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Well, welcome to “Did You Know? Part Two.” I’m calling this the advanced edition because in this video we’re going to be looking pretty deeply into the specifics as are found in the funding manual section that deals with home ed funding. If you want to follow along, I’ve provided a PDF download from the THEE website where you found this video, and you can download that and follow along as I go through pages 30 and 31. As I look through this, I found eight items that are new and that are important to you, the parent, to know for this school year, which is 2020-2021. So let’s jump right in. We’ll just start at the top.

The 50/50 Split and the $850 Limit
The very first one out of the eight deals with something that’s very familiar with most home ed families, and that is the 50-50 split of funding. I’ll go ahead and read that from the very beginning: “Because for each education home education student, the school jurisdiction is provided 50% of the funding to support the home education student, and 50% of the funding is provided to the parent or guardian for reimbursement for instructional materials and services,” et cetera. So that’s that part hasn’t changed. What’s changing, or what’s a bit confusing in this funding manual, is that at the very top of the section that deals with home ed funding, we’re told that very specifically the school authority gets 50%, which is an exact amount, gets 50% and you the parent or guardian will get 50%. So there’s no room for negotiation of these percentages; it’s 50% to the school authority, 50% to the parent or guardian. However, we’ll skip down to number six, and it says in reference to this 50/50 split, it says, “The school authority must offer to the parents of a home education student no less than 50% the home education funding.” That’s a big difference between saying you the parent will get 50% and you the school authority will get 50%. Just a few numbered items down we’re told that, we’re told no, as a school authority, I’m told that I have to, don’t have to, but I am to give no less than 50% of the home ed funding to the parent. So that’s that’s different than an exact amount. So it’s in one section it’s 50% only, in this line it’s “no less than 50%,” so 50% all the way up to 100% possibly. And then on page 31 on number 13, Alberta Ed says, “Forget percentages, we’re going to tell you an exact dollar amount.” “Reimbursements to parents of students in the home education or shared responsibility program may not exceed eight hundred and fifty dollars and value per year.” So that’s a big difference between “you will get exactly 50%,” well, “you’ll get at least 50%, maybe more,” and then on the next page it’s, “oh, you’re going to get no more than eight hundred fifty dollars.” So not real clear guidance on the funding manual or in the funding manual for what we are trying to provide to the parents. Here at THEE, we will be following the very top instruction, which is 50% to you the parent and 50% to the school authority, so that we have funding to operate the program and you have funding to essentially operate your program or buy the materials for your education program. So all that is number one. So hopefully, well, if you have any questions, let me know because that is confusing.

The 75% Rule and Other Funding Changes
Still in that top section, the second thing that’s new for next year is this statement: “Furthermore, parents who submit receipts for at least 75% of eligible expenses will receive the entire eight hundred and fifty dollars.” So 75% of $850 is your magic threshold after which we can essentially cash you out, right? So once you’ve reached 75% of $850, and this we’re going to have to work through this but I’m assuming it’s 75% of the entire pooled family account, I think that’s safe to assume. Once you’ve spent 75%, sent receipts for, been approved for 75% of your reimbursement amount as a family, then we the home ed authority can pay out to you the remaining 25% or less without any more receipts needed from you. So let’s say you you sent in six hundred and fifty dollars worth of receipts for a child, for eight home ed students, let’s take a, let’s make math easy, one student, $850. You sent in receipts that were legit and eligible for reimbursement of $650. That’s more than 75%, so we can actually send you a check for the full $850 even though your receipts only covered, you know, $650 of that. So that is new. That’s actually a good thing because it reduces the burden, the paperwork burden on you and on us, so that that’s a good thing. We definitely want you to know about that.

Number three is down on numbers, number six on the list, but my number three for something new that you need to know about is the issue of “not less than 50%.” So that’s another statement. Be just be aware of that because you may hear from other programs a different policy and you might be wondering, “Well, why is their policy this and THEE’s policy is that?” And someone else’s policy is on you. It’s all because this policy document is no, not consistent. So the number three thing that you do need to know about is on item number six. The funding manual states that “the school authority must offer to the parents of a home ed student no less than 50% of home education funding.” That’s different when it said at the top of the paragraph.

