Bison Scholars Fund is a scholarship-granting organization being formed in Sheridan, Wyoming. We help K–12 children get to the school that fits how they learn, and we run learning programs that take AI seriously without handing children over to it.
A scholarship decided on curiosity and effort. A school day rebuilt around mastery instead of seat time. Software that runs on the family’s own laptop, with the Wi-Fi off.
Sometimes that door is a different school. Sometimes it is smaller and more urgent: tutoring that reaches a struggling reader in October instead of the following spring, a cello so a student can stay in the orchestra, the fees that stand between a kid and the program she has already earned her way into.
The Fund also looks ahead. The children starting school now will work in a world remade by AI. They should meet it as builders who understand it, which starts with mastering the fundamentals it cannot master for them.
Our first program is a small math tutor for grades 4 to 6, built for homeschool families. It opens with a short diagnostic, finds the skill that needs work, and practices that skill. When a child is stuck, it offers a hint, then a smaller hint, then a worked example with different numbers. The answer itself is never on the screen.
The pilot tutor, drawn as it appears on a family laptop. It keeps each child’s work on that computer. Nothing is sent anywhere, and it runs the same with the Wi-Fi off, which matters on a ranch road outside Sheridan.
A first pilot is being organized now with homeschool families: 20 to 30 minutes of practice a day for ten days, parents acting as the guides. What we learn from it will decide what gets built next.
Reading, writing, and math in one focused block of about two hours. A topic is finished when the child can do it, not when the term ends.
A parent or mentor sits in the guide’s seat: watching for frustration, asking the question the software would not think to ask. In a homeschool family that seat is already filled.
The hours mastery gives back go to projects: a portfolio, a small business, a program written with AI and understood line by line.
For a rural family, the school that fits can be ninety minutes away, and the connection at home can be the weakest link in a child’s education. So the Fund starts in Wyoming, and its tools are built to work offline and to travel light. If the model holds here, it can hold in other states. Wyoming is the proof, not the limit.
Wyoming families, homeschool co-ops, teachers, and mentors: if this describes a child you know, or work you want to help with, write to us.
[email protected]