A new program helping parents pay for their child’s private school education is off to a fast start.
In less than three weeks, the state has received almost half the number of applicants it anticipated for the entire year.
The Education Savings Account program allows parents to remove a student from public school and access a portion of that child’s education funding to pay for private school.
The student must have spent at least 100 days in a public school.
If a student is approved for the plan, parents can use 90 percent of their student’s funding to attend the school of their choice.
As of Friday, the State Treasurer’s office has processed about 600 of the 2,000 applications it has received. Nearly 100 applications arrive every day. About 400 applications have come from parents in Clark County.
The office will not reveal how many have been approved.
Sandra Salas is one of hundreds of parents in southern Nevada applying for the state’s new Education Savings Account Program.
“I’ve been wanting my kids to go to a private school or to a better school but my husband and I pretty much work paycheck to paycheck,” Salas said.
The program is offering parents who have kids in public school up to $5,000 to pay for a private school education, but there may be some limitations.
“There’s about 6,000 open private school seats and so there is that limitation,” said Victor Joecks, executive vice president, NPRI.
If approved, parents will get an account with a percentage of what the Clark County School District would receive for their child’s public education.
‘We’re not sure how this is all going to play out at this point in time. Parents should have a choice about their child’s education though,” CCSD Superintendent Pat Skorkowsky.
He says he still has a lot of questions about regulations, which the Nevada State Treasurer’s office is still working on.
One of them is whether students starting kindergarten will qualify for the program if they haven’t meet the 100- consecutive days in public school qualification.
“Until we see actually how all the regulations are going to pan out and how the system is going to work with the way that they set up some of the regulations, it may not have as big of an impact on us as we initially thought,” Skorkowsky said.
Private schools who want to participate must also file an application which will become available in October.
Saint Anne Catholic School is one of them. The tuition runs about $3,900.
“This bill seems to be able to cover that and more,” said Monsignor Gregory Gordon, St. Anne’s Catholic Church.
Salas is anxiously waiting to hear back on her application.
“This would just mean the world,” she said.
The application period ends Nov. 30.
Currently, applications can only be submitted by mail, but that could change at the end of the week when the state treasurers office has an electronic process set up.
Families who are approved will receive funds during the first week of April.
