LAUREL HILL, Fla. – Bryan and Laine Baker didn’t set out to start a school. They were focused on their kids and their up-and-coming cattle operation. But then Laine met a woman at a business conference in 2023 who was creating a hybrid homeschool 20 miles from the Bakers’ ranch.
The pair kept in touch, and one day, the woman asked if the homeschoolers in her orbit could do a “ranch day” at the Baker place. The next thing the Bakers knew, 50 to 75 kids at a pop were being driven from up to two hours away, from all over the Florida Panhandle and even South Alabama, so they could learn how to ear-tag cows, drive tractors, and use compasses in the woods.
“We were like, ‘What is going on?’ “ Laine said.
What’s going on is education freedom in Florida, which is happening at a scale America’s never seen.
Now the Bakers are part of the movement, too.
Their experience with those adventurous homeschoolers planted a seed that’s now spilling over with fruit. The Bakers’ Wagyumama Schoolhouse sits on 140 acres of woods and pasture, framed by hay rolls and pecan trees just shy of the Alabama line. For Florida, it’s pretty remote.
And yet, what the Bakers started last year with seven students in a barn now serves more than 100 students in two locations, almost all of them using state choice scholarships.
The demand “tells me you’re trying to fit yourself in a shoe that doesn’t fit,” said Laine, who struggled with dyslexia as a child and became a fitness trainer and entrepreneur. “There is a place for everyone to learn. In public school, it’s one way. Here, it’s many ways.”
Students can attend “ranch school” two to four days a week, for three hours a day. And/or come for “ranch day,” a two-hour à la carte experience on Fridays. And/or sign up for electives like building, cooking, or entrepreneurship, which are offered on an à la carte basis Monday through Friday.
The school’s second location, an hour south, is more focused on nature than agriculture, but has similar scheduling options.
The students learn core academics and so much more. At the ranch, they dehorn cattle, bottle feed calves, and do blood tests on cows to check for pregnancies. They also maintain a big garden, care for the chickens, and frequently cook the food they grow.
Along the way, life sometimes administers a pop quiz.
A couple of months ago, a cow was having trouble giving birth. The calf was stuck. Both were at risk of dying. A ranch hand tried pulling the calf out, but no luck. Some of the students suggested tying a rope to the calf and using a golf cart to pull it free. It worked.
“This place here, you never know what you’re going to learn,” Bryan said. “The kids saved that calf.” Today, both mother and baby are doing okay.
The families who access Wagyumama Schoolhouse also pick and choose from a menu of other providers.
Florida now has more than 150,000 à la carte students and 7,000+ à la carte providers, making it far and away the leading state when it comes to “unbundled education.”
As more families choose this path, even more providers will emerge.
The Sunshine State already has more than 40 learning operations on farms and ranches. Most of them formed in the past three years, after Florida expanded eligibility for choice scholarships to all students.
“This is way crazier than I ever expected,” Bryan said about the school’s growth. Choice scholarships “literally opened the door wide open.”
Bryan is a retired Marine and former gym owner whose ties to Sunshine State soil go back 150 years. His family sold the Central Florida farm he grew up on, which left him longing for that lifestyle not only for himself, but he and Laine’s two children, Koa, 17, and Kai, 11.
In 2019, the Bakers bought an old cotton farm near the tiny town of Laurel Hill, 70 miles northeast of Pensacola. After they painstakingly converted 80 acres into pasture, they bought a small herd of Akaushi Japanese Red Cattle.
Now they have 50 cows, a top-tier wagyu operation, and, for them, the perfect place to raise a family.
“I don’t need to worry about where (Kai) is. He’s in the field, or with the cows and dogs, or picking blackberries,” Bryan said. In some urban areas, “kids can’t even ride their bikes in their neighborhoods because it’s too dangerous. Here a snake might be the biggest worry.”
The Bakers briefly sent their kids to schools in the area. But classroom disruptions and other issues led them to homeschooling. That, along with what they saw from those homeschoolers on ranch day, is what inspired Wagyumama Schoolhouse.
The Bakers’ approach to education is impossible to put in a box.
It’s heavily hands-on and place based. There’s a strong focus on building a solid foundation in literacy and numeracy. There are echoes of Waldorf, Montessori, and Charlotte Mason. Recently, the school began using the Orton-Gillingham approach to reading instruction, reflecting a belief that the structured, multisensory method originally developed for students with dyslexia benefits many kinds of learners.
Wagyumama’s 10 teachers are diverse, too. Some taught in traditional schools, including one who was a literacy coach in the local public school system. Some learned as they homeschooled their own children.
To track academic growth, they use NWEA’s MAP assessment, a nationally respected standardized test.
As the school’s growth would suggest, plenty of families think the ranch school strikes the right balance.
Lexi Franklin and her family moved to the area a few years ago when her husband, who’s in the Air Force, was assigned to a base about an hour away.
Their son Will, now 6, began attending a local school with a good reputation. But with so many hours sitting at a desk and plugged into screens, he felt out of place. “That isn’t the way he learns,” Lexi said. “My kids are used to being outside.”
By contrast, Will and his classmates at Wagyumama are sometimes taught reading lessons while sitting on hay bales. They learn about the water cycle by measuring how much rain evaporates from cups they’ve placed outside the barn.
Lexi, who works as an executive assistant, said her family would not have been able to access the school without the choice scholarship. Still, she wanted to be sure about Will’s progress, knowing the family might get re-assigned again and not wanting Will to start behind in whatever school might be next.
Wagyumama doesn’t issue report cards. But the standardized test results showed Will made strong progress this year and is now performing above grade level in reading and math.
Meanwhile, there are other encouraging results.
“He has gone from very shy, very quiet … to his confidence growing by leaps and bounds,” Lexi said.
Two of Mollie Allen’s kids, Samuel, 11, and Sarah, 9, attend Wagyumama’s other location, at a nature park affiliated with an environmental center.
Their prior schools veered from one extreme to another. The first was high performing but pressure packed, with only 15 minutes for lunch and 20 for recess. The second had bigger classes – and bigger challenges with classroom management.
Mollie, a speech language pathologist, discovered Wagyumama last fall after deciding to homeschool.
Compared to the prior schools, she said, there’s far more outside time and hands-on learning. When her kids learned a science lesson about buoyancy, for example, they built little boats out of popsicle sticks and tin foil and tested them in the nature park.
Meanwhile, if Samuel finishes his work early and wants to get up, he isn’t told to sit like he was before. Instead, he’s asked to organize PE activities for the younger kids. “He’s become a leader,” she said.
“Wagyumama Ranch has a setup that’s aligned with how kids are meant to learn,” Mollie said. Samuel and Sarah have “gone from not wanting to go to school … to not wanting to miss school. Huge, drastic difference.”
