That's the situation unfolding in Cupertino, where a group of Silicon Valley's most accomplished parents — we're talking tech executives, venture capitalists, and startup founders — pooled their considerable resources to create an elite private school tailored to their gifted children. The result? A governance mess that reads less like an education story and more like a Series B funding round gone sideways.

Reports describe a school plagued by leadership turnover, warring parent factions, and the kind of micromanagement that makes city hall look efficient. Some families have already pulled their kids out. As one Bay Area resident put it: "People with no experience in education trying to teach kids like mergers and acquisitions. What could go wrong?"

Quite a lot, apparently.

The deeper lesson here is one libertarians and fiscal conservatives should take to heart: markets work beautifully when people respect the division of labor. You hire experts — teachers, administrators, curriculum designers — and you let them do their jobs. What you don't do is treat a kindergarten like a board meeting where every parent with a corner office thinks they're the chairman.

Another local nailed the psychology at play: "People obsessed with power and hierarchy are obsessed with power and hierarchy. Without all of us normies to feel superior to, they start fighting with each other."

And here's the kicker that makes the whole saga even more absurd — Cupertino already has some of the highest-rated public schools in California. These families had access to world-class free education funded by their own sky-high property taxes and chose to spend extra money building something worse.

Look, we're all for school choice. Parents absolutely should have the freedom to seek alternatives to the public system. But freedom includes the freedom to fail spectacularly, and there's no amount of venture capital that can substitute for humility and competent governance. Sometimes the disruptors need to sit down, stop optimizing, and let the teachers teach.

The kids will be fine. It's the adults who need a lesson.