Okay. Well, let me welcome you everyone.
My name is Ronnie Daniel. I’m the executive director of Children First Education Fund.
And first and foremost, I just want to thank all of our vendors and service provider partners for the important role that you play in the lives of the students and families that we serve through the Carson Smith Opportunity Scholarship Program. Whether you provide educational therapy, tutoring, specialized instruction, behavioral support, enrichment opportunities, curriculum services, or other educational programs, or you might be part of a micro school, co-op, an online school, or other education delivery provider.
Your work makes a meaningful difference for the children with disabilities throughout Utah. Every day, you help students develop skills, build confidence, overcome challenges, and achieve educational goals that might otherwise be out of their reach.
As we prepare for the 2627 school year, our goal today is to review some important program updates, discuss operational changes that may affect service providers and answer any questions that you may have regarding participation in the scholarship program. We know that many of you serve as a trusted partners to scholarship families.
And we appreciate your willingness to work alongside us in helping students access the services that they need and the supports that they require. Before we begin, I just want to introduce Travis Manning.
He’s our director of operations and Bridget Win who will be serving in a new role with our organization. and the title of her position is service provider director.
And so in this capacity, she’ll work directly with you and your organizations to help facilitate services, payments, and support. Today, Bridget’s going to walk us through the agenda and review important updates for upcoming for this upcoming year and provide guidance regarding policies, procedures, and expectations.
If you have any questions as the webinar proceeds, just click on the Q&A button at the bottom of your screen and that will enter a question in and Travis and I will attempt to answer those questions during the meeting and if we don’t get to all of them, we’ll we’ll tackle them when Bridget’s finished. So Bridget, with that I will turn the time over to you.
Thanks. welcome to our webinar today.
The purpose of the Carson Smith Opportunity Scholarship is to support students with special needs in a homeschool or private school environment. I just kind of wanted to go over some of the key points of being a service provider in the program.
Something that’s come up most recently that probably several of you are wanting clarification on is the distinction between a service provider and a private school. so we’ve been discussing this a lot lately.
We’ve been in discussions with USB with for clarification on that and also reviewing legislation. And a service provider provides supplemental education services does not serve as the students primary educational setting.
They may provide things like therapy, tutoring, individual classes, enrichment, remediation, educational support services, online services. a private school, they serve as the students primary educational setting.
A student in if they’re in a program where they attend in person full-time not online, but it’s a full-time and full-time is defined as a minimum of 3 days per week, 4 hours per day for grades 1 through 12 and 2 hours per day for kindergarten. Provides their core academic instruction.
The private school controls the curriculum, provides direct instruction and the private school charges and the website reflects a comprehensive tuition is charged. it requires the private schools require approval through USDE where service providers require approval through children first education fund the SGO of the Carson Smith Opportunity Scholarship.
The process for private school approval as I mentioned it does go through USB. that organizations that may fall into this private school category may be micro schools, hybrid schools, schools that call themselves private schools.
Ultimately with our program it is that approval is through USB. some programs may fall into both categories.
As I mentioned, one of one of the names is a hybrid school. So that name in itself indicates that you know it it doesn’t just fall into one thing.
So you may have some programs in your organization where it would fall under the service provider category and then some programs that are that minimum 3 days a week 4 hours instruction per day in person where it falls under the ser under the private school category. So some some organizations may need to apply with both USB and children first education fund.
If you do have a program where you do offer both types of services, we just ask on the service provider side that the invoices clearly indicate you know what program the student is participating in. so USB approval there is an application on USB’s website if you just Google USB Carson Smith on the USB website when that comes up it’ll have Carson Smith and Carson Smith opportunity tabs and you’ll click the Carson Smith opportunity tab and there is a link there where you would it pulls up the application.
And it’s like a two-page application where it has a checklist and it has the contact for applying through USB which is Tony Zombranand his phone number and email and so you apply directly with USB. We actually don’t have any part of that application process until we’re notified that the organization is approved as a private school at which point we reach out to you and get you set up in our system as a private school.
So if you think that you fall under that private school category or you’ve had parents request that you apply as a private school that is the process that you’ll you’ll take to do that as a service provider. your application or the process for that is you’ll submit an application.
You will provide part of that application is providing us an EIN and we are reviewing our current service providers because legislation does indicate that it needs to be an EIN that’s provided to our organization. we do have some service providers that are set up with their social security number and so we’ll give them you know time to get that information to us and EIN to us and work with you on that.
But we do need all of our service providers in our system within EIN. It will the application will ask you for you know basic information your contact information what services you provide you know description of those services and test stations that you know you need to agree to.
A service provider may not act as a consultant, referral service, clearing house, marketplace or intermediary. So you do need to be be providing direct educational services to the student.
What are educational services? they are generally services provided directly to the student.
They support education, support skill development, support educational engagement, have a clear educational purpose. It’s a program, course, service, or activity that directly to the student that supports learning, skill development, or educational engagement.
