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Thanks for watching this video which is going to cover “strange but true” reimbursements which we approved. A lot of families know of things that we say no to, unfortunately, but not too many families know about these things which we can say yes to. So we’re going to look at two different categories of “yes” items. The first category is from our past experience over the last many years, and the other category is from the actual funding manual.

Before we jump in here, I want to say, and I believe I’ve said this in other videos too, but it bears repeating: when we say no to an item that you’ve asked for reimbursement, it’s not that we’re saying your resource isn’t a good resource. It’s just saying we can’t use home ed funding to reimburse you. So please don’t take it personally. Sometimes families get upset when we say no to something because I I think they’re taking it personally. It’s not personal. It’s, “Hey, we’ve gone down that road before, the money was clawed back, and we lost our argument.” So it’s like we again, we just know that we couldn’t defend something to which we’ve said no. Okay, so with that said, Natasha is going to start off with the first category.

Past Experience: Strange But True Reimbursements
So, some of the things that we can reimburse for that some people don’t always think of are Robotic Lego, STEM Lego, even the Lego that is just like basic Lego pieces. It’s the ones that are like a themed set, like “Frozen” or “Spiderman” or something like that, that’s a little bit harder to defend as a learning resource. Some of the tangible assets that we can reimburse for that people don’t always think about are cooking supplies. So, like if you have students that are doing stuff with foods, we can reimburse for things like a mixer, stuff like that. They’re kind of larger items but not, so those things don’t people don’t always think about. Indoor gym equipment, so we’ve had like different types of exercise things. We’ve even approved some stuff for like a basketball net, yeah, basketball net, the different stuff that you think of as maybe larger things that wouldn’t be approved, but they are because it is for physical activity. We can do construction materials and gardening materials and tools. So if you are, you know, doing some planting or doing some construction projects at home, the students can you can keep track of those receipts for the stuff that they’ve been working on. Something we can’t do would be something like a used car or your winter tires, stuff like that. Maybe if you’re needing if you’re doing stuff like mechanics and you’re changing tires, we could do some of the tools to help you change those tires, but we can’t buy your winter tires because, yes, we have been asked these things. Another thing is field trips outside of Canada. Now, obviously, you have to reside here to have funding, but if you’ve taken a trip say to Mexico or the U.S., somewhere or wherever, you can still submit those reimbursement or those receipts for reimbursement. It does only the children, we can reimburse for, not for the full family, but that stuff is covered in another video as well. But yes, we can reimburse for those things as well. Another thing are some of the like more computer-type things that people haven’t always thought about: virtual reality hardware because there’s actually educational things to do with that, as well as something like a 3D printer because lots of schools even have those at school for the students to use. So those are things that we have been asked and able to reimburse for.

All right, and before I go on to the second category, I want to provide some additional information on the tangible assets because we get asked about that category specifically, and I want to say two main things. One is with the tangible assets, it, the the amount of reimbursement that we can provide sometimes or will be variable depending on the resource you’ve requested reimbursement for. For example, if you’re submitting a receipt for, you know, $800 or maybe your full funding, $800, this year it’s $850. If you’re requesting full funding, 100% of your funding for a garden item, can’t think of something right now, or a construction item, we won’t we won’t give 100% only, not because we don’t think that it’s worth 100%. We just know in the past when we’ve done things like that, because it’s your money, it’s your resources, absolutely, it makes sense, but we’ve had funds clawed back, and we’ve lost the argument when we went and argued on behalf of the family. So just based on past experience, we do provide maybe, you know, 25% or sometimes half of the full funding that you have for that one item. Now, this isn’t consistent because we will use, when we we will reimburse you 100% of your funding for say a computer, which is also a tangible asset. So what they also want to say here is consistency is not, you’re not going to find consistency or even logic in some of our decisions because I’m going to step out on a limb and say it’s because the standards that we have to follow, and I say “standards” with a little “s,” are not consistent or logical either. So, anyway, with that said, speaking of standards, the second category I’ll be reading from today is from the standards document that we are going to use and apply when we’re making these decisions.

