A Letter from the Founders

Dear Families,

We’re Ray and Rebecca Girn. A married couple, we’ve worked together for twenty years as educational entrepreneurs. We’re thrilled to introduce the Austin community to our latest collaboration:

Fulcrum School

We’ve both been involved in education and educational innovation all of our adult lives. Our three children (ages 10, 9, and 5 as of the writing of this letter) have all attended our schools, since they were three months old.

But this latest project is special.

After a decade of rapidly scaling our previous education start-up, we felt we wanted to get back in touch with the core work of our educational mission. We wanted to bring fresh eyes to the foundational work of directly building a school program and community. Our souls are craving this opportunity to personally and lovingly handcraft each detail of our “dream school”.

It’s particularly special to us that our three boys, and the rest of our “founding students” will be our co-entrepreneurs. Both of us started young as founders and entrepreneurs. We want our students to directly experience both the romance and the reality of what it is to start with an idea and build something that you envision. We hope it’s something they will carry with them when it’s time for them to build their own dreams.

We are Montessorians through and through. Our educational vision, in all of our ventures, has always been Montessori in nature. Our emphasis has always been on designing a deep, rich, intellectually inspiring and demanding curriculum worthy of the Montessori pedagogy.

Maria Montessori was an educational genius, who did her work during the first half of the 20th century. She revolutionized early childhood education. Her key achievement, in our view, was that she discovered how to impart demonstrably fundamental knowledge and skills to children in a manner that placed their educational choices directly into their hands. Montessori children, right from birth, experience themselves as agents in the world—heroes of their own lives. Using brilliantly-designed materials, introduced in a highly intentional and optimized manner by a Montessori “guide”, young children in a Montessori setting are inspired to choose ambitious, focused, transformative activities. The curricular and program design leads naturally to joyful learning, early independence, an earned and unshakeable sense of pride, and advanced academics.

Maria Montessori, later in her life, began work on elementary and adolescent education. But in our considered view (as lifelong, committed Montessorians), her work was unfinished. She simply did not have enough days in her long and highly productive life to develop sufficient curriculum in the areas of science, technology, history and writing. In addition, many Montessori schools, though they have the best of intentions, are ineffective at inspiring intellectual and moral ambition in their students. Montessori programs typically do succeed at preserving a love of learning in students as they grow. But they do not typically succeed at inspiring them to push themselves. To demand excellence of themselves. To pursue advanced learning and operate at the upper limit of their potential, as an act of loyalty to their own life and values.

From our many years of teaching, coaching both students and adults, and developing innovative curriculum designed for agential, ambitious learning, we believe that we do understand how to do this. And we are excited to bring our understanding fully to fruition at this, what is to be our flagship school, and our definitive legacy in the education space.

For the physical campus, we’re dreaming big. We want the school to be an idyl, offering fuel for both curious, inquisitive intellects and hands that are eager to explore and create.

We’re thinking tree house playgrounds strung between our 100 year old oak trees, chicken coops, fenced gardens for our students to tend, a fish pond, an outdoor theater for student productions, and an upgrade to the property’s existing woodshop and maker space, so our students can get their hands dirty and build real products they design. Seamlessly integrated into this, we’ll emphasize the wonder, power, and majesty of modern technology, both as a tool and as an object of inquiry.

We’re hitting the ground running to get our hands dirty, building and creating the school of our dreams.

Please reach out to learn more about the school, and we’ll sit down with you for a personalized consultation about exactly what individual learning plan will best serve your child this year. We ensure significant academic progress across all subjects, but it is core to our pedagogy that we customize to each and every student.

Yours,

Ray & Rebecca Girn

Summer 2025