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Talk to me about WHERE your co-op is held, please.


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Our co-op is held at a local church. We are charged X amount per day for a something like 6 classrooms. This really limits how many classes we can hold. Currently, we are only able to have 3 elementary classes. I find this very unfortunate because we have many people that would like to teach and many neat classes that could be available if there was room.

 

Where does your co-op meet? How do they pay for it, and how much is the charge? I am trying to find out how other co-ops work to see if I can change ours. Thanks!

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Three states, three co-ops, always in a church. Every co-op I am aware of is held in a church. If your church is not favorable to your co-op, perhaps consider finding another one that is not so strict.

 

 

A church is fine, I am looking at costs. How much did each church charge you?

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Our co-op also meets in a church. We have been very blessed in that the church doesn't charge us a penny to be there. We do, however, take up a love offering that hopefully covers the cost of electricity. We also act as their janitorial crew. We have 28 families at this point, so our cleaning time really doesn't take very long at all. Once a year we also have a 'grateful for Brookdale' service. Our co-op basically does the Sunday morning service, lets the congregation know what we're doing and how very grateful we are to them, and we provide them with a meal after the service. Hope this helps!

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Our group meets at a Boys and Girls club. We have our own insurance and pay them rent that covers the utilities while we're there, a staff person while we're there, and a bit more. Around here, most of the churches have preschools and daycares using the facility M-F during the day, so it didn't make much financial sense for them to rent to us just 2 days a week. I also know of several home school groups using parks and recreation facilities (with various types of rent and contracts covering insurance, etc).

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We meet in a UU church. We pay $10/child a semester as an offering to the church to help pay the utilities and the like (and, to be honest, we leave that building cleaner than when we got there each week) and stock up on supplies, which are used both by the co-op and by their RE classes in the fall, with each family bringing in a few things bought on sale.

 

In our case, one of the members of our group is the RE director for the church and she was able to successfully "Sell" them on the idea that there was a real need for families who weren't Christian homeschoolers to have a place to meet, and that this fit the church's outreach goals. We're not allowed to have classes where we pay a teacher, because of their insurance, but we can do parent-led activities with a fee to cover expenses.

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Our group meets at a Boys and Girls club. We have our own insurance and pay them rent that covers the utilities while we're there, a staff person while we're there, and a bit more. Around here, most of the churches have preschools and daycares using the facility M-F during the day, so it didn't make much financial sense for them to rent to us just 2 days a week. I also know of several home school groups using parks and recreation facilities (with various types of rent and contracts covering insurance, etc).

 

 

Do you know how much the your co-op pays for the B&GT club?

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It might depend on what part of the country you're in, too. We pay $100 per year per family for our co-op at a church. We meet 26 times a year. We just moved here, and back where we came from we paid $35-50 per student per year at local churches for about the same number of times we met. Any way you can convince them to move to a fee per student model?

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We meet at my friends house ;). Our co-op is only five families however and we're all learning the same stuff. The other co-op that we were a part of before we moved met in a City of _______ buiding with plenty of room and a full sized gym. It was really cool. I think we were charged $5/child per year.

 

I wonder if there is a city building we could meet at..... have to think on it.

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We meet at a smallish church, about 22 times a year. It's free and we've got free reign of the church and the youth building. We tidy it up at the end of each day. We give the church about $80 to cover the cost of electricity, toilet paper, wear and tear, etc.

 

Families pay $15 per semester per family, with leadership team families and those doing extra jobs (arranging the summer party, making nametags, etc.) paying $10. If someone has a really tough time it's free. We've done that a few times...

 

We use the money to buy some supplies, help people going through tough times, and pay for things like file folders, some cleaning supplies, etc.

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In our area churches are where most people meet. Simply, they are the only buildings large enough that are not otherwise used during the day. Depending on the church, it's mission, and things like utilities and insurance, the cost and availablity varies widely. We were looking for a place to meet last fall for a secular based group and churches kept coming back to the top. Most civic buildings only had one large room available, not multiple rooms, so that knocked out multiple classes. We can use the library once a month for free, but again only one room. We were invited to write a proposal for the YMCA and at first the local one loved the idea of us using their building and classrooms during the day and quoted us some workable prices. It looked like it was going to be a great relationship. Then, while we were working on a contract, they completely switched gears when some key board positions changed. To use the Y we would have to carry a very particular type of insurance that was wildly expensive, pay some pretty steep rental fees, and meet some really strict use rules including everyone must buy a membership to attend a class. That was not even feasible for our small but growing group. So now, we don't have a place to meet other than a church and some of our members won't attend classes if we meet in a church.

