revenue share, Delk says. He says teachers at Primer, on average, are making significantly more than what they would make at a nearby private or public school.
"In the traditional school system, you just get assigned a number of kids. So one year, you might be teaching 19 kids, and the next year, you might be teaching 36, but you're not making any more money," Delk says. "So what they really feel like is, 'At Primer, I'm compensated for the amount of work that I have to do.'"
Students Feel "Free"
Daniela Ciffoni decided to send her son Lorenzo to Primer for fifth grade after she witnessed how his stress levels were worsening in public school. The hours of homework each day were piling on and interfering with his ability to go to swim practice after school. She noticed her son was not as happy as he used to be."He was so stressed," she tells New Times. "He would wake up sometimes in the middle of the night, 'I forgot to read that chapter. I forgot to do that.' Learning should be fun, not so stressful."
Since moving her son to Primer in August, she has noticed a shift in his attitude. She says he is now excited to go to school and even asks her to let him stay longer for aftercare.
Lorenzo says he feels more relaxed and able to take his time to ensure he fully understands a classroom subject. In public school, he adds, they were constantly moving to the next topic even before the students had mastered what they were learning.
"He feels free and that people are nice to him," his mom says. "Even when he does something that needs to be corrected, it is in a very respectful manner. In the public system, you have to fall in that box, and if you don't fall into that box, there's something wrong with you."
The parents of younger students at the Health District microschool also tell New Times their children are excelling, including a 5-year-old who did not know how to read prior to enrolling at Primer. Bommarito notes he is now reading second- and third-grade material.
Damaris Abreu says her son Cam, who is also 5 years old, is getting the individual attention he needs to succeed and explore his creativity.
"It's really like a family. I love that he's exposed to different ages," she says. "He's not only with 5-year-olds. He's doing multiplication. He's able to explore the things that he loves. He loves art — he loves to make little monsters with Play-Doh. He's able to be himself and enjoy the things he likes while learning."
