Montessori on a Mission: Kaye Boehning’s Fight for Accessible Quality Education

Intro  

Welcome to another edition of inspired stories where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from their successes, how they’ve overcome adversity, and explore current challenges they’re facing.

Anthony (16:36.645)
Welcome to another edition of the Inspired Stories podcast, where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from their successes and be inspired by how they’ve overcome adversity. My name is Anthony Cotaspoti, and today’s guest is Kay Boney, founder and director of Tomorrow’s Promise Montessori Schools, an early childhood education center with three locations in Huntsville, Texas. Their website is tomorrowspromise .info.

They are driven by Christian values and a commitment to quality. And in 2023, they won the SBA Houston District Rural Business Owner of the Year. They are the only Montessori school within 45 miles, and they recently spent over $100 ,000 on new learning materials, books, arts and crafts, and playground equipment. And they converted into a nonprofit so they can serve families regardless of economic status.

They were highlighted in the book Havens of Hope that discussed how childcare centers made it through the challenging COVID period. And in addition to her master’s degree in education, has over 30 years of experience and is committed to ongoing learning. She received credentials from the American Montessori Society and completed the Streetwise MBA program, the first one to do so in Walker County. She won third place out of 1 ,500

from the Child Care Success Academy based on improvements made to the daycare. She was recognized by the Texas State House of Representatives. And for over 20 years, they’ve had a four -star Texas Rising Star Business Rating, which is the highest level possible. They’re coming up on their 27th year in business next month. And they’re the first child care center in the Houston area to be recognized with an award. Now, before we get into all that good stuff, today’s episode is brought to you by my company, Ad Back Benefits Agency.

Anthony (18:31.665)
where we offer very specific and unique employee benefits that are both great for your team and fiscally optimized for your bottom line. One recent client was able to add over $900 per employee per year in extra cash flow by implementing one of our proprietary programs. Results vary for each company and some organizations may not be eligible. To find out if your company qualifies, contact us today at addbackbenefitsagency .com. Now, back to our guest today, the founder and director of Tomorrow’s Promise Montessori Schools, Kay.

I appreciate you making the time to share your story today.

Kaye Boehning (19:02.466)
Well, thank you for having me on.

Anthony (19:04.335)
Okay, so let’s go back to more or less the beginning. What’s the origin? What was the inspiration behind starting your…

Kaye Boehning (19:13.55)
Well, when I was 14, I told my daddy that I was never ever ever having children because I had babysit my cousins and they were little monsters. And he said, you’ll change your mind someday. Well, fast forward about 10 years later, and I was having my first child and got in his wonderful sense of humor. have three biological children, one for every ever I told my daddy.

And then I told him also I was never ever going to get a teaching certificate or teaching degree. And I’ve told him I was never ever going to do several things. Everything I’ve told my daddy I was never ever going to do has come to pass. So I say God for funsies through in the school after I told him I was never ever ever having children. So kind of come about it in a roundabout way of it was definitely.

something because I have a degree in fine arts with an emphasis in advertising. I spent about five years in that field and then decided I was tired of people telling me what to do about my artwork so I was going to go become a CPA because my brother and my uncle are CPAs and my dad did all the book work for the trucking company that he was vice president of and so I come very naturally by numbers.

I was 21 hours away from sitting for the CPA exam with a 4 .0 when I said, I’m having fun teaching my 18 month old things and stopped working on my business degree and went and got my master’s in education.

Anthony (20:55.067)
So from fine arts to, you took a little detour, thought you were gonna become a CPA and then you were having fun with your kids. And so that turned into the inspiration for starting your daycare. Did you start it first in your home?

Kaye Boehning (21:08.718)
Well, a things. First thing I’m going to do is as a teacher, I’m going to educate you now. Whether you want to or not, you’re going to hear. Okay, a daycare is where you take your dog or your grandma because you expect them to come home alive.

Anthony (21:19.899)
Bring it on.

Anthony (21:25.841)
Okay.

Anthony (21:30.821)
that’s different from a childcare set.

Kaye Boehning (21:33.012)
Yes, because at a child care center, you expect them to learn something. So if you want to take your child to a daycare, all you’re expecting is for them to come home alive. So.

Anthony (21:44.209)
You’re really lowering your expectations in that case, aren’t you?

Kaye Boehning (21:47.406)
Well, yeah, so early learning center, childcare, school, preschool, something like that is giving a respect to our industry because we hope 90 % of brain development happens those first five years of life. And so I take that very seriously that that’s what happens those first five years of life because I can teach any grade from K through eighth grade. And I was shown early on.

where it makes the most difference is those five years, first five years. So I have spent my life, most of my life in this for five years because that’s where brain development happens. So.

Anthony (22:26.193)
Thank you for clearing that up. That was an education for me. Words matter, folks. And so we are not talking about daycare today. We are talking about the early childhood education center. So let’s get into now how this first center came about.

Kaye Boehning (22:39.864)
Yes.

Kaye Boehning (22:45.966)
Actually, I finished my master’s degree in Oklahoma and we were living there and we moved to a little town called Etoka, Oklahoma. And I walked into the only childcare center there with a master’s degree and said, I will work for minimum wage if my children can go for free. So I started working there and computerized our system and

implemented curriculum and everything like that with this little center. Then we, my husband got a job in Huntsville and the childcare center owner cried when I told her we were leaving town. I moved to Huntsville and worked for a year at the college in their lab school. And then the next summer I was able to take my Montessori training and I committed to Houston back and forth each day for about 35.

days and started, I probably have the designation of being the only idiot to start a Montessori school two days after graduating from, well two days after doing the training I started the school.

