Parents of homeschool families have sent dozens of written messages to express frustration over the online purchasing system for school supplies through the Hope Scholarship, which provides financial support for families pursuing education outside the public school system.
Homeschool families cited delayed or pending orders, frequently mentioning wait times exceeding 10 days and expressed concern that their children would be unable to start school without necessary materials, according to documents obtained by MetroNews through a Freedom of Information Act request.
The request was for all written submissions by families participating in the West Virginia Hope Scholarship program regarding difficulties, frustrations, or issues with the purchasing system for educational supplies.
The Treasurer’s Office, which administers the Hope Scholarship, redacted names and other identifying information for the response, which stretched to 145 pages.
“I think the State Treasurer’s Office needs to know that the Hope Scholarship is setting [homeschool] families up for failure,” one family wrote.
“What I mean is, having three kids on the Hope Scholarship and then not releasing funds until August 15th and then taking days/weeks to approve our purchases in addition to 1-2 weeks for items to ship/arrive is setting us Hope Schoolers up for failure.”
Treasurer cites improvement in complicated purchasing system
Treasurer Larry Pack, in an interview, acknowledged ongoing concerns of families but said constant effort is being applied to improve the purchasing system.
“We’ve started bi-weekly meetings with the vendor to basically gauge their progress and to make sure that they were ready, really, for this school year — for the push that came in August 15 once the money was available for these parents and students,” Pack said.
The crush of buying school supplies occurs in mid-August, when funds are made available to families. In a relatively small window this year, Pack said, homeschool families made 50,000 item requests.
“It took us about a month, I think, to get to the point where we’re all caught up,” Pack said, noting that the backlog was gone by the beginning of October. “But for about two weeks it’s a lot of work to process all those items.”
The focus has been a purchasing system often called TheoPay, which is a key part of a platform that state officials selected for a nearly $10 million contract to process families’ purchases of state-approved educational supplies.
“There were a lot of headaches, a lot of I’d call it startup issues that the new company had that took a long while to work through,” Pack said of the arrangement that started before he took office as Treasurer earlier this year.
Families who opt to use the Hope Scholarship for non-public school expenses receive an amount that changes each year. Most recently, it’s been about $5,267. Families may use the money for supplies like textbooks, flashcards, whiteboards or even computers.
For families who apply the money to private school expenses, the purchases are standard and, therefore, not complicated.
But the purchasing can be especially challenging for roughly 5,000 homeschooling families, who have highly individualized needs.
“We think we’re the only state that does not restrict what can be bought. In other words, we allow our parents to basically buy from any vendor they want to. But that slows things down because we have to get the approvals. We have to make the connections and so forth,” Pack said.
“But that slows things down because we have to get the approvals. We have to make the connections and so forth, but we don’t say ‘Here’s the 10 people you can buy from.’ It’s a very open market, which we do think gives parents more choice, but again it does mean it slows things down.”
Purchasing system balances parental choice with financial responsibility
The system through Student First Technologies actually works a couple of ways. The main idea is to allow parents to buy educational supplies while also trying to reduce possibilities of fraud or waste.
One aspect of the platform is considered a closed system. Products are available at specific prices. You get what you get and you don’t throw a fit.
Another option – the one that often results in frustration by families — is meant to be more flexible for purchases.
Yet the variety of potential purchases lives in tension with efforts to prevent fraud. Add human error and automated computer systems into the mix and you have a recipe for frustration.
Parents use a browser extension and may shop different markets for personalized school supplies. You place items in your online shopping cart, which is scanned by an artificial technology tool to provide or decline preliminary approval.
After that, an employee of Student First technologies reviews the order – and may make a different determination of whether it would be allowed or not. The representative then manually recreates the order.
In practice, this offers a lot of points for the process to go off track. Sometimes there’s operator error on the part of the parent. Sometimes the system can be clunky. Sometimes the rules are not quite flexible enough. Sometimes the employee deviates from what the family intended in filling the order.
Sometimes it’s just slow. If much time passes, the price could go up on the produce the family needs.
“I would like to express my concern for the current turnaround time for orders using TheoPay with Student First,” wrote a family in the batch of comments received through the FOIA request. “It currently looks like a 10-day turnaround time. Ten, possibly more. This is absurd; our children deserve better than this.
“So many parents are trying to homeschool for the first time, and they are now behind due to the wait. Yes, they could do other things while they wait for the orders, but that is not the point. They should not have to wait this long for an order to be approved and sent to a vendor.”
Parents wonder when they will receive school supplies
Some of the parents who wrote in to the Treasurer’s Office described frustration over price fluctuations that occurred over the time required to finalize an order.
“Today our robotics Lego set was denied due to a $23 price increase — something entirely outside of our control given the delays in order approvals,” wrote one family.
“If I cancel and attempt to reorder, the purchase would be pushed further down the review list, delaying our school year even more. I am feeling very frustrated my child’s education is being negatively impacted by a process that seems to penalize families for vendor price changes and approval backlogs.”
Similarly, another parent wrote, “I am reaching out because I am concerned that our school year may be significantly delayed due to pending HOPE orders for my child.
“I submitted several orders on [August)] 15th, and while one order (Logic of English) has been approved, the others remain unprocessed. In particular, my Singapore Math order is still pending, which is especially concerning since it is a core subject we cannot begin without the materials at hand.”
A family wrote an email labeled “Delays, Nothing but delays” in describing a rocky start to a first year of taking on homeschooling. The family ordered school supplies by August 15. But 10 days later, the family wrote, not enough curriculum material had been received to start a full range of lessons.
“Our computer was denied due to it being ‘out of stock’ on Amazon. It was never out of stock. However, I had to wait a week for it to be denied, then reorder it,” the family wrote, noting that the delay in ordering then resulted in a delay in approval.
State officials monitor purchasing system progress
West Virginia, which runs a particularly challenging version of the purchasing system, has spent the past couple of years trying to get better and more efficient. But that’s up against ever increasing participation in Hope Scholarship.
Program participation grew from 2,333 students during the 2022-2023 school year to 5,443 students during the 2023-2024 school year, and now more than 10,000 students in the current school year.
Arkansas, which also had a deal for TheoPay, canceled it after concluding the vendor “failed to deliver a fully functioning system by the deadlines established in the contract.” Last month, the Arkansas Department of Education clawed back $300,000 over the contract dispute.
Frustrations grew so intense this time last year in West Virginia that Riley Moore, the state Treasurer at the time, said during a public meeting, “I am not happy with where we are right now with this vendor.”
Moore went on to say during the meeting last October, “Certainly this would be one those deadlines and if it’s not met, I’m certainly going to rain a storm that starts with a certain letter down on some people if we don’t get this figured out.”
Moore won election to Congress last November while Pack won election as the new Treasurer.
West Virginia is still trying to figure out TheoPay, but Pack said the system is getting better.
Student First assigned more personnel to processing orders, he said, and seemed to improve over the prior year.
“Things were much better than last year. I thought they did a decent job getting through the crunch in August,” Pack said. “And we really firmly believe that they’ll do better when we do the same thing in January. But we will continue to have biweekly meetings with them just to make sure.”
One area of potential improvement would be extending the period of time when money is available.
Right now, the Treasurer’s Office receives funding for the Hope Scholarship on July 15. Then the money is released for parents to order supplies on August 15. Making a change to that timetable could receive legislative attention.
“Well, school starts, basically August 15. So if we had the money basically a month earlier, I think the crunch wouldn’t be as bad. They get the money; they almost need the supplies immediately because school starts right then,” Pack said. “So that creates a lot of tension in the way the calendar works.”