Hello-

  Couple weeks ago, our private, catholic school sent out a message that all families in Ohio are eligible for some state scholarship money for private education. After viewing the new scale, the wife and I hopped right on the application and the income verification. I went on the Ohio Department of Education's site and did all the steps and now we're waiting for an approval or decline.

Anyone else have any experience with these scholarships and how they process? As I understand it, it used to be just for families wanting to move from public schools to private schools and they were under 250% of the federal poverty level. Now, I guess everyone can get something.

Thanks

Awaiting a response on our income verification for scholarship amount also.

How long ago did you submit the information?

We applied for a central ohio catholic high school and elementary school.  Both applications have been accepted, now just waiting on financials acceptance.  We just uploaded our w-2s and 1040.  I think the minimum you can now get is $950

eta. we subbmitted to the schools and the Ohio Ed "app" same wee we were given the info, week and a half ago I think.

Submitted on 7/18. First year being able to submit, so still new to navigating the process on OH ID. Hopefully I submitted everything that need and we will hear something back.

Did you school provide you the chart that shows the different levels of aid available? You should be able to figure out about what you qualify for by just looking at the chart. If you aren’t sure what I’m talking about, shoot me a PM and I’ll send it to you.

ETA: Posting the chart.

Attached File

Yes, the school gave everyone the chart. Just waiting for the application processing and income verification processing. I imagine they are slammed with this being open to everyone now.

same here, but i think we get the min iirc $600 per child.

Same boat for our daughter, but our son is already awarded Jon Peterson so EdChoice isn't available to him.

Wife submitted everything last week.

Whatever they send us will be more than we ever expected. Tuition is a two fold investment to us- good education AND not being in public indoctrination centers-pure win at any cost.

This. 100% absolutely this.

Update: submitted everything a couple weeks ago and this morning, got an email updating that we have been income verified and no other documentation is needed. This was based on our 2022 W2s. The people at the state actually adjusted our gross income down to account for AGI. Awful nice of them, but we're well within the first level, so it wouldn't have mattered anyway. Still, though, it was great of them. Hopefully this is a big hurdle passed and we wait for the award notification? Like the other have said, anything is more than we expect, but extremely helpful nonetheless.

@PKT1106

Good deal, OP!

Ours is still showing “Under Review.” When did you submit yours?

7/18

My nephew has three kids in Catholic elementary school. In response to this program their school raised tuition from $8000/kid/year to $10000/kid/year. He and his wife both work and do well and exceed the income limits so they get to pay $6000/year more. Yikes. My neighbor is a teacher at a private religious school and said they didn’t raise rates much, just a bit to cover increased costs.

Our schools have not announced an increase YET.

However they did send out an email to assuage fears of lower standards

Increased tuition rates and decreasing standards are my concerns. We will see how this goes. The extra help financially would be great but “there’s no such thing as a free lunch.” Our income verification is still pending.

Our income verification came through today. Maybe I’m not as rich as the General Discussion Millionaires or maybe I have too many kids.. or both, but I’m very pleased with the amount. Still concerned about the potential of decreasing standards/quality and increasing tuition rates in response to this through.

I don't think it will be as much of an issue with catholic schools as it will be with independent charter schools. The Diocese we are in still requires a teaching license and all the requisite training. Charter schools may not be so rigorous.

Anyone with a college degree can get a teaching cert in OH, that doesn't mean they are a quality teacher.

The reason most catholic school teachers are quality is because they aren't teaching there for the paycheck and benefits.

As of 8/20/23, everything has been loaded into the Dept of Ed system. The school either sent some wrong info or the state entered it wrong from the school and had to be corrected. the Principle from the school jumped on it and got it straightened out. For each of our children, I see a conditional letter of approval and a statement that everything will be reviewed within 14 days. that conditional letter has been in their system since at least 8/16, so Im hoping the approvals and award notices come this week. heres to hoping. How is everyone else looking?