Anthony (24:03.311)
And how many grades were you serving when you first opened?

Kaye Boehning (24:05.998)
We were going from basically six weeks old to through kindergarten.

Anthony (24:12.241)
Okay, and so how many different classrooms was that?

Kaye Boehning (24:15.352)
When I first started, I started with three children. Yeah.

Anthony (24:18.439)
Okay, so single room. And were you doing everything? Did you have any employees when you first opened?

Kaye Boehning (24:25.032)
I had one person that helped me part time and then I started adding children, adding employees.

Anthony (24:34.745)
And so how were your, how are people finding you? Were you doing some advertising or just the sign out on the streets?

Kaye Boehning (24:42.22)
Well, back then there was such a thing called the phone book and newspapers. And so, and I went around to different organizations and got on there speaking to speak about what Montessori was, things like that. As far as I know, I didn’t get any students from doing any of those things. I did get students for running ads in the newspaper and we were right downtown. So there was a sign on the door basically.

because it took forever to get a sign up on the outside the business. And it just word of mouth, especially it exploded after Christmas. People went home, I think at Christmas time and talked about how much their children were learning. And then, I mean, we doubled in size from the 1st of January to like February 1st, just absolutely doubled and kind of.

Anthony (25:39.121)
When you put out a good product, word gets around, that’s the best form of marketing, right?

Kaye Boehning (25:43.692)
Yeah, word of mouth is definitely the best form of marketing.

Anthony (25:47.193)
And so how did you, let’s fill in some of the gaps, how did you get from this first center that’s now quickly growing in size to three centers? What was that journey?

Kaye Boehning (25:58.382)
We’ll go along for about 20. Okay. Three years later, we finally found a location to buy because we were renting. And then we added, soon as we kind of got started on it, the house next door, we’re in converted houses in a neighborhood. The house next door came up for sale. We bought it, kind of expanded again and ended up where we had three houses converted.

And then we added an elementary K through sixth grade and kind of stagnated at that point. were held in that pattern for several, several years. In 2016, my elementary teacher, I had hired a new elementary teacher because my other one had retired and he decided to take and call my students.

I had been thrown from a horse. had been, I took the seventh and eighth graders I was teaching on a field trip and got thrown from a horse and suffered post -concussive syndrome and couldn’t work full -time anymore. And my stepson was also dying from cancer. And so I took off and when I came back, well, actually I’m sorry.

At his funeral, the teacher sent out an email during the funeral. I mean, this was planned and orchestrated in evil. Sent out an email during the funeral to my parents saying he was not gonna return for the spring semester. And so for two years after that, I tried to find a teacher to teach the elementary program that met my standards. Could not find a teacher, and so we closed the elementary program. And then…

The next year I sold off my Montessori material and then the next year COVID hit. And I could have started my elementary program back up if I was willing to be the teacher. But with running the schools and things, running the school and things like that, I had already spent two years being a seventh and eighth grade teacher. And cause we were expanding and going to go to middle school and high school and things like that. And I was working till almost midnight every night.

Kaye Boehning (28:27.118)
and get there at six o ‘clock in the morning and it’s like, I’m tired. I can’t do the being the teacher and running the company at the same time. So we closed. We basically closed down after. And I’m back to where I’m as back to normal as I’m going to get with my brain. I think it’s back to my. Close down the elementary. Yeah, because we had 50 students in my elementary teacher when he left.

Anthony (28:47.633)
So you close down the whole operation or you close down just the elementary school?

Kaye Boehning (28:57.39)
left me with nine students and we continued to have nine. Mm -hmm, yeah. Yeah. Which his school failed in about two months. So I went from 50 to he ran off students if, because we specialize in children that needed that extra help.

Anthony (29:01.691)
So he took, he started another school and poached these students. Wow.

Kaye Boehning (29:25.198)
And if they needed any extra help or had any learning difficulties, he basically ran them off. And then that left us with about 35 students and he left with, I’m sorry, left us with 25 students and then he left with about 15, leaving me about 10, nine to 10. And so, which is fine, we could do with nine or 10 children and grow back, but I couldn’t find a teacher that…

Anthony (29:43.248)
Wow.

Kaye Boehning (29:53.858)
held to my standards, my ideals.

Anthony (29:57.073)
Why is it so hard to find a teacher that’s not your students?

Kaye Boehning (30:03.65)
The two teachers I was able to find both had public school degrees and licenses and stuff, but they would yell at the children. And in Montessori, you speak to people the way we want to be spoken to, you know, and…

Anthony (30:23.025)
they couldn’t wrap their brains around the different approach that Montessori brings.

Kaye Boehning (30:27.414)
Right. And they didn’t have the classroom management skills that comes with that, you know. And so I’m not going to have my children being yelled at like that.

Anthony (30:41.531)
So okay, there’s a lot to unpack there. You fell from a horse. You get, what’s it called? Post -concussive disorder?

Kaye Boehning (30:49.26)
Yeah, basically when I was strung from the horse I had a helmet on and I hit the ground so hard that I left an impression in the ground and I broke the helmet.

And so it scrambled my brains.

Anthony (31:03.119)
And so what is post -concussive disorder? What are the symptoms they go with?

Kaye Boehning (31:07.276)
Basically you get a concussion and your brain has rattled around inside your skull and has hit the hardness and so your brain is very, very bruised. some of the things I had, problems I had was I couldn’t concentrate for more than like an hour two at a time and I’d get headaches or I’d get tired. I’d get mad.

