This story was originally produced by The Keene Sentinel. NHPR is republishing it in partnership with the Granite State News Collaborative.
Inside The Younger Years in Swanzey, it looks like any other elementary school classroom.
Multicolored toy bins and stacks of board games line one wall. Red, green and yellow smocks hang on a coat tree near an assortment of art supplies. Shaggy floor rugs are bordered by bookshelves full of childhood classics like “How to Train Your Dragon” and “Flat Stanley.”
But there’s a key difference. The Younger Years has only one student, its second since it began in 2024.
It’s known as a microschool, a wide-ranging distinction for nontraditional schools that generally teach fewer than 15 kids. The criteria for what constitutes a microschool are nebulous — there’s no federal definition, and regulation varies by state. The New Hampshire Department of Education does not oversee microschools, according to department spokesperson Kim Houghton.
The microschool model gained traction during the COVID-19 pandemic, and as many as 2.1 million children in the U.S. attend these schools, per a May 2025 study from the National Microschooling Center, a nonprofit advocacy organization that offers resources to microschools. Microschools have also become the darling of several tech CEOs, like Space X’s Elon Musk and Palantir’s Peter Thiel, according to the magazine Wired.
The model’s supporters say it provides a less rigid teaching environment that caters to students’ interests. At the same time, microschools have drawn some criticism from people who question their lack of regulation or worry the model could siphon money from conventional public education.
Thomas Arnett, a senior fellow at The Christensen Institute — a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank — has researched microschools for more than a decade. He said the term is tough to define because of the many variations within the model.
Some schools focus on studying Greek and Latin, others on outdoor learning or long-term projects, Arnett said. The Younger Years — which operates out of Swanzey’s The Village Church — is a homeschool co-op, which typically means families share the educational duties.
But the Swanzey school differs slightly from a traditional homeschool co-op, which is often run by parents. It’s led by Pollianne Stenstrom, a seasoned homeschool educator.
Stenstrom, whose official title is “guide,” is a teacher by trade. She has degrees in elementary and special education, homeschooled her own children for 15 years and has taught in residential and public schools, she said.
“As an educator and a formal teacher, I would like to support more of the homeschoolers in the area to actually have a real teacher."Pollianne Stenstrom
While microschools started to gain prominence about 10 years ago, their numbers have jumped in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, as families scrambled to find alternative education options, Arnett said.
“COVID was really kind of an accelerant for microschools,” he said. “Families that had been motivated to figure out a new solution during COVID were starting to experiment with things like pandemic pods, and I think that interest kind of bubbled into the more sustained microschool movement that we have today.”
Families seek out or start microschools for a few different reasons, Arnett said. They may see conventional public education as too testing-focused or too sedentary. Microschools advertise a different type of learning that is often more experiential, hands-on and exploratory, he noted.
But in his research, Arnett said he found that for a lot of families, the decision comes down to very practical reasons.
“For a variety of different reasons, the common theme was that parents were saying, ‘Look, I’m tired of the daily battles with my kid about whether they are going to go to school today, and so I need to find a place where my kid won’t hate school anymore,’ ” he said.
Some parents also said they felt unheard by their school district, Arnett said. They were upset with a certain policy or action, and feeling that their voice wasn’t going to change anything, decided to find another option for their kids.
Stenstrom says it’s the flexibility and personalized setting that draws families to microschools.
She gave the example of setting student goals. If a fifth-grader is at a third-grade reading level, Stenstrom said she would meet with the parents to determine how much growth their child could handle in a year. If a traditional year of growth seems unlikely, they could aim for a half year of growth.
“That’s what we’re doing — we’re resetting,” she said. “We’re setting goals personally for each student, and every student is different from another.”
School is in session at The Younger Years on Monday through Thursday, from 9 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. The curriculum is administered through Prenda, an online, microschool-focused learning company that has about 230 schools in the United States. The Younger Years is the only school in New Hampshire listed on the organization’s online map.
Students who use Prenda get all the core subjects — math, science, history, English — along with the option to enhance the learning process, Stenstrom said. Should students partake in an out-of-class experience, such as a trip to the library or an apple orchard, parents can add those to their children’s homeschool portfolio.