Once again, some of these examples include academic tutoring, speech therapy, occupational therapy, reading intervention, math instruction, educational software, special education supports. things it does not include are general child care.
So the scholarship does not pay for like after any sort of morning or you know day child care. It does not support parent coaching, mentoring or support.
Scholarship funds are for the scholarship students direct educational needs. So if a parent would like you know coaching, mentoring, support for them, that would be an expense that they would need to pay for on their own.
We will pay for you know educational expenses for the scholarship student but any sort of parent coaching, mentoring or support is not covered by scholarship funds. it doesn’t pay for referral services, membership organizations, activities without educational purpose.
One thing that we you know want to clarify is in legislation it does indicate that a parent or relative they cannot provide educational services to a scholarship student and receive you know either reimbursement to the parent or payment directly to the organization. They can provide services to other scholarship students.
So, if there’s a scholarship student and a parent wants to be a vendor and provide services to someone other than their child or a relative wants to provide services to someone other than their, you know, relative that’s a scholarship student, they can do that, but they may not charge for the scholarship students services. and just to be clear, a relative is a father, mother, husband, wife, son, daughter, sister, brother, grandmother, grandfather, uncle, aunt, nephew, niece, first cousin, mother-in-law, father-in-law, brother-in-law, sister-in-law, son-in-law, daughter-in-law.
And these relationships may be biological, adoptive, step, foster, marital, legal guardianship, or otherwise recognized by law. So, we just want to make that very clear that if you are in any way connected to a scholarship student in those relationships that I just read off, you may not charge the scholarship student for your services, but you may participate for other scholarship students.
If you are participating in the scholarship, and you know that scholarship funds have paid for your services as a provider, legislation prohibits you from refunding scholarship money directly to parents. you would need to provide those funds back to the organization.
It also, let’s see. So, that that’s a a main point, too.
So, if any there’s any refunds or rebates for the scholarship student, maybe they didn’t use all of your services, you know, those funds would not go back to the parent, they would go back to the organization. If your organization has a change in ownership, you would need to that new owner would fill out a new application.
So your approval is based on the information that you’ve provided and that you are the owner. any changes in that we would you know want to deactivate the organization with your information attached and that new owner would need to apply for approval.
We have a lot of great service providers that have extensive, you know, credentials and work with special needs students and we love that. to qualify for the scholarship, a student must have a determination of eligibility for special education services and that they provide to us either through an IEP from a public school district or we have our MDT which was created through legislation and it’s specific to our program.
It doesn’t qualify a student for special education services in the public school system, but it does qualify a student for the scholarship. That MDT needs to be signed by two providers from two different disciplines.
And if you’re not a provider where we can verify your credentials through like Doppel because you have lenture or through USB lensure like a teacher then we do need you to fill out an MDT signer form if you are planning to sign any of the MDTs. that way we can look at your credentials, make sure that they you know meet minimum standards which would be similar to the teams that are signing IEP forms in public school districts.
So we just want to make sure that you know the knowledge and expertise match the credentials and approve you to be able to sign that MDT. So, if you need that form to fill out so that you can, you know, be a provider that signs MDTS, then please reach out to [email protected] and we can send you that link.
It’s a Google form that that asks you questions and has you provide, you know, your crediting information for us to review. And that’s just to kind of keep a high standard of those that are signing the MDT.
We want to make sure that it’s a robust form qualifying students for a special education scholarship. let me see if you have any updates to your organization those can generally be done in your service provider portal.
If you would like to add additional authorized admins onto the portal, you can do that under the user management and you can also deactivate any previous authorized admins through that function. So if you need help with that, you know, reach out and let us know.
But I think it’s pretty self-explanatory. One thing with the service provider portal, it’s created in a way for other processes that are not yet developed to be added.
Such as like a marketplace. because that’s not added yet, you don’t need to worry about right now updating your banking information or submitting services or products.
Those are part of a marketplace once again that the system is created to add but it’s not currently added. So right now as a service provider if you’re not a private school right now as a service provider basically it’s just kind of your your basic contact information that that needs to be filled out in that portal right now.
I think that’s all that I have to cover. if Ronnie, you have anything else to add or if we want to open it up to questions, we can do that.
Great. Yeah, Bridget, thank you very much.
I don’t have any additional information to add. we’ve had just one question come in.
Are there any other questions that anyone has to go ahead and type those into the Q&A feature and we can respond to them directly. And I would just once once again reiterate if you applied under a social security number, please reach out to us with a you know W9 that has a federal EIN number so we can get that updated.
We are identifying the service providers that apply to such but it is helpful if you’re just proactive and you know can provide that to us directly. I don’t see any additional questions coming in.
So, we will go ahead and wrap up for today. Thank you all for participating and, let us know if you have any questions down the road.
We’re always excited to work with you and helping to support our children here in dis with disabilities here in Utah. Thanks so much.