And I’m not a person that, you know, like throws things or anything like that. And I threw my cell phone once and, you know, I’m very frugal. So I don’t throw a, at that time, $600 cell phone, but I threw it across the room at the wall. And, you know, just things that weren’t me. And I was like, no, I can’t be around the school and stuff. So I’d work for an hour or two and then go home and rest my brain.

Anthony (31:42.736)
Yeah.

Anthony (32:01.937)
Wow, that must have been really hard because you, I mean, you’re somebody who really wants to help people. You really care for the kids. This was a business that, you you had started and to have to pull yourself away from it must have been really difficult on top of all the other things that you were dealing.

Kaye Boehning (32:13.538)
Well, I have.

Kaye Boehning (32:19.502)
Well, it was, but David was also diagnosed with cancer and he was dying. And so, you know, I think both happened at the same time so that I would have to be away from the school to adequately be able to be there for him and take care of him. And, you know, I had great I’ve got one one employee that’s been with me for 25 years. So.

you know, she’s been by my side and she knows how I think. And another employee has been here over 20 years and we’ve got some that’s been here 13 years. So I had good people that I trusted to take care of and follow with what I needed to have done while I was gone.

Anthony (33:08.111)
That helps a tremendous amount. How did you personally get through all this turmoil? You have the concussion, your stepson is dying. This teacher leaves and coaches a bunch of students. What got you through this difficult period?

Kaye Boehning (33:23.406)
When he poached the students, lost about $20 ,000 a month overnight, and we weren’t making $20 ,000 profit, and I still have not figured out that math as to why we even stayed in business. And with David, he was 43 when he passed, and

He had oral cancer from from dipping skull and The time he passed was Christmas Eve about two o ‘clock in the morning and he had a fiance and she had a little baby what he is but he had it she had a little baby and They wanted to spend Christmas Day at his house and they were planning on spending Christmas Eve before he got sick at her house her mother’s house

And I know there would have been an accident that night at that time he died. If he hadn’t had cancer, they would have been in the car driving home. And just there’s in the Bible there says there’s appointed time to die, be born and appointed time to die. And so I had to wrap my head around that that was his time. And it wouldn’t have mattered if he had done skull, not done skull, you know.

Anthony (34:53.233)
God had a plan and God was calling him home on a certain time and date and that was going to happen regardless of how it happened.

Kaye Boehning (34:55.413)
I didn’t like it, but yeah.

Yeah, and I just had a piece that at least the baby and his fiance was okay and they weren’t in the car kind of thing, but I just knew that’s what would have happened if he hadn’t had cancer. So, yeah, because we make choices.

Anthony (35:20.731)
And then, yeah, powerful stuff. And as you’re working through all these emotions, then COVID hits, which was hard on everybody, but particularly hard on childcare centers, right? You’re dealing with changing regulations, you’re dealing with parents who taking it very seriously, parents who don’t wanna take it seriously at all. You’ve got, you know,

Kaye Boehning (35:24.696)
So.

Anthony (35:47.735)
New requirements coming in different class sizes, different ratios that are required, having to close down, open up. And you guys were featured in a book that talked about the path that you took and how you were able to survive during that time. What can you tell us about that?

Kaye Boehning (36:04.834)
Well, in terms of that, my daddy ran a trucking company. if the trucks could go through, no matter what the weather was like, we delivered our goods. And if the flowers missed the truck, my dad would hot shot it out because those flowers were needed for a funeral or those flowers were needed for a wedding. If the blood missed the truck, that blood was needed for a surgery.

if a car part, a tractor part for, you know, missed a truck, he would take it out to the farmer. And we’re talking, he had most all of Oklahoma and most of Kansas and the panhandle of Texas. So, I mean, this is a wide territory that my dad would, would hot shots things out. The tractor missed part, he would take it to the farmer because he needed to plow his field and get the harvest in. And so grew up with this customer service.

ideal. And so when I opened the school, we’re in a prison town. The prisoners have to be guarded, no matter who or what the weather is. So we have had this reputation, we have always been open because I know how to drive on the snow and ice. And so I would either go around, pick up employees, or I would open the school up until somebody could get there. And some people live within walking distance.

because we’re like I said, we’re in a neighborhood, we’re converted houses. And so when COVID hit, we’ve already got this reputation. And so the first thing I did was that morning I called the health department, I said, you gonna shut me down? And he says, you can do whatever you want. And I said, okay, we’ll be open. And we made the national news for being the hotspot in the nation for COVID cases.

because of all the prisons and they were still transferring prisoners from one place to the other. And so we became a hotspot and people were dying. And a correctional officer died and I knew which unit this daddy worked at. And he came, up his child and know, people were six feet away and you know, and I just asked him, said, what unit do you work at?

Kaye Boehning (38:29.152)
And he kind of looked at me and he didn’t want to answer me and I said, it’s okay. I said, we’re here. We will continue to take care of your little girl.

And just the look on his face was so priceless because he was afraid if he told me which unit he worked at because one of the correctional officers had died there that I would not let him bring his child and he was a single daddy. And so the little chapter we’re focused in in the book is called, we were the calm and the eye of the storm or the calm and the eye of the storm because I was the calm person.