 

In the past we also have reserved a pavillion at the park, but we could only do that once a month. Plus, they were all outdoor spaces. In bad or cold weather, it didn't work well.

 

Other ideas we looked at included banks, sharing a space with an art studio, sharing space with the boy scouts, and so on.

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We're using a rec center for a very low cost (free if we don't charge instructional fees, a percentage of any instructional fees), but we are also subject to changes that the county makes. For instance, they added a senior nutrition program mid-semester that knocked us out of two of our rooms. They were quite willing to work with us on shifting to other, less ideal, space, but they have little choice in what the county sends them.

 

We have a similar issue in terms of finding space for any event. Many churches in the area want things to be specifically Christian or only their members, even for a fee. It's understandable, but awkward when your group includes atheists, Muslims, Buddhists, Neopagans, etc (some very visibly so) as well as Christians. Also, many of the area churches that would possibly consider us are used during the day for senior nutrition programs, daycares, preschools, elder care, etc. Ideally, we will one day have the ability to rent a space of our own, but that's well in the future.

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We were in a TOG co-op for 2 years. We met at a church; a different one each year. The first church was where the primary leader of the co-op attended. They didn't charge us for using their facility. The co-op was very small at the time so we only needed 4 rooms. But the rooms for the youngers were not child friendly at all. It did have a great playground, though, which all the kids could use. But it would take me nearly 10 minutes to get 2 kids to the playground because our classroom was on the 2nd floor of this really big church. And the church was a long drive for us--45 mins.

 

The second year one of the co-op members was able to get us the use of her church, which was more centrally located. It was a smaller church so all classes were on the ground floor. That year our co-op had 20 families, so we needed a lot more rooms. The church was able to give us a lot more rooms, including one that was set up for nursery-toddler ages. But there was no place for the older kids to run around; the playground was limited to the younger kids as it was rather small. The church charged $1 per week per child.

 

Prior to this co-op we were involved in a non-academic co-op that met at people's houses about once a month. We also met about once a month for a field trip.

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We meet in our own church. We used to be about 90% of those attending co-op were from our church. We are now at about 50%. We are not charged for using our church. Our Pastor is glad to have us there and takes time every other week to teach a class on woodworking/basic home repairs to the boys. Our small co-op fee of $5 per kid per co-op week is used for any supplies bought and for our lunch. We have a "lunch lady" who fixes us all lunch each week. :001_smile: We clean up after ourselves.

 

I guess I didn't realize how blessed we are!

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We belong to two different co-ops, both meet at churches. One charges $60 per child/per year with a family cap of $180/yr. This co-op sets up for us and cleans somewhat. Specifically they set up table and chairs in the room in a requested configuration for us and sweep/vac. floors afterwards. We are responsible for general tidying, wiping tables, and taking out trash. They don't let folks move furniture or clean in their facility, so although we'd be willing to have less service done by them in exchange for a lower cost, it's not an option.

 

Our second group accepts a love offering only, we do $25 per semester, per family as our suggested donation. They don' t provide set up or cleaning for us at all.

 

Most groups here meet at churches too, but I do know of a secular group who meets in a local community center, no idea about fees for that though.

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I'm in charge of our co-op (enrichment type classes), and we meet in a local church. I'm not a member, but the pastor is very pro-homeschool. The church only charges us $.05 each for copies. We do make a donation to them, but it's not required. The church is big and has a gym, so we have access to lot of rooms. We just choose the specific rooms that work best for our classes.

 

I've already looked into another church in a near-by town to possibly host an academic co-op with some friends. This church is also not charging us anything to use the facility and giving us our choice of rooms. That pastor really wants to reach out to the community. He says it's such a shame that churches sit empty all week when they could be used for so many good things.

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Our co-op changed a few years ago to being specifically a support ministry of the church rather than an independent group composed mostly of church members. One benefit was that it let the group have all of our room needs met free of charge. Another benefit is that financial bookkeeping is handled by the church office staff. So we don't have to have our own treasurer and bank accounts.

 

One place for possible co-ops that has crossed my mind is after school tutoring companies. I don't know if they have daytime staff at all, but it would seem that they already have the classroom setup and probably aren't in demand during the day.

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