IMPORTANT MESSAGE FOR OUR SCHOOLS

Hello Step Up Partner Schools.

We understand that there may be some confusion when you see your second and third quarter’s student invoices.

When HB1 turned all scholarships into education savings accounts (ESAs), many schools expressed great concern to us about families spending ESA funds on things other than tuition, and not having enough funds to cover their agreed upon obligations to schools for the entire year.

We designed EMA to protect schools by ensuring that tuition and fees are always the first thing paid out of student education savings accounts at each funding, until all cumulative tuition due at that point in time has been paid. This prevents any quarterly deficit for tuition and fees due to families purchasing other items before the quarter's tuition and fees are paid in full.

EMA achieves this protection for schools by creating invoices for 25% of the agreed-upon tuition and fees for each quarter (as opposed to creating four invoices for 25% of the scholarship award amount). If the scholarship account balance is lower than quarterly tuition and fees at the time of a funding,  the invoice will be generated for the entire amount available in the account. 

However, when accounts are funded the next quarter, EMA will look back to ensure any unpaid tuition and fees from the previous quarter are invoiced first, and separately. Then it will issue a separate invoice for the third quarter’s tuition and fees. If the amount remaining in the account is not enough to satisfy all of the third quarter's tuition and fees, EMA will carry the remaining amount forward to the fourth quarter as an unpaid third quarter invoice, and the invoice for the current quarter will be less than the quarterly funding. But the two invoices combined will equal the quarterly funding. This practice continues in subsequent quarters, until the entire tuition amount is satisfied or funds in the student's account are exhausted (if total tuition and fees are greater than the total scholarship amount), whichever comes first.

For example, take a student with tuition and fees of $11,000 and a scholarship award of $10,000. This is what you will see.

• The student is enrolled for $11,000 tuition and fees.
• The student's scholarship award amount is $10,000, meaning the student will receive funding of $2,500 per quarter.
• For Quarter 1, the student will have one invoice for $2,500. 
• For Quarter 2, the student will have two invoices that will total $2,500. One will be reflected as "Quarter 1" for $250 and the second will be reflected as "Quarter 2" for $2,250.
• For Quarter 3, the student will again have two invoices totaling $2,500. One will be reflected as "Quarter 2" for $500 and the second will be reflected as "Quarter 3" for $2,000.
• For Quarter 4, the student will again have two invoices totaling $2,500. One will be reflected as "Quarter 3" for $750 and the second will be reflected as "Quarter 4" for $1,750.
• By the end of the school year, the school will have received the full $10,000 scholarship award amount for the student which will be reflected on the school's billing report as: 
◦ Q1: $2,750 ($2,500 + $250)
◦ Q2: $2,750 ($2,250 + $500)
◦ Q3: $2,750 ($2,000 + $750)
◦ Q4: $1,750

Total: $10,000

EMA was also designed to capture funds carried forward from previous years, and also interest earned in the accounts, and will include those funds in one of the invoices. These amounts would be in addition to the total scholarship award amount, but would not exceed agreed upon tuition and fees. 

If a student has two invoices, please approve both, and they will both be paid.

Thank you!