Everybody else was freaking out and it’s like it went back to kind of David passing away with You know if it’s my time to go it’s my time to go and there’s nothing I could do about it but I’m going to do what I can to make sure the town stays safe and the prisoners are guarded and people can go to work that have to go to work and They have some place safe for their children to go

Anthony (39:31.729)
Sounds like you’ve got a powerful combinational foundation, right? You had this amazing entrepreneurial father who set a standard in your mind of how you help and how you serve. And you’re able to fully rely on your faith to get you through these challenging times. Your stepson passing away, this was God’s plan. And also,

Kaye Boehning (39:57.73)
The whole starting of the school was God’s plan because when I first found the location it was August 5th and we opened the day after Labor Day. You do not get the city, the state, the health department, the fire department, and licensing all together to agree on anything that quickly, nor do you get the carpenter, have a carpenter available that could start on August 6th.

to fix everything so that you can get open that quick. And then, you know, and I know that because when we bought the first building, we spent four months re -bottling it and trying to meet all the codes. The second building, we bought August 15th. Three years later after opening the first building, we bought it August 15th. Day after Labor Day, it was opened, licensed and everything. And you don’t do that. It just doesn’t happen.

Anthony (40:51.012)
It’s fast.

Kaye Boehning (40:56.434)
And then during COVID, you know, I’m doing the Zoom calls and you know, do mask work. We tried mask on the kids for, sorry, children for a couple of days. I tried to change saying from kids to children because in Montessori we teach that children are the offspring of humans and kids are the offspring of goats. So when you call a child,

Anthony (41:20.067)
Okay, again folks, words matter. More education.

Kaye Boehning (41:24.578)
when you call a child a kid, you’re expecting them back like baby goats. and what, yeah, well, yeah, mine too.

Anthony (41:29.755)
which mine do sometimes. My eight -year -old just chewed a part of straw yesterday. So anyways, I digress.

Kaye Boehning (41:36.226)
So, but you know when you’re teaching the children That they’re children and then you call them a kid and they’re like, well, that’s a baby goat So three -year -olds are very literal. So you have to kind of watch what you’re doing. So Occasionally I still fill it up and say kid but We I’m we tried masks and after two days, I mean my church group made masks for the children to wear

And you know, they’re chewing on them and they’re swinging them around and I’m like, we’re going to end up giving everybody COVID, you know, because this is not going to work. And how other states did it where they kept masks on children, I have no earthly idea. But we went from the time it hit until November before we had our first case of COVID at all of anybody, any child

or teacher that worked at the center. And the teacher and I, it was my assistant director and I, and who went to a chamber event and she got COVID from the chamber event and I did not. And then it was like March before we actually had a child that came in and she came in with it. Her dad was a pastor.

Anthony (42:56.837)
I remember those early variations of COVID, kids were not getting it very much, almost at all. Yeah, wasn’t so the future variants.

Kaye Boehning (43:02.616)
Mm -mm.

Yeah. And then during the Zoom call and everything, we had a house across the street that I had known the lady for several years and she passed away and coincidentally is pink. I mean, we’re talking baby pink. And, you know, she didn’t think it was going to be that pink when she painted it. And she’s like, well, that’s pink.

Anyway, she passed away and it had been leaking for years. It had black mold, had termites, had roaches, had, you know, it was disgusting. You could stand, open the door, stand and two doors down at the dumpster, you could smell the house over the dirty diapers and the dumpster was how strong that smell was. And so we started remodeling that.

And I wanted to use it for to rent to people because we have a couple of rent houses and stuff. And my husband wanted to bulldoze it and make a parking lot or put a garage up because we have several old cars. Another thing I inherited from my daddy. And so we kept going back and forth while it was in probate and stuff. And we’d just go rent and he’d go bulldoze. I’d say

rent, I had to say parking parking lot, you know, and so just this gone kind of back and forth little, you know, you you don’t have you have a conversation, which don’t have a whole conversation kind of thing with your spouse. And so one day I’m driving home from the school and it was like somebody hit me upside the head said use it for the school. And I’m like, no, I have enough parents. I have enough teachers. I have enough children.

Kaye Boehning (45:04.686)
I have had it, I am tired, it is COVID, I have, you we’re at 40 % capacity. This is the stupidest thing I have ever, ever heard of, no. All the way home, I’m having this little argument. I walk into the house and look at my husband, I said, use it for the school. He’s like, I like that idea. And I’m like, no, no. And so we…

Anthony (45:28.7)
You’re supposed to tuck me out of it.

Kaye Boehning (45:32.972)
We ended up, I mean, we were already on contract to buy it. And so I’m like, okay, that’s kind of quinky dinky. The guy comes and says, we’re supposed to close August or September 15th. And he says, I’ve got, it’s been cleared now. I’ve got people willing to pay me cash right now to buy it. And I don’t wanna wait till the 15th. And I’m going, okay, so.

I call up my realtor and I say, how soon can we close on it? So she calls me back, she says, we could close on it September 2nd. And I’m like, okay. And I had just enough cash on hand to buy it because I was getting a bank loan to buy it. Just enough. mean, like within pennies of enough. And I’m going, well, that’s quinky dink. We opened the school 20 years ago, or 23 years ago on September 3rd.

And I’m going, we’ve bought our first location in 2000, so 20 years ago for that. And I’m going, that’s kind of a quick thing. And I get this little voice in the back of my head saying, look it up. And I’m going, no, we opened September 3rd. I have been celebrating September 3rd for at least, know, look it up. So I’m getting my phone going back. We opened the school on September 2nd.

I had been celebrating the wrong day for I don’t know how many years. Well, I call them God incidences because it’s kind of like, okay, it’s meant to be the school. We’re buying it on the anniversary date 23 years later. It’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever done. Okay, I’m gonna have to change my mindset.

Anthony (47:06.011)
Lots of coinkydinks here as you put it.

