Colleen Hroncich
Things weren’t going the way Ar’Jillian Gilmer expected. After much prayer, she had taken a leap of faith and left a secure job as a public school teacher to create Gilmer’s Learning Solutions. “I advertised homeschool support, and I’m thinking, ‘On a Tuesday at 10:00 a.m., I’ll get Rachel. She’s going to come, and I’m going to help her with her English,’” she recalls. “And literally, zero people bit. Zero.”
Entrepreneurship requires a mix of vision, resilience, and the willingness to take risks to turn ideas into reality. In the education sphere, the challenges are even greater because the primary competitor—public schools—are tuition-free for families, and there are typically very complex regulations when children are involved. Thankfully, “edupreneurs” like Ar’Jillian have the tenacity to stick with it and pursue their visions.
Her first foray beyond the school system came when she started a successful tutoring business in 2020, inspired in part by her bonus daughter’s struggle with dyslexia. Before receiving her diagnosis, “we had to come up with some really creative measures to try to help her pass spelling tests,” Ar’Jillian recalls. Once they had the diagnosis, Ar’Jillian went deep into research to find the best ways to support her daughter.
Ar’Jillian knew not every child or adult had the access and knowledge that she and her husband had due to her profession. “Not every family has two parents who know how to think outside the box and figure out things to do with their kids to help them grasp that academic content that they need so that they can master skills and be proficient,” she explains. “So that was really the underlying boost to make sure that business kept going.”
During the pandemic, Ar’Jillian expanded her tutoring services and began serving a broader population beyond just people she knew. The business was thriving, but she felt called to do more. That’s when she left her job and put herself out there for homeschool support. When that was a bust, she set the idea aside for almost a year.
A life-altering event—a ruptured brain aneurysm—re-inspired her. “It was while I was in the hospital in Neuro ICU for about 19 days that I recall knowing that I’m not supposed to stop yet,” she says. She applied for the Arizona State University Microschool Entrepreneur Fellowship and found a guide to launching a microschool. On a trip to San Diego with her husband, she went through the guide and began developing her plan. When they got home, she told him, “This is it. I’m going to put it out.”
At the first interest meeting, only one family showed up—but they told her they were on board even if no other students came. By the time the microschool launched for the 2024–25 school year, eight families had enrolled. The Foundation Christian Microschool, as she recently rebranded it, now serves eighteen students in grades K–8, meeting Tuesdays through Thursdays with optional Fridays. Classes are grouped flexibly by age and ability, and the atmosphere blends academic rigor with a strong sense of community.
Instead of purchasing expensive, one-size-fits-all curriculum, Ar’Jillian curates affordable resources, keeping what works and discarding what doesn’t. The approach has paid off: every student in the first year made progress in math, English, or reading, and all (except for one who moved away) returned, often bringing siblings.
The Arkansas Education Freedom Account (EFA) program, which is an education savings account, has been transformative for Ar’Jillian’s microschool, with sixteen of her eighteen families using the funding. Before EFA existed, many interested families faced a double barrier: they couldn’t afford the tuition and couldn’t find or pay for childcare on the microschool’s off days. Now, families can use EFA funds both for tuition and to find approved providers for care on Mondays, removing the financial obstacles that once made these options accessible only to those who could already afford private school alternatives.
“I always tell people when they ask me to talk about microschooling and EFA, I’m a proponent for whatever schooling works best for the child,” Ar’Jillian says. “We need great public schools. We need great private schools. We need great micros. Because we have a hodgepodge of kids, and we have to meet their needs.”