School Update - any ideas?

[RTSDaddy2]

We're still moving the school forward guys - been very busy over the last year with it, I do have questions for the more legal minded of you:

1)  Does anybody know of places that we could get capital for our school in the form of a loan? Local banks seem to be out, our personal credit rating doesn't cut it - but after being in business for a year, wouldn't we / shouldn't we have some sort of business credit...how do we find that ranking and possibly borrow against it?

2) We have moved the school to our home temporarily - still just have our daughter as student, but have had a few prospects. We were wondering if we can legally market it out of our home without a special use permit (which we're looking into by the way).  Our house is close to (within tenth of a mile) of other local businesses; we are in GA, didn't know if that would help us in getting a permit.

[Howard_Casto]

I don't know a lot about the finder details, but I have some friends who used to (attempt) to run a business out of their home and while possible, the regulations are a pain in the butt. 

Your mileage will vary from state to state but let me give some examples of what they ran into:

The business area of your home must be seperated from the rest of your home via a wall and a door.  During business hours the door to the living area of your home must remain locked at all times.  There must be a seperate entrance (from the outside) to your business area.  All employees and customers must use this entrance.

A restroom is required.  It cannot be the restroom for the living area of your home and must be built into the business area. 

So basically it has to be setup like an annex. 

Of course daycare and schools probably have different but equally ridiculous regulations, I'm just saying that they nit-pick and it's a pain in the butt.  You'd have to basically go to whoever is in charge of permits in your area, explain your situation in detail and have them spell it out for you. 

[ChadTower]

There are plenty of "in home daycare" businesses here in MA/RI.  I don't know a ton about them but I do know there are a lot of them.  They don't have the type of segregation of business/home areas that Howard just described.  That sounds more like it's for tax purposes than business purposes so that it's clear you are not trying to write off your home as a business expense.

[RTSDaddy2]

No, we're definitely not using it as a tax write off;  we decided that this might enable us to build capital by not paying a lease payment - and we will (obviously) have a fenced in yard for kids to play in, plus a full kitchen to make lunches in without having to pay for those appliances.  With our mortgage and utilities already covered in just owning the home, that would allow us to save any tuition monies towards the purchase of a nice, permanent home for the school in the future.

We are still researching here too, but I just knew there are some really intelligent business / legal folks on this board and I thought I'd throw the question out here as well. 

[ChadTower]

My wife is a Pre/K teacher and we've thrown this idea about too.  You look like you're already doing it though so keep us updated even if we don't give you anything useful.   

Who is the licensed teacher in this situation?  You, your wife, or both?

[RTSDaddy2]

Thank you for the support Chad...I am; been Masters certified in GA in middle grades since May of 2000.  My wife is looking to get her initial certification program started soon as we can afford it.

[ChadTower]

And you have only had the one student so far?  That's probably why you're having issues getting credit.  Business credit is issued based upon a business plan the banker finds favorable or upon an established revenue stream.  You don't have either one in place yet, it seems.

[hypernova]

And you have only had the one student so far?  That's probably why you're having issues getting credit.

And it's their child, which effectively only says that they're home-schooling their own child.

I believe in-home daycares and such only run into problems when they get past a certain threshold of children.

[ChadTower]

Yeah, they are specifically licensed to an enrollment capacity usually based on the building first and then staff second.  Building comes first because most in-home daycares are in someone's house so that is the limiting factor.

I'm not entirely clear on whether he is trying to start a real school or just an in-home daycare.  They are very different things.  In-home daycare doesn't have curriculum requirements and is limited to certain ages outside of normal school hours.