Kaye Boehning (47:29.678)
because we’re at 40 % capacity and I’m gonna add another building and spend money on it. This is stupid. And so I started attending, there was a growth start class with the SBA. I did that, I did mattress max school of selling. I found the Chris Murray podcast kind of thing, started listening to that.

and started changing my mindset. in January, from January 1st to the 30th, I had changed our marketing, I had changed our website, I had changed a lot of things. And we enrolled 13 children in one month, which was unheard of. I’m gonna go, so a of goals, I I’m working on enroll 70 children by June 1st. We had enrolled 70 children by May 1st. I think I have.

And when we opened the pink house on March 1st, it was full before the end of the month.

Anthony (48:30.075)
So can you dial it in for us? What was the biggest thing that you did that led to such a huge increase in?

Kaye Boehning (48:39.158)
It sounds silly, but people would call us and ask us how much. And we had learned over the years, if you said how much, you heard click. And so we would say, OK, well, we’re open from this time of day to this time. We offer breakfast, lunch, and afternoon snack. That’s included in the price. The price is click.

And so we weren’t gathering any information as to who was calling us. We weren’t trying to establish any kind of rapport with them or anything. It was just that. Now when people call, it’s kind of like, know, hi, what’s your name? Okay. And what age child are you calling about? You know, and what’s your child’s name? And when’s their birthday? And you know, this kind of thing. And you know,

What’s your phone number in case we get disconnected, you know, and things like that. And so we start talking to them and establishing a relationship because we are about relationships. I mean, you’re leaving your most trusted, your most precious thing with me. And, you know, you have to trust us. And so just starting that conversation off of, you know, we’re in, because we are interested. We want to help the parents be.

able to go to their job and not worry about their child and we want to teach their child and things like that. And so just starting that conversation, it sounds like the stupidest thing on the planet, but that’s what we did.

Anthony (50:12.165)
Yeah, you’ve turned what was going to be just a, I don’t know, a strictly transactional conversation, right? I want one piece of information. I want to know the price. Well, here, let me get to know you a little bit. Let you get to know me a little bit.

Kaye Boehning (50:24.994)
Yeah. And then we invite them in to come in and take a tour and, you know,

Anthony (50:32.645)
And so were you not giving them the cost until they came in for the tour?

Kaye Boehning (50:36.098)
Yeah, so we, if somebody’s really insistent, if they live out of town or something like that, they’re moving to town, you know, we will give them the price. But generally it’s like, we want to show you what we have to offer. Cause it’s really hard to explain this over the phone. You know, and you know, we’ll talk, you know, we ask them what they’re looking for, what they’re interested in. And then, you know, because some people, we have the largest playgrounds in town. Large show you the playgrounds.

Some people want to know how much their children are going to spend outside because a lot of people live in apartments or even if they live in a house, the only time they’ll let their child go out to play is when they can sit out there and watch them. And, you know, parents are busy. When do they have time to do that? So some children never get the opportunity to play outside. You know, there’s some children in cities that have never ever touched grass. Ever. And so, you know, we have grass on our playground.

Not so much in our town is probably touching, actually touching grass, but there are some places in our cities and stuff, people have never touched grass, even adults. And so some people are interested in what is their child gonna be doing after school or what’s their child gonna be doing during the summer when they go after school. And so some people are interested in our safety features because we have coded entry. You can’t get in unless you have our codes.

Anthony (52:00.322)
That’s nice.

Kaye Boehning (52:01.426)
And I’ve had that forever. Ever since I first opened, you know. Then some people are interested in the curriculum. Some people are interested in the menu. You know, I’ve had some people say, well, they don’t want any GMO products or they don’t want this or they don’t want that, you know. And so it’s like, okay, well, this is what we serve for lunch. So, you know, on these days, if you want to bring something different, you can, you know.

And so you find out what they’re looking for because we have so many different things we’re offering. We’re open in the early, we’re open at five o ‘clock in the morning. So we catch that first shift. We catch that first shift that goes to the prison. Cause they get off at two o ‘clock.

Anthony (52:48.773)
mean, this sounds like your dad, right? Driving across the state to deliver a tractor park, because that’s what the customer needs.

Kaye Boehning (52:54.862)
And we’re open till 7 .30 at one location because that’s when the hospital gets off. They don’t open as early because we catch that shift from 6 .30 to 7 .30 over at the third location because we’ve got a partnership we’re working with the hospital on. And so the…

Anthony (53:01.339)
Wow.

Anthony (53:16.507)
Something interesting I want to make sure that we cover, because I thought that this was really unusual, is that you went from a for -profit company to a nonprofit so that you could serve people at multiple income levels. So talk to me about how that came up.

Kaye Boehning (53:26.966)
I did that.

Kaye Boehning (53:34.994)
In 2000, I applied for and got our nonprofit status. So we’ve been a nonprofit for, you know, going on 24, about 24 years. And I did that because I thought, you know, we could apply for grants and we could, you know, I want to set up a foundation where, you know, anybody could come that wanted to come, especially when I had the elementary for the elementary, because there’s so many people that

Anthony (53:44.443)
Okay.

Kaye Boehning (54:03.286)
aren’t being successful with traditional teaching and they don’t have choices. They might have different private schools here in town and they do and they’re very excellent and our school system is a good school too. But sometimes you need that extra, you need a different approach. And so in Montessori, you master a concept before you go on to the next concept.

where in most traditional schools, private or public, everybody’s on the same page at the same time. And so if you don’t understand static addition, know, three plus five, you know, four plus five, things under the value of 10, you don’t understand dynamic addition where you’re now carrying and doing three plus nine.

