Over 18-thousand 600 Students First Education Savings Accounts have been approved as of this past Friday, including over 700 in area counties.
According to data released on Monday by the Iowa Department of Education, students have been approved for ESA’s in 96 of Iowa’s 99 counties including 152 in Buena Vista County, 250 in O’Brien, 142 in Clay, 75 in Palo Alto, 29 in Sac, 30 in Calhoun, 43 in Pocahontas, 17 in Cherokee, and 14 ESA’s have been approved in Ida County.
Approximately one-thousand applications are pending, waiting on a parent or guardian to confirm their annual income is at or below 300 percent of the federal poverty line. In addition to applying and being approved for an ESA, families must separately apply to the accredited private school of their choice. If accepted, their ESA account will be funded.
A previous state report indicated about 60 percent of the applications for the 76-hundred dollars in state funding were for students already enrolled in private school.
