Notes from Parent’s Meeting July 1, 2025

Like many of you, we have been watching the drama around the Utah Fits All Scholarship unfold this year, with all of its uncertainty, and we wanted to touch base with all of you to go over the things we know, the things we DON’T know, and reaffirm our commitment to riding out this process in order to get our second year at New Life Christian Academy off the ground.

What We Know

  1. Scholarship Challenged in Court – Found To Be Unconstitutional – The UFA SCholarship has been successfully challenged in court by the state teachers union, the UEA, and ruled unconstitutional by a local judge in Salt Lake County. It is being appealed to the State Supreme Court, however, and the same judge stayed her own ruling so that the program would be allowed to move forward for the ‘25 – ‘26 school year, while the appeals process is worked through. This appeals process may take a year or more to go through, but in the meantime, things should go forward for this coming year. 

In the future, should parts of the law be found to be unconstitutional, the Legislature has vowed to simply rewrite the law in a way that complies with the State Constitution. There isn’t a lot of worry that the entire program will be scrapped. We just have to wait and see what, if any, changes will be made in the next few years and how that might affect us. 

  1. Changes To Award Amounts and Allowed Expenses – Last year there was some questionable spending by some homeschool families who were very public about some of what they used their scholarship funds for. At least one family was able to be reimbursed for parts of a trip to Hawaii. Several families used their funds to outfit their students with ski gear and enrolled them in private ski lessons. Several families were reimbursed for theme park tickets like Disneyland. A few others spent ½ or more of their total funds on extra curricular activities or sports. Because they were so vocal about the wonderful ways that they were able to enrich their children’s “learning experience,” we, as a scholarship community, lost a lot of the public support that we had for this scholarship to exist. 

Amid the State Constitutional challenge and the public backlash against extravagant spending, the State Legislature revamped the scholarship law to make some changes to the amounts that were awarded to homeschool students and applied stricter definitions around how scholarship money could be spent and what would qualify for reimbursement. Currently, award amounts are as follows:

  • Homeschool Students K – 6th grade – $4,000
  • Homeschool Students 6 – 12th grade – $6,000
  • Private School Students – $8,000
  1. New Program Administration – The State Legislature determined that part of the problem around what was deemed “irresponsible reimbursements” could be ascribed to the original program administrator, called ACE. The Legislature decided that ACE had mismanaged the first year’s administration and a new administrator had to be found. They began the search very late in the year and switched to the new and current administration organization, called Odyssey, on May 15, 2025, just two weeks before scholarships were to be awarded. 
  2. New Deadlines and Award Dates – When Odyssey took over on May 15, they said that ACE failed to transfer all of the data they had collected and in some cases failed to collect the necessary date, to determine whether or not families were or would continue to be eligible for scholarship funds. 

Odyssey also declined to accept, as eligible, those providers who had been approved under Ace’s process. As a result, everything started again from scratch, basically. 

Currently, the new application portal will open on July 31 and scholarship recipients will be notified by August 22. We realize that public school begins on August 18 and this places a lot of you who are waiting to find out if you’re getting the scholarship in a hard place. Contingency planning is covered below.

  1. New Life Christian Academy Will be a Vendor on the Odyssey Marketplace – On June 11, Odyssey opened up their application process to vendors. NLCA completed that application immediately and we have no reason to expect anything except to be installed as an approved vendor on the Odyssey marketplace. This will allow your payments to be seamlessly processed from your scholarship wallets to the school. The Marketplace is scheduled to launch August 21, 2025. 

We are still awaiting final approval and onboarding to the Marketplace, however, and are not shown on the most recent list of approved Private School providers put out by Odyssey. If you have seen this list and find yourself concerned, you needn’t be. This is a very early list of mostly larger, well established institutions that were basically handed to Odyssey by the State School Board. Odyssey has said it will continue to expand the list as new schools are approved. We expect New Life Christian Academy to show up on that list in the next few days or weeks. 

  1. Scholarship Applications Will Have To Be Resubmitted – If you were not a scholarship recipient last year AND you filled out an application before the April 28 deadline this year, you will need to reapply for the scholarship when Odyssey opens up their application portal on July 31, 2025. A link will be sent to the email you used to apply in April. You will use that link to submit a new application. This application is promised to be much easier to navigate than the last one, but you will still need to provide proof of residency, proof of income, and birth certificates for each child.
  2. No New Families Will Be Allowed To Apply – If you were not able to submit an application before the April 28 deadline, you will not be able to submit an application when the new window opens. 
  3. Returning Scholarship Recipients – If you received the scholarship last year, you should expect to receive the scholarship again this coming year, provided you’ve submitted your portfolio information for your students and verified your state residency. Odyssey will reach out to you with a request for the appropriate documents to prove residency and provide a link to upload that information.  
  4. Siblings of Previous Scholarship Recipients – Siblings of last year’s recipients can expect to receive the Scholarship this year, as well, provided the application is submitted correctly and on time. If you submitted an application for the sibling of a student who received last year’s scholarship, before the April 28 deadline, you can expect to receive a link to update that application on  or before July 31 when the new application portal opens. However, sibling approvals are expected to be nearly automatic. Naturally we don’t know anything for absolutely sure, but this is the way the program is expected to work. 
  5. Portfolio Deadline Updated – Parent’s of previous scholarship recipients were required to upload a portfolio for their student by May 31st. However, once Odyssey took over from ACE, the portal for uploading portfolio information was closed down. If you did not get your student’s portfolio uploaded before Odyssey took over, you will have another opportunity to do so beginning on July 31. Your student will not be eligible to receive the scholarship for next year until this portfolio information is uploaded and accepted. If your child was a student here at New Life and you need additional information for submitting their portfolio, please get with Mrs. Johanna. 

