Parents using Empowerment Scholarship Accounts (ESA) to fund their child’s education now have access to a simpler method of payment and reimbursement that uses artificial intelligence.
It’s available to all families enrolled in ESA, Arizona’s universal voucher program that helps cover the costs of homeschooling, private schooling or microschooling.
Pathfinder is a Phoenix-based company started by Amaan Ahmad, a former microschool educator from the UK. He says the tool equips parents with the security to make ESA purchases and reduces the paperwork of submitting reimbursement requests.
What is typically a seven-step reimbursement process, Ahmad says, is turned into a few easy clicks.
“This entire process takes parents hours on the weekend for multiple transactions,” Ahmad says. “We streamline everything, so everything's ready for them. And we help them collect the documents that they need so that everything is organized and managed for them.”
Pathfinder is both a mobile app and a charge card. On the app, parents can determine whether a purchase they’re going to make is allowable in the voucher system by inserting a link, scanning a barcode or taking a photo of the product.
Parents then charge the expense — whether it’s tuition, supplies or services — to a Visa card which the state Education Department reimburses. Ahmad says users receive a push notification reminding them to upload a photo of their receipt after a transaction is completed. Since their documentation is prepared by Pathfinder, the request is then ready to upload to the state ESA portal.
The universal voucher program is often criticized for its lack of oversight on purchases. Ahmaad says Pathfinder will strengthen accountability.
“By giving them the pre-approval tool — and it's freely available to parents — they can get that confidence before they buy. It also reduces the likelihood of them purchasing something that's not actually allowable on the program,” Ahmad says.
On top of the 101,000 students enrolled in the ESA program, about 6,400 applications are under review according to ESA Executive Director John Ward. It’s the highest enrollment the program has ever seen at the start of a school year.
An audit conducted earlier this year of a random sampling of ESA purchases shows 20% were misspent. The Arizona Education Department, however, says misspending often occurs as a result of understaffing, not a lack of rules.
“The ESA program can afford only 35 employees to operate a $1.1 billion program. Operating ESA’s call center, enrollment, purchase review, and accountability functions with 35 employees has become a Herculean task,” Ward said in an email to ESA families Thursday.
The director, who was previously a state auditor, sent a memo to superintendent Tom Horne in June recommending administrative cuts to the ESA program which is facing a $900,000 deficit. That includes eliminating seven full time equivalent positions, a contract with an outreach liaison and decreasing IT spending. The newly-approved state budget does not provide additional funding for ESA.
As of last month, ESA recipients are no longer required to submit a written explanation of how purchases would supplement a curriculum. That’s after Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes and conservative think tank Goldwater Institute settled a years-long lawsuit by Mayes.
The voucher program instead requires parent signatures attesting to the educational purpose of those supplies. It will also ask parents to identify which subject matter the materials will be used for.
