meeting,” Prescott continued, speaking without notes, “is to go over some early financial estimates, discuss some of the progress we’ve made in the six weeks since open, and, hopefully, come up with some strategies to get things headed in the right direction before we release our first quarterly report.
“I‘ve been in communication with the adoptive parents on a weekly basis. Unfortunately, we lost about four weeks in the transition from orphanage to home, but we’ve now started most of the educational programs we’d prioritized the highest. Our boy’s actually already well ahead of where we thought he’d be in math despite the setback – he’s picking up concepts amazingly quickly.
“His tutor is billing out at 45 dollars an hour for 10 hours a week, and we’re picking that up. We’ve also got him working with an English tutor for 4 hours a week, primarily working on writing. That seems to be paying early dividends also, and she bills at the same rate.
“His mom is out of the house for four hours a day, leaving him with a Mexican-American nanny we’ve chosen, who’s got an exceptional track record for teaching conversational Spanish. He’s doing very well with that, and she only costs us 20 dollars an hour for 20 hours a week. We’ll keep the nanny until he’s fluent, but we won’t need the math or English tutors during the school year.
“His adoptive mother is playing games of strategy with him for about an hour a night, which I’m told he enjoys, and his dad is introducing him to the basics of the financial markets, obviously avoiding AVEX. Those services are of course free to us, and his parents have waived the parental stipend.
“We’re picking up the family’s healthcare by contractual obligation, which is about 900 a month, and he’ll be starting school at the Hunting Valley Academy for Math, Science and the Arts, which is clearly the top primary school in Cleveland and one of the best in the country – really a bargain at $24,000 annually.
“That puts our annual expenditures somewhere in the neighborhood of $60,000. Any questions or comments on any of that?”
“Any word yet on grade placement?” one of the executives asked. “60,000 times nine sounds a lot more palatable than 60,000 times eleven.”
“Hmm. What you’re proposing is a bit of a gamble,” Prescott said flatly, trying to conceal his delight that someone else was suggesting a course he fully supported. “Kids don’t immediately gain maturity by virtue of skipping a grade. Now of course, RTJ is slightly taller than average for his grade, and believe it or not, that’s an independent predictor for success in skipping grades – we have data on that.
“What’s harder to predict is how he’d do emotionally. Initially, it’s hard on all kids who skip ahead. Then, down the road, some kids have trouble building relationships with their peers, who are all a year or two older, especially around adolescence, but I don’t have any numbers to give you on that.”
“If we can save 120,000 bucks, I say we do it,” J.R. said casually, as nine heads turned in his direction. “Look, more than the $120,000, it’s the extra years of productivity, while we still have a high percentage of ownership. We have a very fixed time period during which we can extract a profit. If he gets out of college at 18 or 19 instead of 22, that could be a huge difference in lifetime earnings. Yeah, maybe it’ll be a little hard for him to adjust at first, but he’s a tough kid. I say we push for 3rd or even 4th grade this year – unless you have good evidence to say that these kids don’t do as well financially in adulthood.”
All eyes turned back to Prescott. “No,” he said pensively. “The data show that the vast majority of these kids do very well financially. The only gamble is that a small percentage – around nine percent – crumble emotionally and end up utter
“I‘ve been in communication with the adoptive parents on a weekly basis. Unfortunately, we lost about four weeks in the transition from orphanage to home, but we’ve now started most of the educational programs we’d prioritized the highest. Our boy’s actually already well ahead of where we thought he’d be in math despite the setback – he’s picking up concepts amazingly quickly.
“His tutor is billing out at 45 dollars an hour for 10 hours a week, and we’re picking that up. We’ve also got him working with an English tutor for 4 hours a week, primarily working on writing. That seems to be paying early dividends also, and she bills at the same rate.
“His mom is out of the house for four hours a day, leaving him with a Mexican-American nanny we’ve chosen, who’s got an exceptional track record for teaching conversational Spanish. He’s doing very well with that, and she only costs us 20 dollars an hour for 20 hours a week. We’ll keep the nanny until he’s fluent, but we won’t need the math or English tutors during the school year.
“His adoptive mother is playing games of strategy with him for about an hour a night, which I’m told he enjoys, and his dad is introducing him to the basics of the financial markets, obviously avoiding AVEX. Those services are of course free to us, and his parents have waived the parental stipend.
“We’re picking up the family’s healthcare by contractual obligation, which is about 900 a month, and he’ll be starting school at the Hunting Valley Academy for Math, Science and the Arts, which is clearly the top primary school in Cleveland and one of the best in the country – really a bargain at $24,000 annually.
“That puts our annual expenditures somewhere in the neighborhood of $60,000. Any questions or comments on any of that?”
“Any word yet on grade placement?” one of the executives asked. “60,000 times nine sounds a lot more palatable than 60,000 times eleven.”
“Hmm. What you’re proposing is a bit of a gamble,” Prescott said flatly, trying to conceal his delight that someone else was suggesting a course he fully supported. “Kids don’t immediately gain maturity by virtue of skipping a grade. Now of course, RTJ is slightly taller than average for his grade, and believe it or not, that’s an independent predictor for success in skipping grades – we have data on that.
“What’s harder to predict is how he’d do emotionally. Initially, it’s hard on all kids who skip ahead. Then, down the road, some kids have trouble building relationships with their peers, who are all a year or two older, especially around adolescence, but I don’t have any numbers to give you on that.”
“If we can save 120,000 bucks, I say we do it,” J.R. said casually, as nine heads turned in his direction. “Look, more than the $120,000, it’s the extra years of productivity, while we still have a high percentage of ownership. We have a very fixed time period during which we can extract a profit. If he gets out of college at 18 or 19 instead of 22, that could be a huge difference in lifetime earnings. Yeah, maybe it’ll be a little hard for him to adjust at first, but he’s a tough kid. I say we push for 3rd or even 4th grade this year – unless you have good evidence to say that these kids don’t do as well financially in adulthood.”
All eyes turned back to Prescott. “No,” he said pensively. “The data show that the vast majority of these kids do very well financially. The only gamble is that a small percentage – around nine percent – crumble emotionally and end up utter
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