What We Believe To Be True

(but, of course, can’t guarantee)

  1. More Students Will Receive the Scholarship Than Last Year – The amount of funding was increased by 20 million over what was available last year. On top of this, the reduced scholarship amounts for homeschool students (who make up the majority of the recipients) will increase the overall number of scholarships available for distribution. In addition, there is a lot of anecdotal evidence that many homeschool parents are leaving the UFA scholarship for this year and applying for Open Ed or Harmony, instead, simply because of the chaos surrounding the application process. All of these things lead us to reasonably hope that most applicants in the first priority tier will receive a scholarship.
  2. Enrolling Your Student in Public or Charter School – If your second choice for education is to enroll your student in either a public or charter school, doing so now WILL NOT (we believe) disqualify your student from applying for or receiving the scholarship. However, upon notification that your student has received the scholarship, you would have to unenroll your student from their current school BEFORE you could accept the scholarship. Scholarship recipients CANNOT be enrolled in a public or charter school. If they are enrolled in a public or charter school AFTER accepting the UFA Scholarship, they will lose their scholarship and not be eligible again until the following year, when they will have to apply as a new applicant.  
  3. Withdrawing From Public/Charter School or Waiting to Enroll – If your contingency plan is a public or charter school, school will start before you know whether you have gotten the scholarship or not. If you DO receive the scholarship, it would be important to withdraw your child from their current school BEFORE accepting the UFA Scholarship. It is also acceptable to wait until scholarships are announced before enrolling your child in public school. They cannot reject your child because of a late enrollment.
  4. Open Ed Or Harmony – If your backup option for your student is to homeschool them, you can still apply for funding through Open Ed https://opened.co/ or Harmony https://harmonyed.com/ as long as you don’t submit any expenses for reimbursement from them. The application deadline for Open Ed is July 6 (so apply soon!) and Harmony doesn’t seem to have an application deadline, but they may prorate the amount of funding based on how far into the school year you are when you are approved. 

What We Need From You

  1. Monitor Your Email – Whether you have applied for the scholarship for the first time, or you are a returning recipient, you will need to watch for the link in your email to either reapply or update your information. Please be diligent in watching for that email so that you don’t miss this opportunity for funding. 
  2. Upload Portfolios – If your student received the scholarship last year, be sure to upload the required portfolio information. Failing to do so will disqualify your student from receiving the scholarship in subsequent years. The portal for uploading portfolio information will open on July 31. They have not said when that portal will close, however they intend to announce scholarship recipient lists on August 22, so portfolio information would have to be submitted before then. This is a case of best done as soon as possible for best results. 
  3. Choose Private School When Prompted – a part of the application process (both for new applicants and returning scholarship recipients) is to indicate whether your student will be a homeschool or private school student. This determines the amount of the scholarship award. You will not be able to change this designation during the school year and if you’ve chosen one you can’t use the funds to pay for expenses relating to the other choice. It is important, if you intend to have your child enrolled at NLCA, that you designate Private School on your application or when providing the requested information for renewing scholarships.
  4. Confirm Your Intention To Attend NLCA – We will need to proceed with preparations for the school year far in advance of having the funds in hand from the scholarship. We understand that not everyone may receive the scholarship, and there’s no obligation to the school, should your student not receive the scholarship. However, if you intend to have your child attend New Life IF THEY DO receive the scholarship, we need to know that your intention is firm. This allows us to proceed with preparations in confidence. 
  5. Reduced Application Fee Due Before Testing – We are reducing the application fee from $500 to $100 per student, for this year only, because of all the uncertainty around funding. This $100 will be applied toward your child’s total tuition, but is non-refundable if your child doesn’t enroll in the end. We hope you can understand that we are investing a lot of time, energy and money into preparing for students next year. This $100 is a small way to assure us that you are sincere in your intention and gives you a little “skin in the game” as well. 

Payments can be made by personal check or online. If giving online, please be sure to choose NLCA from the “giving type” menu and click the button to cover transaction fees when prompted. Also, make sure to list the child/children covered in the payment in the memo line. 

NOTE: Once children are enrolled and the tuition has been paid from the student wallet, the $100 application fee will be refunded through the church account. The application fee for children who ultimately don’t enroll at NLCA will be forfeit. The reason for this is that we need to know who is committed to attending so that we can move forward ordering supplies, curriculum, etc. Much more than $100 per student will be spent preparing for their attendance.

Waiting until after the scholarships are awarded to apply for school admission (to avoid the application fee) is an option. However, doing so could result in there not being enough space for your student(s), and a delay in their receiving the proper books and supplies.

If the if the application fee is a financial hardship for your family, please reach out to us and we will do our best to work with you.

  1. Register Your Child for NLCA – we have launched a registration application on our website. You can find this application here Enroll Now. This will take you to a Google form for registration. The information on this registration form will help us prepare for your student’s placement testing and enrollment. 
  2. Schedule Your Student’s Testing – All new students will need to complete some placement testing ahead of the start of school. This testing is currently scheduled to take place July 21 & 22. Please sign up for a testing slot as soon as possible. 

Sign Up For Junior High/High School Testing Here

Sign Up For Elementary Testing Here