Operating Plan
A. The maximum enrollment will be 600 children, ages 12 to 18, from around the world, particularly from the 99 nations and from indigenous or minority tribes that have never won an Olympic medal.
B. The students will reside on an idyllic campus containing the most modern facilities possible for every major sport, e.g., track & field, baseball, golf, tennis, aquatics, soccer, basketball, hockey, gymnastics, etc.
C. Students will reside in a home with house mothers and fathers and a tutorial manager in residence.
D. The Staff will be recruited locally and internationally and will represent the best in his or her field.
E. Supervising the design of the facilities will be the firm of HDA Architects, located in Gilbert, Arizona.
F. The Organization. The Academy was incorporated in Arizona as a nonprofit (501(c)(3) educational institution. In Albania the plan is to incorporate the Academy as a Membership Cooperative, limited to 1,000 members. The Academy will accept corporate sponsors which have a sterling reputation.
G. Costs. The normal cost for training one Olympic-level athlete ranges from $100,000 to $300,000 per year. By applying the economies of scale the Academy anticipates providing equally high quality training at approximately $52,000 per year per student. Another reason for the lower costs is that the Academy starts earlier than most nations’ Olympic-level academies.
H. Endorsements. Substantive conversations on this concept have been held with the Government officials of Fiji, Arkansas, Arizona and Washington. The responses, including a signed letter from former U.S. President Bill Clinton, have been most positive. Over thirty embassies in Washington have endorsed the concept to their home governments. Several of those governments have authorized their embassies to issue extraordinarily enthusiastic endorsements. Nobel Laureate in economics Professor Milton Friedman endorsed the Academy’s core financial innovation, the “Educational Mortgage” in a letter to the Academy which he wrote shortly before his death. That Educational Mortgage idea Dr. Friedman himself proposed.
Where is the Money Coming From?
At maturity, the funds to operate the Academy come primarily from (1) student tuition costs paid for either by the student’s government, the student’s family, or the student’s educational mortgage; (2) corporate sponsors; (3) Children’s Athletics Trials. There are thirty other income streams that are detailed in the Business Plan.
Prof. Milton Friedman, the Nobel Laureate
in Economics, made the radical proposal in 1961 that the child finance his/her
own education. Such an idea permanently levels the “fairness playing
field” of education, offering the poorest child the incentive to “talent
search” and develop his or her abilities as early as possible knowing that the
economic status of his/her parents or his or her community will no longer be a
factor in the quality of education received.
The Students
The Students will be invited to enroll in the Academy on their twelfth birthday. Entry at a later age would, in most cases, be too late and entry at earlier ages could pose an undue emotional strain on the child. The students would be expected to remain at the Academy for six years—through high school graduation and, for some, through the junior college years or Form Seven academic level.
Selection Process and Guarantees
The selection process for children from foreign countries will involve national sports bodies and others nominating students who would come to the Academy for appropriate medical and physical screening and for participation in certain competitive physical activities. We call these The Children’s Athletics Trials™, which typically last for six days. The selection process will have to receive the prior approval of the government concerned and appropriate national organizations, in the case of children from overseas. Parents will also have to agree to their child’s participation.
The
following guarantees will be given to the children who
enter the Academy and who continue to meet its academic and behavior standards:
1. The children will be trained to qualify for their nation’s Olympic team in the Olympics following their graduation from the Academy and they will be granted a full scholarship to one of the top 50 universities of the world.
2. The students will graduate with a high school diploma with a background that will permit them to score in the top 10% of all students taking any standard university entrance examinations.
3. The Academy will commit itself to the child. The Academy will not dismiss a child from the Academy prior to graduation until the child has been trained in a skilled trade* or until the child is qualified for further academic study, except for a serious breach of the law of the land or the Academy’s regulations.
__________________
The temporary chair of the faculty until a
successor is found will be Professor William Maxwell, who has been dean of
several schools around the world, including, North Carolina State University,
California State University, Fresno; The University of the South Pacific, Suva,
Fiji, and Texas Southern University, Houston.
A. Athletics and Coaching Staff. Successful coaches are rare and well-paid. The Academy will recruit from proven coaches, internationally.
B. Academic Staff. Academy teachers’ salaries will be internationally competitive. The teacher search process will include recruitment at the most successful college preparatory schools around the world and at the graduate schools of the world’s first-rate universities.
C. Administrative Staff. The administrative staff will also be recruited internationally.
D. Media Technology and Editorial Consulting Staff. Students will be assisted by a first-class cadre of teachers and tutors. Students and teachers will also be assisted by a staff of media technology experts in Computer Assisted Learning. Every teacher will be expected to publish regularly. The Academy will hire an editorial and publishing consultant who will assist all the teachers in every phase of the publishing process: conceiving, writing, researching, editing and submitting for publication.
E. House-Parent Staff. As the children are away from home they will often be lonely. The Academy must compensate for this by establishing living arrangements that will be as close to as family-like as possible. It is intended that the living arrangements include campus houses of twenty to thirty students. These Houses would function as a family, each headed by an educated, cosmopolitan husband-wife team who will serve as parent-surrogates for the children, emotionally supporting them and guiding them in their development through the critical adolescent years. Recruitment of these house-parents will focus upon mature, emotionally stable, married adults who have opted for early retirement and who have completed the raising of their own children.
F. The Health Services
Staff. The nucleus of the Health Services Staff will include a general
practitioner, a sports-medicine specialist, dentist, dietitian, clinical or
public health nurse and a medical laboratory technician. Some will be
part-time.
The Academy’s first campus is planned to be located in Albania. The campus will include ample acreage for Olympic-quality sports facilities, for track & field athletes, a gymnasium, swimming and diving pools , tennis courts, fields for soccer and baseball, a rowing pond, as well as facilities for administration, classes, science laboratories, student and faculty houses and an infirmary.
Guest House. An Academy Guest House will be built on campus as a resort-quality facility to accommodate government delegates, sponsors, children’s parents, etc.
Students’ International
Hall. The Students’ International Hall of Heroes will be a building
designed on a classical Greek model. It will house displays of
international heroes worthy of study and emulation by young people around the
world. Students will be invited to nominate candidates for this
honor. Twelve historic heroes and twelve living heroes from all fields of
endeavor would be elected to the Hall each year by the Academy’s students,
after appropriate consultations and discussions with experts.