SARASOTA, Fla. – Alison Rini thought her destiny was to be the principal at a traditional public school. She had been the principal at a charter school, the assistant principal at a Title I district school, and the assistant principal at a magnet school for gifted students.
But in the wake of Covid, Rini began to feel “adrift.” The system, in her view, proved incapable of helping students, particularly low-income students, overcome the academic and behavioral deficits left by distance learning. Some students were being promoted, even though they weren’t ready. Others were being labelled disabled, even though they weren’t.
“My path wasn’t leading to where I thought it would,” Rini said. “It felt like they just wanted me to grease the wheels to keep them turning. And people were getting chopped up in the gears.”
“I just felt there’s got to be a better way.”
In 2023, Rini took a leap of faith, one that is becoming common for public school teachers in school-choice-rich states like Florida.
She decided to start her own school.
For other recent examples, see here, here, here, here, and here.
With help from The Drexel Fund, a philanthropy that helps promising new private schools start and/or grow, Rini took a year to plan. She visited successful schools across the country; acquired deeper knowledge about the business side of running a school; and mapped out exactly what she wanted to create. Her vision was based on 20-plus years of learning the best approaches from teaching in all types of schools, from New York City to the Virgin Islands to the Gulf Coast of Florida.
The result is Star Lab, a private microschool that opened last fall with a handful of kindergartners and is now set to expand. It’s housed in the recreation center of an oak-graced public housing complex in Newtown, a historic Black neighborhood in Sarasota.
Watching students walk up on the first day of school in their Star Lab shirts was “an out of body experience,” Rini said.
“It was just such a dream come true,” she said. “And this year has been such a joy, to behold the power of just tailoring something around kids – not around adults, not around the system.”
Star Lab is a rich blend of philosophies and practices that reflect Rini’s background in education and neuroscience. (Rini earned a bachelor’s degree in neuroscience and behavior, and master’s degrees in elementary education and education leadership, all from Columbia.)
Star Lab’s approach to reading instruction is grounded in “science of reading” research. It employes hands-on Montessori materials to help students better grasp some academic concepts at their own pace. It embraces the Finnish approach to student movement, which sees frequent play breaks as optimal for learning. It also emphasizes individualized lessons, mastery learning, lots of direct instruction, and progress monitoring via a custom-built dashboard.
“We’re not just educating,” the school website says, “we’re preparing future leaders, innovators, and global citizens who are as healthy and mindful as they are intellectually empowered.”
Every morning at Star Lab starts with 25 minutes of exercise and five minutes of “mindfulness” activities. Monday through Thursday, the students are immersed in core academics. Fridays are for group activities like drama, field trips, and guest speakers.
Rini guarantees parents that Star Lab students will perform at or above grade level in reading and math. Most of the students in the neighborhood are not at that level, which is why Rini chose to be here. According to the most recent state stats, 38% of Black students in Sarasota County are reading at grade level, compared to 68% of White students.
“I just felt drawn to it,” Rini said of Newtown. “Super wealthy people already have school choice.” But all families deserve the ability to choose, Rini continued.
Every student at Star Lab uses a state choice scholarship and there are no other fees.
Rini could be a poster child for the wave of education entrepreneurs who are rising in Florida and other choice-rich states – both for the promise they represent, and the pitfalls they continue to face.
Due to fire-code complications, Star Lab could only serve five students this year. Rini didn’t learn about the snag until two weeks before school opened, and the remedy – a $97,000 sprinkler system – wasn’t financially possible. A local philanthropy recently stepped forward to help the housing authority pay for the sprinkler system. But Rini’s case isn’t an isolated one, as stories like this one and reports like this one highlight.
With the stars finally lined up at Star Lab, 14 students have already enrolled for this fall, and more are expected.
The draws are many.
For families who live in the complex, the school couldn’t be more convenient. The individual attention is tough to match. (Besides Rini, there’s another teacher and an assistant.) And it’s clear the school is enmeshed in the community. 
Last month, the school hosted a “design lab” with local college professors and more than a dozen parents in the neighborhood, so the parents could discuss the educational needs of their children and how they could be better met. A few days later, Star Lab students built a float for the Newtown Easter Parade. In early May, the school hosted an international food festival for the neighborhood, so the students, their families, and their neighbors could, in Rini’s words, “travel the world through their taste buds.”
It’s not just families who are benefiting from the emergence of distinctive new schools like Star Lab.
“If you are not happy at your job, I would say don’t accept that as your fate,” Rini said, referring to other educators. “There are options, and some of them are already out there. And some of them don’t exist yet, but they might be in your head or in your heart.”
With choice, they don’t have to stay there.
