For a mature franchised The Goddard School, the strongest decision-useful annual range is the independently calculated middle 50% of 2025 school-level EBITDA. The 2026 Franchise Disclosure Document officially reports a median of $474,693 and an average of $546,554 across 620 mature schools. EBITDA is not the owner’s salary, distribution, or after-tax take-home pay.
The $264,000–$723,000 band is not a separate Item 19 financial performance representation by Goddard Franchisor LLC. It is calculated from the 620 unit-level EBITDA observations disclosed in the 2026 FDD and uses no external margin assumption. Actual owner cash can differ materially because of location, tuition and enrollment, payroll, occupancy, financing, capital spending, owner involvement, and execution.
Legal franchisor: Goddard Franchisor LLC. FDD: issued April 30, 2026. Item 19: 2025 Gross Revenue and EBITDA for franchised schools. As of December 31, 2025, all 665 operating schools were franchisee-owned; the mature reporting class covered 620 of 628 mature schools, or 98.7%. Eight mature schools lacked sufficient data, and one mature school that closed during 2025 was excluded. Figures were franchisee-reported and unaudited. Sources: 2026 FDD, Item 19, pp. 93–130; Item 20, pp. 131–137. Public information checked July 15, 2026.
What does The Goddard School’s 2026 FDD actually report?
The official measure is school-level EBITDA, not owner income. For mature franchised schools open more than 18 months, Item 19 reports 2025 Gross Revenue, payroll, occupancy, miscellaneous operating expenses, EBITDA, and EBITDAR. EBITDA means Gross Revenue less operating expenses directly related to the school, excluding interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization.
Median EBITDA
The midpoint mature school in the 2025 reporting class.
Average EBITDA
The mean is higher than the median because strong schools lift the average.
Middle 50% of EBITDA
Calculated Q1–Q3 range from all 620 disclosed mature-school observations.
Average EBITDA margin
Average EBITDA divided by compatible average Gross Revenue.
Mature schools reported
A broad franchised-school population, but not every mature school.
Negative EBITDA observations
About 4.0% of the disclosed mature-school observations were below zero.
Where did mature-school EBITDA fall?
The derived middle 50% ran from $263,554 to $722,998, with the official median at $474,693 and official average at $546,554.
Interpretation: The average is not a typical guaranteed outcome; half of reported mature-school EBITDA observations fell below the median and half above it. Source: official median and average from 2026 FDD, Item 19, p. 125; quartiles independently calculated from unit-level EBITDA on pp. 94–124 using linear interpolation on the ordered observations and rounded to the nearest dollar.
- Gross Revenue
- Amounts billed by a school for services or products without deductions. Revenue is not owner earnings.
- EBITDA
- Gross Revenue less direct school operating expenses, excluding interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization.
- Pre-tax owner cash
- Can be lower than EBITDA after interest, debt principal, capital expenditures, owner or operator compensation not already captured, and other owner-level obligations.
How did the average school move from revenue to EBITDA?
The official 2025 average bridge for the 620 mature franchised schools starts with $2,507,631 of Gross Revenue and deducts average payroll of $968,761, occupancy of $329,645, and miscellaneous items of $662,671, leaving $546,554 of EBITDA. The bridge is fully reconciled from same-period, same-population Item 19 figures.
Average mature-school revenue-to-EBITDA bridge
Payroll was the largest disclosed operating cost category, followed by miscellaneous items and occupancy.
Interpretation: A one-point change in payroll or another major expense ratio can move annual EBITDA substantially at this revenue scale. Source: 2026 FDD, Item 19, p. 125. Values use full-precision disclosed dollars; chart labels are rounded for readability.
Item 6 sets a 7% royalty, a TGS Marketing Fund charge contractually up to 4% of Gross Receipts, and a $700 monthly proprietary curriculum fee. The official franchise site lists the current marketing assessment as 2%, subject to the 4% maximum. Item 19 says royalties, marketing, technology, and related costs are included in “Misc Items,” so they must not be subtracted from EBITDA a second time. See the official 2026 franchise economics and fee summary.
How does owner involvement change the earnings interpretation?