So you shouldn’t go from static addition to dynamic addition until you’ve mastered static. And so that’s how a lot of children, they need that extra week or they might need the extra three weeks or an extra two months, you know. But that’s the thing that’s inherent in Montessori is everybody’s on their own curriculum at their own pace. And so I might have a second grader that’s still doing

first grade math, but doing fourth grade reading. You know, so you don’t hold them back and you work on where they need the extra work. And so that was my frustration is watching some of these children fail or watching that spark go out of them because I get the children in the summer and it’s like, we have to go to a museum. We have to read. When can I have electronic time?

You know, and it’s like, it’s sad because when they were at my school, it’s like, we get to read or we get to this or we get to that. You know, and especially what I had by elementary students, I was comparing them against my elementary students. We could go on a field trip. We get to go. mean, you we get to go to the museums and that’s it there and read. Yeah. And so, you know, that difference in that terminology in that language, it’s like something happens.

Anthony (56:15.064)
Not I have to, get to.

Kaye Boehning (56:25.954)
And that’s, you know, one of the reasons why I miss the elementary is because I see some of that spark go out of the children. I mean, the statistics for how many people, and probably nobody on this is looking to listen to this, is in the statistic. But how many people graduate high school and never read another book?

The statistic is outstanding. It’s sad.

Anthony (56:49.009)
So how does it work, Kay, when a family comes to you and they don’t have the means to pay the tuition or to least pay the full tuition? How does that money come in? How is that assessment made?

Kaye Boehning (57:03.938)
Well, I haven’t been totally successful. I’ve not been able to write grants to fully fulfill that dream of, you know, of that. Now we do take some state subsidies. So whatever the state will pay us. So if a parent goes to the state and says, I need child care subsidy, some parents pay nothing and the state picks up the rest of the bill and they pay us our contracted amount.

The sad part of that is sometimes there’s a waiting list. Sometimes for our area, it’s up to a year, which doesn’t help anybody get jobs or help the workforce or help the employers out there that are trying to find people to hire because the mommies can’t find childcare because they can’t afford it. Then we also have a little bit of a scholarship where they can pay a fee. It’s about $30 and they can

submit all their information to the third party and see if they qualify for a scholarship. And we have usually given about 10 % off of their tuition if they qualify for the scholarship. Because again, we don’t have the funds to give somebody a free ride because we just haven’t gotten scholarships or, I’m sorry, haven’t gotten grants and things like that. And.

Anthony (58:27.055)
Yeah. Yeah.

Kaye Boehning (58:30.442)
Over here, if I had many different hats, I could probably possibly write some of those grants and things like that. But I have been devoting more of my other time, what time I have, we do the Dolly Parton Imagination Library. And so the school does, you know, this portion of the pie, and it’s gotten bigger as to the portion of the pie of the population we serve for the town.

Anthony (58:48.452)
Let’s hear about that.

Kaye Boehning (58:59.246)
But the Dali Parton Imagination Library serves the whole county by giving children books for free from zero until they turn five. And so we have a partnership with the hospital that when a baby’s born, we give them a gift bag and in it has an enrollment form for the program and a little letter saying how important it is to read to your child. Because the stats show there’s one book for every 300 children when you’re in a poor neighborhood.

and middle class families only have about 13 books. And this program will give you 60 books by the time you go to kindergarten. But our community is over 62 % poor. So we have a huge population of children going to school that’s never seen a book, going against children that are already reading. And then we expect the public school system or the school system to fix that. And when 90 % of the brain development happens by the time you’re five,

you’re asking them possible. So the program that I’ve been spending a lot of time trying to do is affecting that whole pie where we’re books out and we’re sending out over thousand books a month. So we’re trying to affect that part of our little world. And most of our, and in our community, the mamas that have the means usually go to different place to have their babies.

Anthony (01:00:00.177)
Yeah.

Anthony (01:00:15.931)
What a great program.

Kaye Boehning (01:00:27.928)
they’ll go to Conroe or the Woodlands or something like that. So having the partnership with the hospital has.

Anthony (01:00:37.753)
Is that where the funding comes from?

Kaye Boehning (01:00:39.566)
No, we don’t. We don’t have. OK. So over on my other hat of 14000 I wear is we have events that we fundraising events. So we in the spring we do a 5K run with your imagination color run. And then in the fall we’ve been the last two years as we third year we’ve done less so your imagination, which is a barbecue dinner and silent live auction.

dessert auction and we raised money. And then my daddy passed away in March and if it had wheels and a motor, he was all into it. So Kay and her little brain added a car show this year to honor my dad and he was all about children. So we added inflatables. So there’s going to be 10 inflatables out there for the jump into your imagination and then rev up your imagination. So we’re having a car Jeep.

motorcycle truck show. They’re have vendors out there, food trucks and inflatables and during the day we already have the fairground rented for the nighttime event. This year we’re gonna have comedians and things and so that’s our big fundraiser to pay for the program for the year.

Anthony (01:02:03.627)
that’s awesome. You are wearing a lot of different hats and helping a lot of people in a lot of different ways. This is fantastic. I love this.

Kaye Boehning (01:02:04.684)
So, marketing that I had a long, time ago, and my first job is working for a bank and I did some events for them. I was an event coordinator for them and the advertising of things that I did for the bank for five years kind of come back circle around that I’m doing that now.

Psychology classes I took in school because I have a psychology minor probably also Although my school didn’t give minors But I have 24 hours in psychology because I thought I was gonna be a psychologist for a while And then I just thought I would get depressed listening people be depressed and talk around me all the time So I was like I got to have something more positive than that Whole reason why I quit being thinking about being a psychologist was because I didn’t think I could handle listening to depressed people

Anthony (01:03:01.561)
Fair enough. I think that’s a legitimate concern.

