When the Bell Rings,
the Real Work Begins

There is a moment every parent knows. The report card comes home, the grade is worse than expected, and the question hangs in the air: how did we get here, and what do we do now? For a lot of Des Moines families, that moment arrives too late — and the options available to them are either too expensive, too impersonal, or simply too little too late. Alex knows this because he spent years thinking about that exact problem. And it is why he built Camp Homework.

A quick note: this spotlight is a little different. Alex is the publisher of Des Moines Digest, and Camp Homework is one of his businesses. He is not pretending otherwise. But the reason it is featured here is the same reason any business earns a spotlight in this newsletter — because it does something genuinely useful for families in this community, and the results speak for themselves.

How It Started

Camp Homework was born out of a problem that became impossible to ignore in the years following the pandemic. Students had fallen behind. That was not a secret. But what stood out was how few affordable options existed for families who wanted to do something about it. Traditional tutoring in the Des Moines area runs anywhere from $60 to $80 an hour. For a family that needs consistent, weekly support — not a one-time session before a test — that cost adds up fast and puts real help out of reach for a lot of people.

Alex had traveled to the Philippines many times, and what he saw there never left him. In too many communities, school is not a given. It is a luxury. Children in poor areas face enormous barriers just to access a basic education — the kind most families here take for granted. But he also saw incredible talent: educated, passionate people with college degrees and graduate credentials who could offer something exceptional to students on the other side of the world. Connecting those two realities — the need for affordable tutoring here and the talent available there — became the foundation of Camp Homework.

Some of our Camp Homework tutors alongside scholars we sponsor in the Philippines — children whose education is supported by a portion of every membership.

What It Actually Looks Like

Camp Homework is a fully online tutoring service for students in kindergarten through 12th grade. But calling it "online tutoring" undersells what it actually is.

Every student is matched with a dedicated, one-on-one tutor — not a rotating roster of strangers, but one person who gets to know that child, understands how they think, and builds a real relationship with them over time. "We bring consistency to their homework routine," Alex explains. "And that consistency, over time, teaches students to be consistent themselves."

At Camp Homework, the team champions every student's progress — not just their grades, but their confidence, their habits, and their belief in themselves. Every grade improvement is celebrated, because when a student sees that their tutor is genuinely excited for them, it changes how they feel about learning itself. That moment — a tutor cheering for a B where there used to be a D — is what makes this feel different from a faceless tutoring platform.

Alongside their tutor, every student also has a Learning Coordinator — a dedicated point of contact who stays in communication with parents, tracks progress, and adjusts the plan as the student's needs evolve. If a student is thriving in math but starting to slip in English, the plan changes. Maybe they work with a math specialist on Mondays and an English specialist on Wednesdays. The goal is never to lock a family into a rigid program — it is to meet each child where they are and move forward from there.

The process starts with a free assessment. A lot of parents come to Camp Homework not entirely sure where their child is struggling — they just know something is off. The assessment takes the guesswork out of it, with no obligation and no pressure. It is simply a starting point. After that, Alex speaks personally with each family, the right tutor gets assigned, and the work begins.

Most students are in the upper elementary through high school years, though Camp Homework also works with younger children — and reading comprehension has become one of the most common reasons families reach out at that age. Screen time is shrinking attention spans, and shorter attention spans are showing up as real struggles with comprehension in school. It is a pattern showing up more and more.

The Team Behind the Tutoring

Every tutor at Camp Homework is a college graduate. Many are pursuing master's degrees or more advanced credentials. These are not hobbyists or high school students picking up side work. They are educated professionals who take teaching seriously — and because they are based in the Philippines, Camp Homework can offer a level of quality that would cost two to three times more anywhere else.

Tutoring starts at $149 a month for one session per week — four 55-minute sessions. For families who want more intensive support, twice-a-week tutoring is available at $249 a month. Compare that to a single hour with a local tutor, and the difference speaks for itself. Most core K–12 subjects are included in the base plan; Language Arts and SAT/ACT prep are available for families who need them.

The Results

Camp Homework has helped hundreds of students, and the stories that stand out are rarely the dramatic ones. One student arrived getting D's and F's in math. When his tutor sat down with him, she quickly realized the problem was not the current material — it was the foundation. He had gaps from the previous year that nobody had caught. Once those gaps were filled, everything else clicked. He became a B student. More importantly, he became a confident student.

That confidence is what matters most. Camp Homework has seen students go from struggling in math to taking AP classes three or four years later — not because someone did the work for them, but because they knew their tutor would be there if they hit a wall. That security changes how students show up. And every step of the way, their tutor is there to celebrate the wins — because progress, no matter how small, deserves to be recognized.

One thing Alex tells every new parent: do not wait for a crisis. It is very hard to turn around a failing grade in a single month. The families who see the best outcomes are the ones who reach out early — not because something is broken, but because they want to get ahead of it. That is exactly why free assessments are offered year round.

Giving Back — Here and Abroad

Camp Homework has donated over a thousand gift certificates to charities across the United States. The giving back happens in several ways — and each one reflects the same core belief that drove Alex to build this in the first place: every child deserves access to education, regardless of where they live or what their family can afford.

But the piece that means the most personally is what happens in the Philippines and India. Having seen firsthand the poverty many children grow up in there — having watched families in poor communities struggle to send their children to school at all — Alex knew that if Camp Homework ever made money, some of it had to go back. The business now works with multiple charities across the Philippines and India to help send children in underserved areas to school. The long-term goal is to send hundreds of children to school through this program as Camp Homework continues to grow. Education changed the lives of the tutors on the team. The goal is for it to do the same for the next generation coming up behind them.

What's Next — And Why Summer Matters Now

If you are reading this in May, here is something worth knowing: summer is coming, and it is one of the most overlooked threats to a child's academic progress. Students lose a significant portion of what they learned during the school year over the summer months — and the further behind they already are, the harder that slide hits. Camp Homework offers year-round tutoring specifically to prevent that loss and make sure students are ready when the new school year begins.

Camp Homework has also just launched Prevent Summer Slide — a free, tip-filled email course for parents at preventsummerslide.com. It gives parents a practical, week-by-week plan to keep their child sharp over the summer. No fluff, no selling — just a roadmap. Every parent reading this should sign up before the last day of school.

As for the bigger picture, Alex wants Camp Homework to become a trusted resource for both parents and schools across the country — and to keep expanding its charitable reach until hundreds of children in the Philippines have access to the education they deserve.

"Our goal is simple," Alex says. "We want every student — whatever they are struggling with — to be successful in school and in life. And we want every family, regardless of budget, to be able to get the help their child deserves."

That is why Camp Homework exists. That is why it is still going. And that is why it is worth telling you about.