Number four, the fourth item that’s new that you need to know about, is that you the parent or guardian, you have up to two years to access the parent portion of the home education funding. So this is new. Until now, the option to roll over money from year to year was left to the home ed authority to decide. But Albert Ed has put it into the rulebook that each home ed program must allow a parent to essentially have two years to spend the $850, if it’s for using this year’s dollar amount per child. So it’s $850 during the current school year plus one more year in the preceding year, so two years total. It’s not, you know, one year, current school year, plus two years. It’s one year, current school year, plus one more year, that’s two total, in order to spend the full amount per student parent. Okay, so that’s number four.

Number five, in terms of new items for home ed funding, parents will be allowed to transfer some or all of the parental portion of the home education, let me back up. In another video here in this series, I talked about how, or Natasha talked about how the student home ed student’s funding, all their funding is pooled together in a family account. It’s not, let’s say you have four children, you don’t have four separate accounts to keep up with. We don’t have four separate accounts for you to keep up with. We put all the funding for your four home ed children into one family account. And Alberta Ed not only recognized this, but they expected and support it because they’re even referring to the family pooled account when they say, “the parental portion.” So that’s what they’re talking about, the parental portion is that pooled family account of all the children’s funding. So I’ll start again, this is number seven if you’re looking at page 30, but it is the fifth new item for this school year that affected your fund, that affects your funding: Parents will be allowed to transfer some or all of the parental portion of the home education funding to the school authority should the parent choose to do so. So that’s one thing. So you have the choice of essentially signing over all or a portion of your home ed funding for all your children or, you know, one child, whatever amount, all or a portion thereof, to the school authority. You can essentially gift it to the school, but it the school can’t use the money in the general account or for just anything, but the money has to go into paying for “education supports.” And that’s a quote, okay, for “education supports” that your school authority provides. Can’t pay for a new roof or a new gymnasium or, you know, subsidizing the day school program and anything like that. It has to be for education supports. I am assuming that the education supports are directly related to home ed. It doesn’t say that. We’re waiting for more instruction at the time in this video, we were waiting for more instructions from Alberta to define the term “education support” and to give examples of education supports, again assuming it has to be limited to home ed, but stay tuned for more than that. But this is new that you can assign all or some of your home ed funding to your school authority to be used for a specific purpose which they call an education support. So that’s number five.

Number six, which is related to that in that if you do want to transfer all or a portion of your home ed funding to your school authority, you have to sign what Alberta Ed is calling a parent declaration form to facilitate this transfer. So the school can’t just take your money essentially and say, “Oh yeah, the parent wants us to use this money for these education supports.” You the parent or guardian have to sign this letter that Alberta Ed will provide you, sign the transfer letter, the your declaration letter to authorize the school to transfer your home ed funding to a certain account for education supports. So you can do it, but you have to you have to sign off on a declaration form. So that’s number six.

Number seven, the seventh item that’s new if you’re following along on page 30 and we’re at number eight says, “If parents decline or do not claim the parent portion of home education funding then Alberta Ed will recover or we say ‘clawback’ the unclaimed or declined portion the year following the previous two-year period.” So remember you have an extra year now, I’ve rolled over your a one extra year to spend your money because you can roll it over for one year to the next. You can get at once so if you don’t spend your money in this year it gets rolled over to next year, so I can, and if you don’t spend it by the end of next school year, so two years from the start of the school of the first year, two years later you haven’t spent it, Alberta Ed will claw it back or recover it. So this brings up an opportunity to summarize some things that are new and that those things deal with your funding at the end of the school year. So in a scenario where you have funding left over, you can choose to roll it over into the next school year, you can roll it over once. You can choose to transfer it or gift it to your school authority for the specific purpose of paying for education supports that the school provides, or you can roll it over with no intention of using it and a year later it gets clawed back. So my personal opinion, these are a lot of regulations for $850, but that’s my personal opinion on that.