Owner involvement changes what the EBITDA represents, but it does not change the official 2025 Item 19 figure and the FDD does not disclose enough detail to assign a reliable dollar uplift to an owner-operator. This is an official operating-structure requirement for the school format: Item 15 requires day-to-day on-site leadership by either a full-time Designated On-Site Owner or, if approved, a Designated On-Site Operator. A separate qualified full-time director is also required.
| Operating role | What the FDD requires | Earnings interpretation |
|---|---|---|
| Designated On-Site Owner | A qualifying owner devotes full time, energy, and effort to school management and supervision. | Any owner benefit may combine residual business economics with compensation for substantial labor. It is not passive income. |
| Designated On-Site Operator | A non-owner may lead day-to-day operations only under a franchisor-approved amendment. | Operator compensation affects owner cash, but Item 19 does not isolate the amount or state precisely where it is coded. |
| School director | Every school must have at least one qualified, trained, full-time director who is separate from the franchisee and owners. | Director labor remains an operating cost even when the owner is highly active. |
Do not add a generic manager salary to the reported EBITDA. The 2026 FDD does not identify owner compensation, operator compensation, or distributions as separate lines, so doing so could double count labor value. The official ownership FAQ confirms that every school has an on-site owner or on-site operator. An official owner-profile article illustrates active schedules, including one multi-unit owner reporting 30–45 hours per week; that anecdote is not a systemwide labor benchmark.
What could make an owner’s actual annual cash materially different?
The largest unresolved issue is the uncertain conversion from 2025 mature-school EBITDA to owner-level cash. The FDD provides a strong operating-performance dataset for the franchised-school population, but it does not report owner salary, draws, distributions, debt principal, capital expenditures, or personal taxes. Financing structure and owner role therefore can create a large gap between EBITDA and spendable cash.
- Performance dispersion is wide. Mature-school Gross Revenue ranged from $716,896 to $6,594,330, and the independently calculated EBITDA observations ranged from −$411,723 to $2,150,771.
- The mature sample is broad but not complete. Eight mature schools lacked sufficient data, and one mature school that closed in 2025 was excluded, creating a limited survivorship concern.
- New-school economics are separate. The mature figures apply only after more than 18 months of operation; the FDD separately reports 37 new schools.
- Figures are unaudited. Franchisees submitted operating reports through a uniform reporting system, but neither the franchisor nor its manager audited them.
- EBITDA excludes financing and noncash charges. Interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization are excluded by definition; debt principal and capital expenditures also sit outside the disclosed EBITDA calculation.
What should a buyer verify before relying on the range?
The answer remains uncertain for any proposed school until unit-specific diligence separates operating performance from owner compensation and financing. For the 2025 mature-school reference population, verify the Item 19 method first, then test the target market and owner role. The Federal Trade Commission’s Franchise Rule materials explain the disclosure framework governing financial performance representations.
- Request the Item 19 written substantiation and confirm how payroll, owner pay, operator pay, director pay, royalties, marketing, technology, and discretionary costs are coded.
- Interview mature franchisees in comparable tuition, enrollment, wage, and occupancy markets; ask for EBITDA, debt service, capital spending, distributions, and owner hours separately.
- Compare the target school’s enrollment capacity, achieved enrollment, tuition schedule, staff ratios, payroll burden, rent, and property taxes with the mature reporting class.
- Confirm the current TGS Marketing Fund assessment and all recurring technology, curriculum, insurance, and required-program costs in writing.
- Model interest, principal payments, renovation reserves, equipment replacement, and personal taxes outside EBITDA rather than treating the Item 19 figure as take-home pay.
What is the strongest defensible owner-earnings answer?
The strongest evidence supports a $264,000–$723,000 annual school-level EBITDA reference band for the middle 50% of mature franchised schools in 2025, with an official median of $474,693. The band is a same-FDD derived calculation, while the median and average are official Item 19 results. Payroll is the largest disclosed earnings driver. The largest unresolved uncertainty is how owner or operator compensation, financing, capital spending, and distributions convert EBITDA into owner cash.
A buyer should therefore treat the range as an operating-economics screen, not a salary promise. The final decision should reconcile Item 19 substantiation with written unit records and interviews that separately identify owner labor, operator and director compensation, debt service, capital expenditures, and distributions.