Kaye Boehning (01:03:02.062)
And then all the business classes I ended up taking. So it’s funny how all the crazy classes, even the psychological effects, I’m sorry, sociological effects of children watching TV. I did a term paper when I was a senior in high school over TV and children. And then I ended up taking a sociology class about TV and children. And then,

I’ve done a lot of research about children and the digital phones. If you want to give your kid crack cocaine, put a phone in front of them because it stimulates the same area of your brain. And that’s why you see these kids throwing absolute meltdown fits when they get their phones taken away. And sadly, I mean, I’ve seen a video where the child is laying on the floor in a fetal position doing this without a phone in his hand.

Anthony (01:04:01.093)
Wow, that is sad.

Kaye Boehning (01:04:02.092)
because they were so addicted to the phone.

Anthony (01:04:06.405)
that just that scrolling motion has become a soothing mechanism for them. know, Kay, one of the things I hear talking with a lot of childcare owners is the challenge in finding good people and holding on to them. And I hear you talk about, you know, all the ways that you are helping other folks. I’m curious, what have you found has worked in a recruiting and retention for building and maintaining a good team of people?

Kaye Boehning (01:04:11.52)
And so he’s sitting there doing that.

Kaye Boehning (01:04:37.3)
Well, we’ve kind of evolved in that because when I first started, you know, I like everybody. And so I would give everybody a chance pretty much. In childcare, there’s kind of the mantra, if you’re breathing, you’re hired. And I discovered that I’m probably not the best judge or person to be doing that job. So a few years ago, I turned to

And now apparently I’ve done some things right because I have people that have been here for 25, 20, 13 years. So I’ve done a lot of interviewing and I have gotten some golden gems, but I’ve also had some real turkeys over the years too. And I have somebody now that does the hiring and she’s not tempted by breathing. She…

I have given her my vision of what I’m looking for and she knows what we’re looking for and she just doesn’t hire anybody. So we have been very selective in the last probably three years in who we hire and that has made a huge difference. Do we still have turnover? Yeah, people get tired of the, I think it’s the five or six P’s, they get tired of the poop, the pee, the…

Anthony (01:06:04.549)
Parents maybe sometimes.

Kaye Boehning (01:06:04.59)
the parents, the pay, and then there’s not enough praise.

So, you know, after about six months, there’s a six month cycle, you know, that they realize that they get pooped on and peed on a lot or puked on, you know, and that the parents can sometimes be an issue. And then you have some, the pay, the pay is not great. They’re not going to get rich at it. And they have to have a passion for what they’re doing. And they need to, they need to know how they’re doing a good job.

Anthony (01:06:43.803)
Yeah.

Kaye Boehning (01:06:43.878)
And unfortunately, in today’s society, sometimes I call it the Pez candy dispenser. You know, it’s like they want praise for showing up five minutes late. But I’m here, you know, and it’s like, no, that’s you need to be in your classroom on time because we have ratios we have to meet and we have safety standards we have to meet and stuff like that. if I have people that are the kind of the Pez candy people, they don’t last long.

Anthony (01:07:11.685)
Why do call them Pez Candy people? Why do you call them Pez Candy people?

Kaye Boehning (01:07:13.804)
You what?

Kaye Boehning (01:07:17.39)
because they want a reward for every little thing. I showed up, I was 10 minutes late, but I showed up. I should get a reward for showing up 10 minutes late. And you’ve met them. Everybody has met somebody like that, you know. And sure.

Anthony (01:07:20.081)
got it. Got it. Okay. Yeah.

Anthony (01:07:31.856)
Yeah.

We’ve all come across those people. Kay, I have just one more question for you, but before I ask it, I wanna do two things. If you’re listening today and you like today’s content, please hit the subscribe, like, or share button on your favorite podcast app. I also wanna tell people the best way to get in touch with you. What is that?

Kaye Boehning (01:07:53.326)
The best way to get in touch with me would probably be k -a -y -e at t -p -s dot life. I asked my daddy a few years ago, said, why’d you put an E on the end of my name? And he said, well, I wanted you to be unique. And I said, you really didn’t think that through, did you? So.

Anthony (01:07:55.025)
Mm

Anthony (01:08:02.842)
in

Anthony (01:08:14.178)
So now you have to clarify the spelling of your name for everybody. K -A -Y -E, yep.

Kaye Boehning (01:08:18.401)
Yeah, well, yeah, a lot of people want to call me Kathy or Karen or something like that. And I’m like, no, it’s just Kay. My parents are poor. They couldn’t afford a real name. So.

Anthony (01:08:29.391)
Well, my wife is Kayla and we call her Kay for short all the time. So I think it’s a perfectly lovely name. So my last question for you, Kay, with an E, how do you see your industry evolving in the next five years? What do you think the big changes are?

Kaye Boehning (01:08:44.942)
That’s a difficult one because the industry as a whole is in a crisis, big huge crisis between what you could pay people, what you charge parents and what your overhead is. And my insurances went from 20 ,000 to 30 ,000 to 60 ,000 to 76 ,000 this year. So it went up. went, yeah.

Anthony (01:08:52.731)
Tell me about it.

Anthony (01:09:10.693)
This is business insurance or?

Kaye Boehning (01:09:14.35)
It went up $16 ,000 this last year. Then you’ve got people needing to make more because of inflation and things like that. Then you’ve got the cost of food going up. And then, and my current crisis that I’m working on right now is I’ve now reached the big girl status and I have to put my big girl panties on. And we’ve reached right at where we’re getting 50 employees.