The Official Standards Document
And so these are some things that are funded, are reimbursable, that you might not think are reimbursable. So, internet: so half or 50% of your monthly internet bill for the entire 12 months, so school year plus the summer, those 12 months, you can get reimbursed for half of your internet cost. But that’s half per family, and I did verify this just recently with our education manager at Alberta Education. It’s not 50% for student number one and then 50% for student two, thus getting 100% of your internet costs paid for. That’s not how it is. It’s 50% per family’s internet bill for 12 months. The next thing is tutoring, group lessons, those kind of things. In the past, they were only reimbursed at a percentage. Well, now it’s a full 100%. You can use your your funding for that. Also, going back to tangible assets, some people were at a home ed program before coming to THEE, and at these other programs, the family could only be reimbursed for a percentage of a computer or they could only be reimbursed for a computer item once every three or four years, something like that. Those were all internal rules and policies of that home ed program. That’s not, those were not official rules or policies. I’ll day one mention that too. So Natasha already mentioned field trips. There are some limitations there, 50% of the student’s funding for home ed can be spent for field trips. So to clarify also what what Natasha said about the reimbursement for a field trip is for the student portion only, except in the case where reimbursing for a student is actually more expensive than reimbursing for a family pass or family plan. So that’s going to be specific for the actual place obviously. But anyway, I wanted to mention that as well.

What, well, I’ll throw in a what can’t be, what can be and what can’t be, in terms of postage or shipping, what can be deducted or reimbursed is the shipping costs for getting the learning material to you. So if you buy something from Amazon or some other bookstore online and there’s an included cost for shipping, that is reimbursable. What’s not reimbursable in terms of postage is if you mailed something to our office, that’s on that’s a cost that you would have to pay for.

I think that are reimbursable that you may not think would be are musical instruments, either the purchase or rental of musical instruments. Again, no um, no percentage. Physical activity equipment and/or a rental. So Natasha mentioned that as well. So that goes also that includes, and this is something that you might not think it would apply to, but that also goes, covers ski rentals, so poles, skis, ski board, I mean, ski board snowboarding, and also lift tickets. And those lift tickets at a ski resort definitely aren’t things that most parents would think are reimbursable, but they are and they’re on that’s on an actual different document from Alberta, just to clarify because people were asking about that. So again, when we’re talking about consistency, you know, there’s one rule in the standards that says we can’t reimburse anything to a family who is home educating that a parent who has a child and a teacher-directed program would have to pay out of pocket for. So there’s that’s quote standard criteria, but yet we can reimburse for ski passes and ski lessons, boarding, snowboarding lessons and so forth. So again, when I mentioned before about the consistency and logic not always there, so some of our decisions may seem inconsistent, and they probably are at times, but it’s we’re trying to hit a moving target. One thing that is not that is not reimbursable are registration fees. So you’ll need to talk to us perhaps if you have registration fees, you have questions on registration fees, but sometimes when you sign up for something for your son or daughter that is reimbursable, that club or association adds on registration fee as part of the total. Usually that is actually fine. It’s it’s a rare situation where you have a registration fee that’s not part of the learning fee that wouldn’t be reimbursable. But yeah, I just wanted to mention that to you that usually registration fees are actually part of the whole learning process and we don’t itemize out or deduct for that. But talk to us if you have a question on that difference.

Final Advice
Other than that, everything else when I say “everything else,” most things that we do see on a day-to-day basis from parents are absolutely reimbursable. We just run into some unique things that are reimbursable and some that aren’t. So if you have something, especially a big-ticket item that you’re about to purchase, let us know ahead of time or ask us ahead of time so that you don’t get a surprise when we say, “No, we can’t reimburse you for such and such.” It’s always a good idea if you have a question, email the [email protected] or just call us or email one of us, and you can ask and we can make sure ahead of time whether or not that item will be reimbursed. All right, with that said, we’re gonna say goodbye, and again, if you have questions about any of this stuff here, just give us a shout.