LEARNS Update 3.3.3025

Dear Current and Potential SCA Parents,

The Arkansas Division of Elementary and Secondary Education has opened enrollment today for the Education Freedom Accounts (EFA). This post will tell you a little about EFAs, why it matters for you, and what to do. The full post is long, so I’ve included a short summary below, but I encourage you to read this message in its entirety.

Short Summary

The LEARNS school choice program will be open to all K-12 students in Arkansas for the 2025-2026 school year, and SCA is applying to participate. Education Freedom Accounts (EFAs), registered through FACTS and managed by ClassWallet, will provide $6,864 per student toward tuition, but families must submit invoices quarterly for payment. Families can sign up for EFAs starting March 3. Note: Withdrawals from SCA after May 31 require full tuition payment. A tutorial session will be held this spring to assist parents with the process.

Background

The school choice legislation passed a couple years ago by Governor Sanders and her team, known commonly as LEARNS, will be open to all K-12 students for the 2025-2026 school year. Sager Classical Academy will be applying (also a March 3 signup date) to be a participating school. As we shared at the Board Vision night last October, we are pursuing accreditation through the Society for Classical Learning (SCL) due to the excellent partnership we already have with SCL and the resources and help they can and will continue to provide us through the accreditation process. We were in process with this anyway, but thankfully, SCL is a recognized accrediting agency by the state of Arkansas, so we won’t have to do anything additionally to become an accredited, private school beginning with the 2025-2026 school year. The State of Arkansas has chosen to fund school choice through the LEARNS Act through EFAs. The EFAs will be registered through FACTS and managed by a third party, ClassWallet, a recent change which has delayed the roll out of EFA signups 5-6 weeks.

What You Need to Know

Beginning on March 3, you can visit http://www.dese.link/efa and click the link that will be added to sign up for an EFA account, which is done through FACTS.

Since we do not use FACTS software as a school, you will need to create an account with FACTS (the link will be on the page).

There is a tutorial video to help you through this process.

Once you have set up an account, it will direct you to select 2025-2026, then type in your information. From here there are a couple options. For those who have a current EFA account because you are participating this year, you will need to select that and follow the instructions. If you do not have an EFA account, then select no and it will move you to the next screen. [Note: Although there is a mandatory question about household income, that is only for research purposes–eligibility for the program is not dependent on income. The same thing is true about questions that come later about military, Succeed, Level 5, etc. These were eligibility questions for last year, but they are merely research questions this year–they are not eligibility questions.] At this point, it will direct you to add all eligible children. There is an add student button at the bottom. Add all children on this page before submitting to save yourself a lot of extra work later. [Note: You will need to supply social security numbers in addition to birthdates, sex, and grade level for next year.] When you type in information for each student, there will be a question for the type of school your child will be attending. Select Private School. It will then ask you to select your school. Since the signup date for Private Schools is also March 3 (or actually going to be pushed back later), Sager Classical Academy will not be listed on the dropdown menu yet. There should be an option to say your school is not yet listed. Once you complete all questions, click Save & Continue, then review your answers. The next page will ask you to Submit Application. Once you have submitted, it will still show incomplete. You will receive an email, and all new applicants will have to upload documents (age and residency verification).

Why It Matters for You

The way in which funds will be dispersed to aid in your tuition payments will be through EFAs and ClassWallet. The amount per student for the 2025-2026 school year is $6864. You will receive an invoice from the school in late April/early May with your above-LEARNS tuition. For example, if you have an upper school student and tuition is $8400, then you will receive an invoice for $1536 to be paid before June 1 to reserve your student’s place for the 2025-2026 school year. The next four tuition payments will be paid quarterly through your EFA, but not automatically–you are responsible for making this happen! The school will invoice you quarterly for the rest of tuition ($1716/quarter). You will then submit this invoice through ClassWallet, who will then disburse payment to the school.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Keep in mind, you are committing to tuition for the whole school year. If you withdraw, we are required by law to indicate that your student is no longer enrolled and therefore we cannot receive payment through ClassWallet, even if you wanted to keep sending it to us. Likewise, if you fail to submit your invoice to ClassWallet for payment, they will not pay the school. In both cases, you are still responsible for the tuition payment out of pocket. We have made commitments to teacher salaries and facilities on the basis of enrollment, so you are making a commitment to a year of tuition. You have until May 31 to withdraw if you do not wish to make this commitment. 

What to Do

  1. Make plans to sign up for an EFA account once it is available on March 3. There is not supposed to be a cap or limit to participants, so it is not necessary to jump in at midnight. In fact, it may not even be available at midnight. But I would encourage you to begin signing up in the next couple weeks so that, in the event of questions or problems, we can help you well before it becomes necessary.
  2. You will need to sign up for ClassWallet at a later date. We will provide more information on this soon.
  3. Sometime later this spring we will offer a LEARNS/EFA Parent Tutorial and Q&A Session. Keep your eyes open for this and make plans to attend.
  4. Be diligent to submit invoices promptly when you receive them so that you do not miss deadlines.

In Christ,

Dr. Rap

P.S. For parents who are curious about our ability to participate in public school activities (sports, band, etc.), here is the latest news.