Abrome

We are not entertaining enrollment options for AY 2024-25.

We have a five-step admissions process for the 2025-26 academic year. If we do not have signed enrollment contracts with deposits for at least 20 young people by March 1, 2025, we will not operate in AY 2025-26.

1. Research & Questionnaire: If you are just looking for an alternative school you may be surprised by our approach to education. Review our website (including our FAQs and additional resources) to see if Abrome might meet the needs of your family. If you are not drawn to the Abrome model, then Emancipated Learning is probably not for you. If you are drawn to it, immediately fill out the candidate questionnaire.

2. Initial meeting with the Director. Once you fill out a candidate questionnaire, Antonio Buehler will call you to gauge whether Abrome would be a good fit for your children / family, and for you to do the same. This will also provide you with the opportunity to ask outstanding questions that were not addressed in the FAQs.

3. Application: If, after the initial call, you feel strongly about joining the community, you will have the opportunity to submit an application for enrollment.

4. Follow up meeting(s) with the Director: The candidate and at least one guardian must meet with Antonio Buehler at least one time after the application is submitted, preferably masked-up and in person, to ensure that there is full understanding of and commitment to our approach to helping support young people to lead remarkable lives within a supportive community. If the Director feels that the candidate or their guardian(s) do not fully understand or trust in our approach to supporting young people to lead remarkable lives, then the Director may require additional meetings to move forward.

5. Decision, enrollment document, and deposit: If the applicant is offered a place at Abrome, the applicant and guardian(s) will have ten days to execute a signed enrollment contract. A $5,000 deposit will be required with the executed enrollment document to secure one of twenty places for the 2024-2025 academic year. The $5,000 deposit will then be applied to future tuition payments. The deposit will be fully refunded if Abrome does not reach the required threshold of twenty enrolled participants.

We will also use a waitlist for prospective Abromies we would like to have in the community but cannot accept at that moment. A $1,000 non-refundable payment will be required to join the waitlist. The $1,000 will then be applied to future tuition payments.

Note: We aim to build a diverse community that looks like broader society. As with most non-conventional alternatives to school, this is a challenge for Abrome because of the messages dominant culture bombards families with. These inaccurate and harmful messages include, “only rich people can afford to opt out of schooling,” “the boys need alternatives to schooling, but the girls will be fine,” “freedom in education is great for younger kids, but they need to enroll in high school if they want to be successful in life,“ and “white kids may not need the validation of schooling, but Black and brown kids do.” We will seek to have an even distribution of ages and genders among the Abromies, and we will prioritize the admission of young people of color (particularly Black and Indigenous youth), LGBTQIA youth (particularly trans kids), and immigrants and refugees.