All right, the eighth item is on page 31, and here we find an exact dollar amount that Alberta Ed is telling the school authority to give to you the parent. Again, on page 30 it starts off as, “You’re gonna get 50%, the school authority is going to get 50%.” Then later on it says, “well at least 50%, you could get more.” Well now, remember the eighth item that’s new is an exact dollar amount. It says, “Alberta, it says, reimbursements to parents of students and a home ed or shared responsibility program may not exceed eight hundred and fifty dollars in value per year and are subject to the same reimbursement interpretations as so yeah this is the first time Alberta ever said a dollar amount is the limit.” So let me give you some history on that. I think the the bottom line here for the Elk Island Catholic, our school board, is that the school authority will get 50% and you the home parent will get 50%. My personal opinion as to why number 13 and if you’re following along number 14, and we’ll get to that in a second, but these last two items are in here, in my opinion, because of the abuses that have gone on within the home ed and even online learning programming here in Alberta. That’s a whole other discussion, but it’s true there’s been a lot of dishonest activity out there. And for all because of all dishonesty, Alberta Ed has written these two new rules, number 13, number 14, to specifically combat the dishonesty and deceit that has gone on quite openly, unfortunately, for many, many years. So hopefully, these rules, which I certainly fully support, number 13 and 14, hopefully these rules will stop the the dishonest activity that’s been going on in Alberta for far too long.

So number 13 puts a dollar amount limit and it’s interesting because the limit is not only, well the limit is $850, but what would Alberta Ed says can be, will be included in that $850 is very important too because it says whether they meaning the the purchases that go toward that $850 dollar value, “whether they are reimbursements ordered by purchase order or directly procured by the school or district.” What it’s talking about here is these were the these ways of procuring reimbursements, purchase orders. Now, this would be a dishonest purchase order that went around the the established home education purchase order system which we offer, many legit, honest, great home ed programs here in Alberta offer purchase order numbers. This is talking about a purchase order system that is designed to hide the purchase within a district’s purchasing system. It’s not the home ed purchase order that’s the issue. So Alberta Ed goes out of its way to say, “we know, we know who’s been doing this dishonest these dishonest activities,” and they realize that these dishonest people, these bad players, have been using reimbursements, purchase orders, and direct procurement by the school and district as ways to hide the actual value of refunding that really does end up in the the hands of the parent. So that’s why those examples are in there, and that’s if you were to read this, which I know many of you won’t, and you wouldn’t need to, it’s the funding manual, you know, we read it, but but if you were to read it might seem odd that they would actually get these or put these examples in there. Well, that’s the history behind this rule.

Number nine, which is kind of a bonus item I’ll throw in here, even though what’s interesting to me is that number 14 does not apply to home education at all, and yet this strong worded rule is included in the section and funding manual that covers home education. Interesting. I’ll read it to you: “Number 14, school authorities are not permitted to provide funding whether by reimbursement here we go the the ways that are have been used to hide this dishonest these dishonest ways of getting money to the parent or in lieu of cash equivalents, you know, ‘will buy it for you but you know you technically didn’t buy it, will buy it for you,’ those kind of games that were being played.” A man back up: “school authorities are not permitted to provide funding whether to the parent whether by reimbursement, purchase order, or direct procurement to students or families in cases where a student is enrolled in an online or regular school program.” Again, why is that rule that applies to online learning or regular, meaning bum and seat, physical, on-site campus programs, why is that included in a home education section of funding? I’ll give you my personal opinion on that, and that is because the problems that preceded these rules were so grave that Alberta Ed wants to put this rule in the the other in the home ed section because Alberta Ed knows that home ed families oftentimes use online learning programs and have maybe a sibling in our child in an online learning program and perhaps one in a home ed. So home ed families use online learning schools and programs, so I believe Alberta Ed just wanted to put this in there to tell us, to perhaps inform our families because online and home ed are quite an intertwined. A lot of home ed program, a lot of school authorities like like us offer both online learning and home ed. So they’re not the same, obviously, online learning and home ed completely different programming, but they’re related and and commonly found together under the same roof in a school authority. So anyway, history on number 13 and 14 is that if you’re, in the past a lot of abuses were going on and Alberta Ed is trying to shut the door on those abuses, which that’s a whole other discussion. If you really want to talk nuts and bolts on that, certainly give me a call, you’re more than happy to talk with you about it. But those are the eight things that I believe that you need to know going forward into this 2020-2021 school year and these things directly affect your funding and how you can access it.

This has been a lot of information. This is a lot of new information for us too. We’ll be working out the “boots on the ground” type of approach and policies on some of these things as to know exactly how these will work out, but I wanted to let you know that all this is new for this school year. If you have any questions about it, please let me know. Natasha will be able to help you out as well, and I’ll put any new information that supports and gives more information about these new topics through our website and through newsletters. So thanks for watching. I know this has been more detailed, a deep dive into the information, so thanks for hanging in there with me and watching the video.