Wonderschool helps teachers afford living in San Francisco

Wonderschool helps
teachers stay in San Francisco by setting up preschools and
daycares in their homes.
Wonderschool

• In San Francisco’s absurd housing market, teachers are
  struggling to afford to live near where they teach.
• A startup called Wonderschool is helping preschool
  teachers stay in San Francisco by providing them with the
  framework to set up preschools and daycares out of their
  homes.
• A school operator on Wonderschool earns an average
  salary of $78,000, which puts them in a better position to pay
  rent.

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Linda Jung’s living room has been taken over by five screaming,
cheering, playful little children — their toys, their books, and
their art.

Brightly colored geometric shapes cover the walls, and an
alphabet rug and train tracks lie where a coffee table or storage
taller than three feet might have once been.

None of the children are Jung’s.

Last year, Jung quit her job at a San Francisco Bay Area
preschool, where she had been making about $50,000 a year, to
launch a preschool
out her two-bedroom apartment in the East Bay. Right now, she
earns close to $80,000, with room to grow, and has plans to lease
a home in the future so she can accommodate more students.

And she did it with the help of a Silicon Valley startup.

For dozens of preschool teachers in San Francisco, Wonderschool is changing the
economics of their profession. They can start, operate, and grow
their own preschools and daycares out of their homes — and earn
an average salary of $78,000, according to the
company.

Wonderschool provides a framework around their small businesses,
supporting them with operations, licensing, accounting, and
marketing to attract enrollment, as well as a network of other
teachers to generate ideas for lessons and work through any
issues.

Chris Bennett, cofounder and CEO of Wonderschool, likens the
startup to a very successful sharing-economy company.

“Think of it like Airbnb. The platform does all of the marketing,
but the host has to deliver on providing a good experience,” he
said.

Tech investors are throwing money at the venture-backed
startup.
On Friday, Wonderschool announced $20
million in a Series A round of financing led by Andreessen
Horowitz, whose partner Jeff Jordan will join the board. Earlier
Wonderschool investors First Round Capital, Cross Culture
Ventures, Uncork Capital, Lerer Hippeau, and eBay founder Pierre
Omidyar’s Omidyar Network also participated.

In San Francisco, teachers are getting priced out of their
districts

At current rates, teachers in San Francisco have some of the
highest salaries in the country. Still, many are
struggling to afford to live near the schools where the
teach. In San Francisco,
less than 1% of homes on the market are affordable for the
city’s schoolteachers.

Read more: San
Francisco’s housing market is so out of control, 60% of tech
workers say they can’t afford homes

The median-priced home in San Francisco sells for

$1.6 million,
and it’s not uncommon for buyers to bid
hundreds of thousands of dollars above asking and pay in all
cash. Priced out of the city’s housing market, some teachers are
living in dorms — fashionably rebranded for adults as
“co-living spaces” — and cars just to get by.

Teachers on Wonderschool
earn a salary of $78,000 on average.
Wonderschool

Wonderschool changes the math of living on a teacher’s salary.

In San Francisco, the company says school operators charge
$1,971 for tuition on average, which could net them nearly $8,000
a month for a program with four kids. The cost is comparable for
parents, based on
typical tuition rates cited in Children’s Council San
Francisco, but the school operator pockets more income. (Once a
school grows to more than four students, Wonderschool recommends
it hire an assistant teacher, who the company helps
recruit.)

Teachers pay for most of their school supplies out of
pocket, but that’s not unusual. A recent
survey by the US Department of Education revealed 94% of
public school teachers said they pay for supplies without
reimbursement. Bennett said the company is working on negotiating
discounts for teachers at some stores.

“Children just need a safe, healthy environment to learn,”
Bennett said. “You don’t have to go spend a ton of money to
create a program that provides a safe, healthy, creative
environment for children.”

There are about 100 Wonderschool programs in the San
Francisco Bay Area, with 30 programs in the city proper.
According to the company, there are another 500 teachers in the
process of opening schools across the Bay Area, Los Angeles, and
New York City.

The cash infusion from Andreessen Horowitz will be used to
develop more products and services for the Wonderschool platform,
Bennett said. Right now, the team has just 15 employees.

For Jung, who also serves as director of programs in the
Bay Area, her salary still isn’t enough to buy a home in the
region. But she’s more excited about the opportunity to grow her
business, until one day, when she can afford buying real estate
for a nursery school.

“Baby steps,” Jung said.