Still sitting on "financial information entered". Been a month and no movement looks like on that

So, the "conditional letter" has a date that changes each day you check it, so take that for what it's worth. Checked in with the principle at our school today and asked if there was any specific timeline for this stuff to be approved and come through. She said the past EdChoice scholarships didn't get fulfilled and sent to the school until October. She doesn't expect to see anything with the expansion until November. So, looks like we're fronting the cost for now and then getting reimbursed from the school when the scholarships get fulfilled.

Makes sense when you think about how many more people probably applied and have to be reviewed. All the huge private schools in the major cities and then all the way down to the rural, small schools.

So, I guess tempering your expectations is in order.

After yesterday's reply, we got our financial approval this morning.  

I'm not holding my breath for when we get reimbursed from the schools.  I had planned on paying what we were going to pay regardless, so its gravy when it does come.  

Also, I keep one of the Bongino rules in my head.  If the government pays for something, that something is going up in cost.  Which one of the schools did.  Sure the other will next year.

https://www.dispatch.com/story/news/politics/2023/09/13/ohios-new-universal-voucher-program-is-already-over-budget/70768757007/

Paraphrasing the "concerns", "Oh no, people want to put their kids in private schools instead of keeping in the public prisons, umm, schools."

That and "You mean people want to use the money they pay in taxes for their OWN families?! Who would have thought?!"

Paywall on article, but interested to know what "budget" since from my understanding the funds come from the individual school districts not the state.

That changed two years ago.  Ohio public schools are now funded via a hybrid of local property taxes and state direct funding.

https://fordhaminstitute.org/ohio/commentary/ohios-new-school-funding-formula-introduction

--

Sorry about the paywall, the Dispatch app provided that link on their "share" button, that's all I got.

here's the article via archive:

https://web.archive.org/web/20230915002827/https://www.dispatch.com/story/news/politics/2023/09/13/ohios-new-universal-voucher-program-is-already-over-budget/70768757007/

FWIW, my daughter's school just sent email that they received confirmation that her edchoice has been awarded.

We had to fill out the acceptance form and submit back to the school.

Official paperwork is supposed to arrive via USPS to the house.

Congratulations.  When did you submit everything?

Begining of Aug when the school sent out the forms and instructions.

My son's school was about a week or two later, and we haven't heard anything out of them yet.

Nothing official has come in the mail yet.

Our son’s was awarded, we sent in the acceptance form, and it has already been applied to his tuition. It took a few weeks, understandably, for the State to work out the documents and move things forward - but overall I am very impressed with how smoothly it went with our school.

ETA: @crazyelece Hello from my Polaris plow thread.

Talked to the principle at our school yesterday and they said they have had some approvals received. However, it's random and it's not everyone at the school who applied, yet. So, progress, but slow.

Well, we just received our official notices in the mail yesterday for both children from the state.

A couple oddities: even though we sent everything for our daughter over a week earlier than our son, his application ID# is ahead of hers although I suspect the schools submitting timeline may have influenced that. Also my son's letter came in my name and my daughter's came in my wife's name, not sure on that little quirk.

Still no details from either school on how it changes tuition, both of them have financial aid/scholarship awards and tuitions are paid in full; so not that it matters really, just don't know if we get a refund and if so how much yet. I'm expecting some amount of financial aid will be pulled for redistribution and then likely a refund of the difference, but we'll see.

Also throwing a monkey wrench into it, my son is awarded (and accepted) a Jon Petterson Scholarship from the state, and as far as I'm aware we can't "double dip" with EdChoice for him. So the details of how his tuition changes will be more interesting.

I'm honestly shocked how quickly and painlessly this has been handled at every level thus far.

So I figured I'd update since everything in my household in now settled.

