Nearly 2 million students across Ohio have headed back to school. Around 20,000 of these precious little Buckeyes are attending local private schools thanks to tax-funded scholarships they receive from the state of Ohio.
Families always tell us how excited they are to choose where their children go to school, rather than relying on default options.
“I feel like I’ve won the lottery!”
- Rose, grandmother from Lorain
“EdChoice has empowered me to sustain that my children will have a strong foundation on which to build their lives. It has opened a door of opportunity for a community of children whose parents may not be as successful as they want to be, but they work hard everyday trying to get there!”
- Angelnique, parent from Dayton
Maddeningly, some parents who applied for an EdChoice Scholarship and enrolled their children in private school didn’t find out if they actually received their scholarship until school was back in session.
Imagine applying for a scholarship back in April and not knowing until the first day of school if your application was successful. Parents are usually notified in July (which is late enough). How can parents plan for back-to-school – transportation arrangements, preparation, soccer practice, and school uniforms – when they still don’t know if the scholarship came through to cover the tuition payments?
The Ohio Department of Education (ODE) has done a great job from day one ensuring that the EdChoice application process is short, simple, and hassle free. They receive high marks both from parents and private school on their unusually-responsive communication and professionalism. This year, however, with all the state budget confusion, the scholarship notification process clearly slipped down the list of priorities.
More than 13,000 students applied for EdChoice back in April – how many of these families were willing to hold out hope this long? And how many simply assumed they weren’t awarded the scholarship and returned to public school? We won’t know the effect of this delay until later this year, but it clearly may have been a tremendous deterrent.
The scholarship process needs to be family-friendly. Still, thousands of new families sign up every year. With rave reviews from parents, ODE, state legislators, parents, school leaders, and community leaders who promote and run Ohio’s scholarship programs can know their impact will last a lifetime.
- Sarah Pechan
September 3rd, 2009 at 8:33 am
I’m really glad some parents were able to hold out hope. that stinks about the slow return time – i think your “maddeningly” was well place – but it is nice to know that, budget crisis aside, ODE is normally super fast and “unusually responsive.”