“So it’s not just me in the classroom, and it makes more of that feeling of community come together,” she said.
Amber Bagster, whose child attends The Younger Years, said she explored public school options for her daughter, but didn’t want her to learn about LGBTQ+ topics or “gender ideology.” Bagster also worried about issues with bullying at public schools.
Bagster’s mother found The Younger Years on Facebook, and Bagster herself met with Stenstrom initially, she said. So far, she said, her daughter is liking the experience for the most part.
As a homeschool co-op, parents would need to take shifts as support staff if The Younger Years gained more students, Stenstrom said, volunteering anywhere from a few hours to an entire school day. Currently, as there is only one student, Stenstrom is the sole adult present.
Bagster said she doesn’t have a problem with the school’s volunteering requirements, as long as it’s not every day. And she said she’s not concerned that her child is the only student in the classroom.
“I feel like there will be more kids eventually,” she said. “It’s pretty new; a lot of people have never heard about it.”
A few weeks ago, Bagster’s daughter, 7, reviewed vocabulary words with Stenstrom relating to the life cycle of butterflies as part of the science curriculum. Then, she and Stenstrom followed along with a YouTube tutorial that detailed how to sketch a butterfly leaving its chrysalis as an adult.
For math, the second-grader did addition exercises on Prenda, with Stenstrom by her side to offer guidance and keep her on task. Online learning makes up about 30-40 minutes of each subject, Stenstrom said. Between each subject, guide and student spent about 10 minutes playing board games, which Stenstrom said helps to “let off steam.”
Stenstrom works well with regulating students’ moods and keeping them on task, Bagster said.
“It’s a little more understanding than a public school would be with a kid who has too many emotions,” she said.
While New Hampshire does not have regulations for microschools, it does have laws governing homeschools. Students who wish to attend The Younger Years must be registered as homeschool students with the state of New Hampshire, according to Stenstrom, who said she follows the guidelines on the New Hampshire homeschool website.
New Hampshire is not alone in its lack of oversight for microschools; most states do not have regulations for these schools, as the model is still an emerging phenomenon, said Arnett, of The Christensen Institute.
Microschools typically function under other rules, such as zoning laws that govern where schools can operate, or by their classification as a child care center or enrichment program, for example.
“Really, microschools are operating under these other regulatory frameworks that weren’t necessarily created for microschools,” he said.
This lack of regulation has prompted some concern about quality, he said. Still, he noted, there’s open debate about whether regulations and testing translate to quality.
The Younger Years is not accredited, as New Hampshire doesn’t require a homeschool co-op to be, Stenstrom said. Instead, the school is registered as a business.
The school is not an outlier in this sense. Seventy-eight percent of microschools are not accredited, per the National Microschooling Center’s study, and only 54 percent of microschool educators have ever held a teaching license.
Another source of criticism against microschools is that some states allow attendees to use public money to pay for them.
In June, the N.H. Legislature expanded eligibility for its Education Freedom Account program to families of all income levels. Also known as school vouchers, these public dollars can be used to pay for nonpublic school education.
Students can use EFA money to pay for Prenda and for tutoring, according to Stenstrom, who said she disagrees with pushback against the school-voucher program. She declined to disclose how much students pay to attend The Younger Years.
“Parents are going to the EFA scholarship because they want something different for their kids,” she said. “Why can’t we revamp some things, and look at education as a celebration of growing our kids in our communities?”
Despite concerns from public education proponents, Arnett — whose institute focuses on improving areas of society with “disruptive innovation” — said he sees possibilities in the microschool model.
“I think some microschools are promising as potential vehicles for really making education more learner-centered, more personalized to students’ needs, more adaptive to their circumstances and their preferences and their interests,” he said.
Stenstrom hopes microschooling will catch on in the Monadnock Region. She tutors and held an educational summer camp to make her presence known.
“This is a small beginning,” she said. “But even in the Bible it says, ‘Do not despise small beginnings.’ ”