Son: freshman in HS, awarded both Jon Peterson (>$10,000) award and EdChoice (full value) award - but can only choose one, school tuition approx $18,000 and out of pocket after scholarships, financial aid, etc. approx $10,000

The school he is attending uses the Jon Peterson award to fund the special ed dept with no additional tuition requirement from the special ed student (or any student). So in practice the school is paid the Jon Peterson award but the award doesn't change the tuition due for the student. So that the parents wouldn't pull the JP award to opt for the EdChoice (which goes directly to the tuition owed), the school setup a grant to cover the EC award the special ed students were awarded. In receiving the grant, some of the financial aid and needs based scholarship money was pulled back, and we ended up with around a $1000 refund for the year. Can't really complain with the outcome here as basically all we did was go through the motions to end up refusing the awarded amount and end up paying $1000 less with the school receiving nothing more from the state for my son. This school re-evaluates tuition assistance every year, so it will be interesting to see how everything gets laid out next year when so many more students will go through the process knowing they are eligible for EC.

Daughter: junior in HS, awarded EdChoice (full value), school tuition approx $15,000 and out of pocket after scholarships,financial aid,etc. approx $5,700

The school pulled all of the financial aid as well as some of the scholarship money back and refunded the entire out of pocket money we paid at the beginning of the year. This school however locks in most of the tuition assistance on the student's freshman year application process unless there is a significant change that might cause more hardship (like a parent losing a job), the re-evaluation process is voluntary. The scholarships my daughter is currently awarded along with the EC award would seem to suggest that we won't owe much, if any, out of pocket tuition for next year depending on what the tuition increase looks like.

It will be interesting to see what, if anything, changes next year with tuition increases, financial aid and tuition assistance, school board and teacher's union push back, etc.

And FWIW, my brother with two sons in the same school as my son, has yet to hear anything, go figure.

Just checked today to see if anything changed and saw 1 of my 3 kids have been approved. They were all submitted at the same time.

So, a day has passed and all three have now been approved. Now, we wait for the acceptance letters to sign and then hopefully get money back.

Still waiting here.

This sounds like what many universities do when your student wins a scholarship. Win a $10K scholarship from outside the uni, then the uni reduces your financial aid $10K.

After all the waiting, the money finally came through from the state and we recieved a reimbursement check from the school today.

Hopefully next year goes faster since all the information will be there.

humm, we havent heard boo about the money

Really? Ours was paid to the school months ago and our balance was adjusted accordingly.

Did you get your acceptance letter in the mail from the state? Return it to the school?

Both of our schools have been very upfront with communication on the awards, and tuition reimbursement. In fact the last one we received was basically to the effect that they are caught up and anyone who is still waiting needs to verify everything is good with the state verification. This also was due to the deadline for getting the entire award, as that deadline was constantly hammered on.

Oh yeah.  Got everything squared away as soon as we received anything.   Received this email from Bishop Watterson yesterday after my inquiry.  

"Good afternoon. We are still waiting for over 150 applications to be awarded and once that occurs our plan was process credits. If the scholarships are not awarded by the end of January we will change our plans and contact families with a credit. Thank you. "

We applied in August. Got our letters in November but nothing about the money as yet. Still waiting.

Weird.

They sent one letter to her for one kid, and the other letter to me for the other kid. Two different amounts for each kid.


One school has already applied the money to the account and is sending a refund, the other hasn't said a word yet

We only recieved 1 letter for one of our 3 kids. However,  the school did get all the funds, which is fine by me.

This past week, our school sent out forms for re-applying for next year. I promptly filled them out and resubmitted our proof of residency the next day. The principle quipped that I got those forms back fast and some families were still waiting for funds from this year. That's how backed up the system is. Plus, I don't fuck around and wait until the last minute to get these things done.

The one letter for one kid in my name and the other for the other kid in my wife's name was how ours came as well.

As far as the different amounts, is one in HS and the other in grade school?

Yes

Percentages we got 20 percent for both high school and middle school.

IDK how they got that number either, but I'll also not be looking a proverbial gift horse in the mouth.