Even as a legislative committee heard testimony this week acknowledging that the vendor chosen to administer the state’s school privatization program was awarded the contract without competitive bidding, ClassWallet was bragging about inking the Tennessee deal. Here’s the text of a recent company newsletter:
November marked a great milestone for the Company landing our 4th state contract, this one with the Tennessee Department of Education. It’s exciting when the problem is real and ClassWallet can uniquely solve it. I have no doubt that ClassWallet will save the Department thousands of hours of time, substantially reduce the cost of program administration and provide dramatically more accountability than the alternatives.
ClassWallet has signed a contract to work with the Tennessee Department of Education. The state of Tennessee joins North Carolina, Arizona, and New Mexico as the latest state government agency that will be using ClassWallet to manage educational program fund distribution, reconciliation, and reporting.
It’s worth noting that Arizona’s ESA program has been marked with fraud, and there have been new questions raised about excessive account balances:
Of the nearly 7,000 accounts, nine have a balance of more than $100,000 and 78 were found with more than $60,000. The records were released by the Arizona Department of Public Education, and spokesman Richie Taylor said the amounts reflect the different types of disabilities students have. But the high dollar figures raised questions for some school voucher skeptics.
“If the entire premise of the ESA program is that families need these state dollars in order to go into private schools or the private sector to pay for the education that their kids need, then I’m not sure why funds would be piling up an individual accounts to the tune of $130,000 piled up; $105,000 piled up,” said Dawn Penich-Thacker with Save Our Schools Arizona. “The funds are paid out quarterly every single year because, theoretically, you’re supposed to be paying tuition or paying therapist or paying for services.”
Even pro-voucher groups are not happy with the payment processing:
Two pro-school voucher nonprofits are threatening to sue the Arizona Department of Education for failure to send on-time payments to parents whose kids use a special program to attend non-public schools.
The Goldwater Institute and the Liberty Justice Center filed a Notice of Claim against the department last week.
They allege the agency is forcing parents to pay for tuition costs out of their own pockets because checks were not mailed in time. The students are part of the Empowerment Scholarship Accounts program that uses taxpayer money to pay for private school tuition, tutoring or home-school curriculum.
Maybe, like with TNReady, Tennessee will get lucky and everything will work out just fine.
For more on education politics and policy in Tennessee, follow @TNEdReport
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