Wonderschool

Founded in 2016 by Chris Bennett and Arrel Gray, Wonderschool offers licensed educators and caretakers a platform to launch in-home daycares and preschools. It assists candidates with licensing, program setup, website launch, student enrollment, and fee collection in exchange for a 10% share of tuition. The platform allows teachers to manage their students, parents, and program using a single dashboard. Wonderschool also allows parents to search Wonderschool programs, schedule visits, enroll their children, and make payments. As of January 2022, the platform served ~1,700 programs across the states of New Mexico, Indiana, Nevada, and North Carolina.

The company promotes in-home programs and the platform supports a variety of program pedagogies or philosophies (such as Montessori, Reggio Emilia, nature-focused learning, play-based learning, and language immersion). Wonderschool is also focused on expanding to “child care deserts” that is, areas with more than 50 children under 5 years that contain either no child care providers or so few child care providers that children outnumber licensed child care slots 3:1.

In early 2021, Wonderschool partnered with different firms to offer support to child care providers within its network affected by the Covid-19 pandemic by offering advertising credits for marketing and promotion, assisting with applications for federal financial assistance, and providing financial services at a discounted rate.

In May 2021, the company announced its entry into a new market with the beta launch of Wonderschool for Centers, a software that manages billing, human resources, government compliance, and student records for child care centers. A full launch is planned for the end of 2021. In September 2021, Wonderschool acquired Moxit, a software provider for childcare centers allowing the company to leverage Moxit software to support the launch of Wonderschool for Centers. Childcare providers will also be able to access Wonderschool's existing features for home-based providers, including family engagement tools and the Wonderschool marketplace.

In August 2024, Wonderschool acquired EarlyDay, a career marketplace dedicated to early childhood educators, to increase the supply of childcare services.

In January 2022, Wonderschool raised USD 25 million in a Series B funding round led by Goldman Sachs as a result of its One Million Black Women initiative (a new initiative committing USD 10 billion to support racial equality by investing in Black women). The company’s previous funding round was a USD 20 million Series A in August 2018. Wonderschool reported revenue growth of nearly 7x over the 18 months to January 2022.