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Well, thank you for watching this video, which is a Q&A session, and I’ll be going through some questions that I’ve received recently and then providing the answers that we here at THEE will give to those questions.

Funding and Reimbursement
1. Is there any additional funding available for my children who are special needs? They were both PUF children last year and they need special therapy. They’re in grades one and three.

Unfortunately, there is no additional funding beyond the $850 that all home ed students will be receiving. So, unfortunately, the answer is no.

2. When do we, the homeschooling parents, get reimbursed for their purchases? Do I just buy the resources now and submit the receipts later? Is it $800? Are any resources loaned out by us?

Well, we have to wait until after September 30th, which is the count date, for us to receive the funding from Alberta Education. So in very early October, we will know exactly who’s funded, we’ll have a very good idea of who’s funded and who’s not funded, and that’s when we will begin the formal process of processing your reimbursement requests. You can send in your receipts and your reimbursement requests before September 30th so that we have them here in the office and they’re ready to go once October 1st or 2nd rolls around and we can confirm the funding. But because we don’t get our money, our funding, until very early October, we don’t have the money to give it out during September, and that’s why we wait until October to start processing the reimbursements. You can imagine the stacks of reimbursements that we do have once we start in early October for processing.

Please know, during September, our main focus is on registration and helping everyone get their registration, or their notification, completed. That’s the notification form and the program plan. Our priority for September is to get everyone registered, notified properly, and get all of those details in place. Then, once September 30th comes and goes, we know who is with us and we know our register, or our numbers, and that’s when we get our funding as well. So all of that happens before we can start processing your reimbursement request. But as soon as we do start, it’s an ongoing process for the entire school year. I know some programs will process reimbursements once a semester, but once we’re up and running in October, we’re essentially processing them every week, so it’s a very fast turnaround.

Next question, which is part of number two, she asks, “Do I just buy the resources now and submit the receipts later?” Yes, you can buy the receipts well before the school year starts and then submit them to us pretty much anytime after school has started. Again, we won’t be able to process them right away, we’ll have to wait till October, but you can certainly send them in so that they’re in the queue and we have them ready for reimbursement when we start.

And then she asks, “Is it $800?” It’s $800 and something, and the answer for this school year is that it’s $850 per child. Then she asks, “Are any resources loaned out by us?” No, we don’t loan any resources out. Many years ago, we did have a what we call a lending library, but no one, virtually no one, ever used those resources, so we ended that, and no, we don’t have any resources here at the office that we would lend out.

Communication and Activities
3. Do you have a newsletter?

Yes, every month I send out a newsletter through Constant Contact. So make sure in your email software that you have whitelisted the domain thee.ca. If you want to be specific, you can whitelist my email address, which is [email protected]. You’ll make sure that all of those emails coming from Constant Contact will arrive into your inbox, and please do make sure that you’re getting those newsletters. They’re very important, that’s the main way that we communicate with our families. We obviously don’t see you every day or every week or every month, so we need to be able to communicate with you, and it would be a very big help to us if you were reading those monthly newsletters.

4. Will the children have access to field trips, events, outings, physical activities, etc.?

We do schedule field trips as often as we can and social events and special events as well. So those are types of things that I announce through our newsletters and then also through our Facebook page. So yes, the answer there is definitely yes.

And then she asked, “Do I need to include the field trips in the $850 of funding?” Yes, her question was related to the fact that some home ed programs across the province will offer to pay for homeschoolers to go, our home education students to go on field trips. We don’t do that. You have your $850 of funding, and you can use that $850 of funding to pay for those field trips. We also schedule free special events, so not everything that we schedule has a cost, but if there is a cost and you would use your home ed funding to pay for that.

Kindergarten Students
5. Does THEE offer any supports to kindergarten students?

And the answer is yes. So while a kindergarten student is too young to officially notify as a home education student, we at THEE definitely support kindergarten students. Our facilitators will treat your kindergarten student just as if he or she was an official home education student. So you are completely free to encourage, to ask us in the office or your, and/or your facilitator, any questions related to the learning program that you want for your kindergarten student.

That’s it for this short Q&A video. If you do have questions of your own, please send them to me at [email protected] and maybe they’ll make it into the next video.