Davies Owens welcomes Ken Rhinehart, a commercial real-estate veteran and founder of VPA Classical, to demystify how classical schools can find, fund, and secure facilities that actually serve the mission.
🎧 In this episode, you’ll learn:
- Why facilities shape formation. Leases, landlords, and leaking roofs quietly undermine learning and enrollment confidence.
- Buy vs. lease – what’s wiser right now. Capital costs, lender track records, conditional-use permits, and the hidden time drain on administrators.
- Mission-aligned investors. How long-term, praying partners can acquire and rehab properties, then lease back to schools, sometimes with lease-to-own pathways.
- Church properties: promise & pitfalls. Beautiful sanctuaries can work – if governance, improvements, and expectations are clear.
- What not to do. Don’t hand this to the office admin or your residential-agent brother-in-law – commercial leasing is a different language.
- A generous freebie. Ken offers a no-cost lease review so schools actually know what’s in their agreements.
If this episode sparks ideas, forward it to your head of school, board chair, or facilities lead. Rate and follow BaseCamp Live so other schools can find it, and tell us the #1 facilities question you want answered next.
Resources Mentioned:
Special Thanks to our partners who make BaseCamp Live possible:
The Herzog Foundation
The Champion Group
ZipCast
Wilson Hill Academy
Life Architects Coaching
Ken Rhinehart is a husband, father, Trail Life USA leader, a 25 year veteran of the commercial real estate field and passionate advocate of Classical Christian education. In this edition, Davies Owens and Ken discuss the hidden challenge facing many Classical Christian schools, and what we can do about it.
Connect with Ken: