Meet Valerie Hood of The Massage School in South End

Today we’d like to introduce you to Valerie Hood.

So, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
Our school is a social enterprise. Alexei and I began with the premise that how we live our lives, the choices we make about how to use our brief time on Earth, matter. Our legacy, the little piece of reality that we leave behind, can be a thing of goodness and beauty if we make choices that reflect our values.

Years ago we hired a non-profit lawyer to advise us about being a non-profit. After reviewing our business and our books, he told us that, while we have the proper mission and we run our school accordingly, we are not profitable enough to be a non-profit! The legal and accounting fees would be prohibitive. Go figure.

So we are a “social enterprise.” We view our school as a vehicle for economic justice: We take this powerful healing knowledge and make it as accessible as we can. We do this by making the tuition as low as we can and still have a program that we are proud of. Then we divide up the payments into twelve smaller pieces and let our students pay a little at a time. No loans, no interest, just pay as you go.

All current student clinic proceeds go toward scholarships for next year’s students, just as last years’ students paid for the current class. It is a beautiful system, one that allows each student to get a great education for a fraction of what the big corporate schools charge. It also helps to build community and spread healing to all of the neighborhood clients who come to the clinic. And it allows us the living to continue to do and spread the work. The only thing missing is all the dividends sent back to investors on Wall Street.

So it’s a lovely little enterprise that sustains itself by spreading the good. That’s our goal here: Spread the good!

We started in Western Massachusetts in 2001. We soon realized that if this were to be sustainable, we would need to grow. We operate on a slim margin, and so if it were going to support both of us long term, we needed to either raise tuition or else add other campuses. We opened a campus in Acton for a few years. It was initially successful, but eventually, there just wasn’t enough demand. So we started looking in Boston.

We were astounded at the rents in Boston and almost gave up. But we were very, very fortunate to find the space where we are now. It’s a basement space on a quiet side street in the South End. Our landlord is a mensch!

Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
Lol… No. It has been anything but a smooth road. When we first opened in Western Mass, we were assailed by the other schools. The big, corporate for-profit schools hated that our tuition was so low. They hired a lobbyist to try to take us out. They succeeded in closing other small schools, but we were able to adapt and hang on. We instigated an ethics inquiry and enlisted the aid of our state Rep. John Scibak. He came out to the school and spent the morning with us looking at how we conduct our program. As he was leaving he said, “I’m going to fight for you. And I don’t fight to lose!!” Another mensch:).

The governor appointed Alexei to the Massachusetts Board of Massage Therapy. He still serves on that board, and in fact, chaired it one year.

The for-profit education system is really a terrible trap for students. It is just a way to transfer wealth from aspiring students to the investor class, using federal financial aid. The corporate schools get laws enacted that maximize their profits. More hours and more regulations add up to higher tuitions. Predatory recruiting and inflated promises trap students into signing up for big loans. Really it is another form of indentured servitude. Most of what they make goes to paying back their loans. The default rate is high. Even declaring bankruptcy does not free these poor students from these disastrous loans. It’s really a heinous way to treat people who are working hard to make a better living for themselves and their families.

A few years ago the big schools tried yet again to raise the requirements so they could max out on Pell Grants. We testified before the Joint Committee on Consumer Protection and Professional Licensure and got the bill killed. Our testimony is on our website. I’ll quote it here:

Testimony before the Joint Committee on Consumer Protection and Professional Licensure

“Good afternoon. I m Valerie Hood, co-director of The Massage School. We are a small, mission-driven school with two campuses, one in Easthampton, the other in Acton. We cost a fraction of what the big corporate schools charge. We do not accept federal financial aid loans. Instead, we offer one of the lowest tuitions in the country. We offer an interest-free pay-as-you-go plan. We are generous with scholarships and do not require payment until we have earned it. Single parents make up a big portion of our student body. They leave our program debt-free.

Those who benefit from the proposed bill are the big corporate schools who rely on federal financial aid and don’t like competition from lower-cost schools.

Already in Massachusetts, the large corporate schools have managed to have the regulations increased twice in the last five years. Last year, the law was changed again to 650 hours. But that did not succeed in taking out all of the small schools. Only some of them. The big schools hope that raising yet again to 900 hours will finish off the rest of the small schools so they can maximize profits from the cash-cow that IS Federal Financial Aid, free of price pressures from smaller schools.

The big schools can’t compete on the merits of their programs, so they are resorting to legislative thuggery. It is anti-competitive, a means of price-fixing.

To put it in perspective, in this state, to become an Emergency Medical Technician requires 110 hours. 110 hours to be the person who makes life or death decisions at the scene of an accident. But massage therapists need 900? Rest assured: if EMT’s made a lot of money, there would be large corporate EMT schools, with lots of regulations, lots of oversight, and huge tuitions. Just like massage schools.

If the big schools want to teach 900 hours, and the big spa owners want to require 900 hours, there is nothing stopping them. This bill’s sole intent is to force the small, non-accredited schools out of business so big schools can charge huge tuitions, and spa owners can charge huge fees. This bill is good for them. For EVERYONE else in Massachusetts, this bill is a disaster.”

Please tell us about The Massage School.
We teach Massage Therapy. We specialize in teaching our students how to deliver a West Coast style of massage, which is a more deep-tissue, athletic massage than the Swedish, “fluff-and-buff” style favored by other schools.

We hope we are most known for our mission. We are trying to give a leg up to hard-working people who aspire to make a better living for themselves and their families, while also making massage more available to all people. We believe that massage is a powerful healing modality and should be available to everyone, not just the wealthy. It is a grass-roots form of healing, and we take pride in giving this knowledge to those who desire to make a better living by helping others.

That is what we are most proud of. We love that we are able to positively impact so many people’s lives. Not just the lives of our graduates, who are now able to make a living doing work that is more satisfying, truer to their natures. But also the lives of all their clients, for whom healing massage is now more accessible and more affordable.

We are also proud that we are pushing back against that corporate culture of greed that indentures hard-working people to years of paying back unnecessarily-large loans. By giving our students a better alternative, we operate a win-win-win enterprise that is good for us, good for our community, and great for our students. We LOVE that!!

Is our city a good place to do what you do?
Yes and no. Boston is a fantastic city. The many colleges and universities give us a smart and youthful energy. With all those people and all the diversity, there is demand for what we teach.

However, it is a very, very expensive city. Many small businesses have had to move out toward I-95 because the rents are prohibitive. Only big corporations can afford to be in the city anymore. Add to that the low-profit margins of our particular way of doing business, and we will probably have to do the same once our lease is up. Or we will have to raise our tuition, which would be sad for us.

What can the city do to improve? Somehow protect the rents for small businesses, (and especially social enterprises like ours!) Maybe incentivize landlords to retain some space for small local businesses by giving them tax breaks? I’m a massage therapist, not an economist, so I’m not sure I know the solutions. But I definitely know the problem. It is something Alexei and think and talk and worry about often.

Pricing:

• The tuition is $11,800. We give $6,000 scholarships to all who enroll. So students only pay $5,800
• We offer a twelve-month interest-free payment plan. Students pay $484 per month for the twelve months that they are in school.

Contact Info:

• Address: 63 Wareham Street Boston MA 02118
• Website: www.TheMassageSchool.org
• Phone: 413-529-2900
• Email: TheMassageSchool@gmail.com
• Facebook: The Massage School

Image Credit:
Bob Levine

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