So that changes a whole bunch of rules that I am not familiar with. And do you grow or do you stay small? And if you grow, can you afford the health insurance and can you afford the different requirements and things like that that you’re at? And there’s a need, but how do you navigate that when you’re not making…

that much money to pay $100 per employee for health insurance and they would rather have the $800 because they need it. So that’s the current big crisis in the whole industry is trying to navigate those waters. It is nothing, nothing compared to what COVID was, in my opinion. And the rules.

Anthony (01:10:30.619)
Do you see any solutions on the horizon?

Kaye Boehning (01:10:36.526)
There’s a couple of different things going on and this is where things always come with strings attached. Like we have started our public school system offered free preschool for three and four year olds back in 2012 and it decimated us and about drove us out of business.

We’ve been able to navigate that and we just started last year where we were full, but we started a public pre -K partnership with the charter school in order to help those parents that did qualify and wanted to keep their children at our center. And so we ended up with about 26 parents last year that qualified for free pre -K to stay at our school and not go to the big kids school, you know.

where they’re just lost in the crowd. Because there’s those big, huge, four, 500, 600 people, children all in the same building. And I have the separate buildings, so each building has its own age group and number of children in it that doesn’t come close to that many. And so that’s one thing, but that comes with strengths as to what you can and can’t do.

They keep talking about universal pre -k, which usually turns around and means they’re going to take our three and four year olds from the private centers and put them in public school, which is going to kill childcare for zero to three year olds because we can’t, you can’t make a profit on babies. They’re lost leader. You know, you have, yeah, the ratios are so much smaller. And so if you are,

Anthony (01:12:13.999)
happening in California.

Anthony (01:12:26.097)
because the ratios have to be so much different.

Kaye Boehning (01:12:32.406)
trying to pay for your baby teachers, it takes the three and four year olds to try to pay for a baby teacher to keep the parents cost where the parents can afford it. And anything that is going to come down the pikes is to, well, the government’s going to fund this or the government’s going to fund that, then again comes with those strings. And we participate.

participate freely in the Texas Rising Star System because we want to make those adjustments. We want to, know, minimum standards here, then there’s a two star, three star, and a four star level. Well, we want to be up here, but not everybody does. And so it’s expensive to go up each star level because of the training required for the teachers or for the materials that’s called, you know, has to go in the classrooms and things like that. So the more things

that are supposed to help parents don’t always help childcare centers and the things if you’re given money, then there’s always a string attached to it. And so can you jump through that hoop? Can you follow those regulations and still stay in business? And so it kind of depends on what’s going on. I mean, if the state of Texas would allocate more money for

child care centers in the sense of the parents getting subsidies, then, you know, more parents could be helped. But on the flip side to that is I’m in Huntsville and I get paid the Houston rate. Well, in Houston, the rate is twice as much for child care as it is in Huntsville. So to get the state money in Houston,

means they’re getting paid half as much because what we charge in Huntsville is about what the state pays. And so you can operate a child care center in Houston and take subsidies, all children being subsidies, and stay in business because your costs are twice as much. So if the state wants to give enough money for more children to have subsidies,

Kaye Boehning (01:14:53.806)
and they want to give, say 100 ,000 people are getting it now and they want to make it 200 ,000, it’s not going to help the problem in Houston because the dollar amount is not enough for that center in Houston. Now it might help us in Hudsonville, but people in Houston aren’t going to be able to child care. There’s still going to be a shortage of child care centers in Houston. If you give more money, say you’re given $700 a month now and you give $1 ,000 a month,

then instead of 100 ,000 people, you’re going to help 70 ,000 people.

Anthony (01:15:30.341)
some tough problems to solve there, okay?

Kaye Boehning (01:15:30.366)
So it all goes back to all those numbers and, you know, and that’s like the public pre -K partnership that we have. You get paid so much a day per child. Well, my numbers work out to where it’s about the same as what I charge for childcare. In Houston, it’s not. So I don’t know how the people in Houston can do a private pre -K partnership on the amount of money they’re paying.

or any of the other districts. Because like I said, Huntsville is a poor community. So 10 miles, 14 miles down the road, you have a town that charges $200 more a month for child care than what we charge in Huntsville. 14 miles.

then that’s.

Anthony (01:16:15.235)
know, Kay, I’ve heard similar feedback from a lot of different childcare owners. you know, I hope that these episodes are getting out to some folks who have some power to help make the situation better and make some more funds available because it’s a problem that’s existed for a while. It’s gotten much worse through COVID and the way that it’s headed, it’s gonna continue that direction if something doesn’t change.

Kaye Boehning (01:16:37.196)
Well, yeah, COVID has made at least put us on the radar that we’re necessary in order just for the economy, because if you don’t have enough child care centers, your economy can’t expand, you know, and there’s a lot of what they call child care deserts out there. And you can Google child care deserts and it’ll show you where there’s areas that

there’s not enough child care centers in and You could go in there an open one, but whether you can make a profit at it And after stay a business even if you’re a non -profit you have to pay the bills You know, but there’s a reason why there’s deserts in some areas is because it’s hard to make that make it work

Anthony (01:17:25.359)
Yeah. Well, Kay, I want to be the first one to thank you for sharing both your time and your story with us today. I really appreciate it.

Kaye Boehning (01:17:32.994)
Well, thank you. Thank you for having me.

Anthony (01:17:35.803)
Folks, that’s a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories podcast. Thanks for learning with me today.