Origins
Field Notes #001 - How a homeschooling mom accidentally started building microschool ops infrastructure
Hi! I’m Tarena.
Wife, mother of three, and founder of BIA Systems.
In a previous chapter of my life, I worked in systems, operations, and cyber security across the Air Force, banking, and higher education.
I also spent several years working as a consultant and Certified Online Business Manager (OBM), where I specialized in helping founders and executive teams build the operational systems that supported their businesses behind the scenes.
My work involved designing workflows, developing governance and security documentation, evaluating technology platforms, improving operational processes, and creating infrastructure that supports sustainable growth.
When I discovered I was pregnant with our daughter, I decided to start winding down my projects and clients, and then I closed my business a couple of months before she was born. I wanted to spend all of my time enjoying my family.
Back then, the thought of homeschooling my kids had never crossed my mind. But a few months after our daughter was born, we pulled our older two kids from public school and started homeschooling.
The Turning Point
The decision to pull them wasn’t difficult at all. There was way too much going on at their school (WAY too much), and I just reached a breaking point. I knew something needed to change, and something told me to just start looking into homeschooling. I talked it over with my husband and did all the research: YouTube videos, podcast episodes, reading about the benefits and challenges of homeschooling, etc., and got them out of there.
I didn’t expect the journey to be easy, but all the research in the world didn’t prepare me for the struggles I would eventually face as a homeschooling mom.
The Curriculum Spiral
I have never followed anyone blindly, but I’m not gonna lie - the YouTube moms made it look so simple. I just knew that I would be one of those kinds of homeschooling moms. I thought that once I found the right curriculum, we would be off and running and everything would fall into place. Wrong!
So I started trying things. Open-and-go curricula, all-in-one programs, online platforms, unschooling, child-led learning, different resources for each kid, different resources for different subjects. New resources seemingly every other month, to replace the previous resources that weren’t working. Online and physical planners to try to pull all of the scattered resources together into one organized source of truth.
On, and on, and on. And nothing worked. The kids still weren’t engaged. The systems weren’t working at all. It didn’t matter what I did, I was constantly trying to force together pieces that just weren’t designed to fit with us.
I accepted that homeschooling wasn’t working, and started looking at private and microschools as potential options. I applied for ESA funding, and both of my boys received scholarships! But as my luck would have it, the one school that I really wanted them to attend was too far of a drive, even in zero/low traffic.
As a last-ditch effort, I looked at state-sponsored online schools. No luck there. Finally, I considered sending them back to public school, though I really didn’t want to.
Neither option felt right.
The Eye-Opening Moment
After trying all the things, my husband suggested I stop looking for someone else’s solution and build one myself. He knew I could do it; I just couldn’t see it at the time.
Specifically, he challenged me to solve the two problems that kept showing up over and over again:
Organizing our homeschool
Increasing our kids’ engagement
I’ll be honest and say that I doubted myself sooooo much. I understood how the right system could help with the organization piece. But, I wasn’t sure how a system could help children become more engaged and enthusiastic learners. I trust his instincts though, so I started trying some things out.
I had already been using AI to help me build recovery plans for the subjects my boys needed the most support in. One experiment led to another and eventually, I developed a learning accountability system that functioned kind of like an AI learning coach.
The results shocked me (in a good way) in terms of not only how engaged they became, but also in how their behavior improved. It also helped that they really loved this new way of doing things. I needed more feedback, so I had them start completing weekly IXL diagnostics to measure the effectiveness of the system.
Not only did their diagnostic scores improve, but over a period of four months (Dec 2025 - Mar 2026), one of my boys advanced an entire grade level in one subject, while the other advanced a grade level in two subjects.
This was all the confirmation I needed to know that I was on to something. For the first time since we started homeschooling, I finally found the right “formula” that worked for my kids.
The (Lack of) Systems Problem
While the kids were making progress, there was still a glaring problem: I didn’t have a way to manage everything happening behind the scenes. We were getting real results with actual proof of learning, but there were several critical things that were still missing from our day-to-day operations:
Grades
Attendance
Progress tracking
Reporting logs
Records
Documentation
I needed to figure this piece out relatively soon for our high schooler - he’ll need an official transcript if we want to get him into a dual enrollment program in his Junior year, like we planned. And since I couldn’t find an existing planner or system that fit the way our homeschool operated, I did what I’ve spent most of my career doing.
I built it.
It started as a simple tracking system, but it has quickly evolved into something much bigger. The more I added to it, the more I realized how many operational pieces sit underneath academic systems.
The Microschool Realization
I’ve wanted to own my own school for as long as I can remember. Way before I started homeschooling my kids. I just didn’t think that would ever be a reality for me; it was more of a dream that sat in the back of my mind, surfacing every now and then, and fading away again.
But when I started homeschooling, I joined all of the homeschooling groups I could think of. And those groups led me into microschool groups. Interacting in those groups made me realize that it actually is possible for me to own my own school.
So at the same time that I was solving the issues within my own homeschool, I started seriously reading up on what it would take to eventually go ahead and launch a microschool.
My thought process was simple: I was already building the operational infrastructure for our homeschool, so why not start developing it to support my future microschool? I was going to need it anyway, as it’s such a huge aspect of any business.
I started researching, and asking…
How do microschools manage records?
How do they track academic progress?
How do they handle reporting?
How is documentation done?
How do you create transcripts that colleges and universities will accept?
What are the compliance requirements for my state?
What’s governance, and how do I make sure I have this covered?
What needs to be in place for operational continuity?
…and every answer I got, I added it to the system as a new feature.
The deeper I dug, the more I noticed something: Many of the operational questions being asked inside the microschool communities were the same kinds of problems I was already solving.
That’s when the project changed course. It began as a system for my homeschool, and sort of naturally started evolving into operational infrastructure designed specifically for microschools.
I didn’t set out to build a business. But the need kept revealing itself, one layer at a time.
Where We Are Today
For the past nine months, I’ve been building, testing, refining, and improving what has become a full academic and operational infrastructure system.
Some days, I’m designing workflows.
Some days, I’m testing automations.
Other days, I’m rebuilding something I initially thought was finished, because I discovered a better way to do it.
The system runs in my homeschool every day, and nearly every day, I learn something new.
As for my kids, they continue to make progress month-over-month. I’m learning a lot from them, too.
Why I’m Here
I created these field notes as a place for me to document this journey. I have nearly a year of notes and insights saved from the planning phase up to now. So I want to share all of that, plus everything that happens as I continue onward:
the observations
the discoveries
the architecture decisions
the operational lessons
and the surprising things that happen when systems thinking collides with education.
I’ve always loved this kind of nerdy stuff, so it’s going to be a lot of fun sharing the process along the way ☺
If you’re interested in operational infrastructure, academic systems, governance, reporting, or what it looks like to build a microschool backend from the ground up, feel free to subscribe and follow along!