Business in Vancouver's "How I Did It" feature asks business leaders to explain in their own words how they achieved a business goal in the face of significant entrepreneurial challenges. In this week's issue, Anne Yu explains how she founded Pythagoras Academy, a new, secular, not-for-profit independent school in Richmond, despite having no background in education.
"I was a business person for quite a few years and my husband [Winfred Liu] is an engineer. But after I gave birth to my children, I was just a stay-at-home mom. We have two school-aged children. They are twins, one boy, one girl.
"Two years ago, we were looking for schools for them. Although I personally haven't experienced it, my friends didn't have a very good experience in the public school system, and there's no existing private school in Richmond, unless we go religious. We have no religion in our family, so that's not a choice for us.
"We also have many friends who have had trouble finding [an indepenent] school in Richmond. They had to send their children either to Delta or Vancouver or North Vancouver. We didn't want to move because my husband works at the airport.
"My children were in daycare preschool – Renaissance Kids. That preschool has a very good fine arts program. I talked to the director there, asking if there could be a possibility of extending that program to the elementary program. She said, yeah, that's something that she wanted to do. The director now works for [Pythagoras Academy].
"We looked around to see if there's a facility that's capable of handling elementary education. We found one and decided to go ahead and do it. It was a college before – the Richmond International [High School and] College. We didn't have to worry about rezoning, but there were challenges when we took over the building. That building was vacant for six years and had a lot of squatters. We had to redo the whole thing.
"Financing was a problem. So far we have spent over $2 million – not just on the building, but building the school overall. The whole budget came from my family savings. We have a few rental properties, so we had to mortgage those.
"The biggest challenge was in the first three months with the recruitment. When we talked to people we know with similar-age children, they said, 'How nice if there's a private school in Richmond.' We thought everybody would love to jump in, but that's not the case.
"We got very excited that Clive Austin (founding headmaster of West Point Grey Academy) was willing to come to us. It gives more credibility to our school. We invited him over and had lunch and showed him the school ground, and he got excited about our belief in a fine arts integrated curriculum. He was always a strong believer in that direction.
"We have 76 students at the moment. Each individualized learning plan is catered to each child. The teachers plan lessons according to their children's ability. Our class size is anywhere from 12 to 16."
