February 27, 2024
by Cynthia Howell | Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Five companies submitted proposals by last week’s deadline to manage the distribution of millions of dollars in state funds to private schools and other service providers on behalf of students participating in the state’s new voucher and/or tutoring programs.
Brooke Hollowoa, a spokeswoman for the Arkansas Department of Transformation and Shared Services, said Tuesday the companies that submitted proposals are:
Student First Technologies of Bloomington, Ind.
Scheel Tech, LLC.
Primary Class, Inc., doing business as Odyssey of New York City.
Kleo, Inc., doing business as ClassWallet of Miami, Fla.
Merit International, Inc., of Melbrae, Calif.
Those are the same companies that initially submitted proposals to the state in January — before the state canceled its first request for proposals and issued a new request as a way to clarify some initial confusion.
The Department of Transformation and Shared Services is conducting the search for a company to manage the Arkansas LEARNS Act voucher and tutoring program payments for at least four years, starting with the upcoming 2024-25 school year. The company that wins the state contract will have an option to renew for up to three additional one-year terms.
The contract is expected to be awarded in May, according to the solicitation schedule attached to the state’s request for proposals, but Hallowoa said Tuesday that a date for making a decision is not set “because we don’t know when that will be. They don’t have a set timetable.”
Hallowoa also said the state agency will not publicly release the proposals, including the amounts of money to be paid to the company that wins the contract, “until the end of the evaluation period, during the Anticipation to Award period.”
Kleo, Inc., doing business as ClassWallet, is currently the company overseeing the payment of state funds to private schools in this first 2023-24 year for the Education Freedom Accounts.
ClassWallet received a one-time $49,000 service fee for setting up the Education Freedom Accounts and tutoring payment programs, and a 2.5% transaction fee on each voucher payment, Kimberly Mundell, a spokeswoman for the Arkansas Division of Elementary and Secondary Education, said earlier this month.
The state’s new Educational Freedom Account program — authorized by Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ 145-page LEARNS Act or Act 237 of 2023 — greatly expands the use of taxpayer funding for tuition and other private and home school expenses.
As of earlier this month, a total of 5,915 students were approved for the accounts this year, of which 5,406 are actually using the publicly funded vouchers for costs at more than 90 private schools.
The number of participating students could go as high as 14,000 in the 2024-25 school year — equal to 3% of the state’s public school enrollment this year. All kindergarten through 12th grade students will be eligible for the vouchers starting in 2025-26.
The accounts currently provide up to $6,672 per student for this 2023-24 school year — unless the students were part of the now-discontinued Succeed Scholarship Program. The former Succeed Scholarship students qualify for $7,413, which is the amount of state foundation aid guaranteed for students in public schools.
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