The Empowering Parents grants program was passed by state senators in February and later awarded to Primary Class, the developer of Odyssey, a K-12 microgrant platform that houses education savings accounts through its online portal, to manage alongside the Idaho State Board of Education.
Empowering Parents, which launched last month for all families, provides $1,000 per student up to $3,000 per family to help cover the costs of technology, textbooks, tutoring and educational programs, among other options. It prioritizes families based on adjusted gross income, with families making $60,000 or less funded first; then for families with gross incomes up to $75,000; and finally to those families with gross incomes above $75,000.
"By ensuring our students have a strong educational start, we're more likely to retain them in Idaho as they thrive and contribute to the success of our state for generations to come," Idaho Gov. Brad Little said in a public statement last month at the launch of the program. "Critical to that strong start is giving families the options and educational support they find best for their children.”
The first month of the program has been an unequivocal success, according to Odyssey Founder Joseph Connor.
“It's been very popular,” Connor told Government Technology. “In the first 24 hours, I think we had 7,000 parents apply. And so there's been kind of clear demand.”
Connor said this week that there have been over 50,000 student applications to date. In a separate news release last week announcing a $4.75 million seed funding round, the company said it has verified and processed in excess of 42,500 student applications filed from some 19,000 parents in the Idaho program. Over half of the funds have already been disbursed, and the remaining funds need to be sent out within 24 months of the program launching. Odyssey handles all the marketing and outreach to ensure all families are aware of the microgrant options available in the state.
“In the last couple of weeks, we've been able to award about $27 million to those families who have applied, so not all the money has been disbursed,” Connor said. “But we're kind of working our way through all the parents who have applied based on the verification criteria and priority ... Based on the early numbers, it seems like all of the money will be spoken for and disbursed. So, it probably will be kind of fully utilized as what we anticipate."
When Idaho senators approved the bill, they stressed the importance of engaging more parents and targeting low-income students. Connor said that Idaho had done a grant program like this in the past that struggled to get the word out to underserved communities, and Odyssey, which will manage the entire program this time around, will target those communities.
“One of our big focus areas has been on Spanish-speaking populations, which is a growing population in the state, plus migrant workers,” Connor said. “Both of whom were underrepresented the first time that they did the program. So that's been kind of a big focus area.”
Odyssey helps with the application verification – a five-minute process, according to Connor – and ensuring parent applicants reside in the state, meet the income parameters and have a K-12 student. The company works closely with the Idaho State Tax Commission, as well as the State Board of Education to ensure these parameters are met in the verification process.
Once families receive a microgrant, they can visit the Odyssey platform and find a list of approved vendors where they can purchase educational items, which could also include computer hardware, Internet access or even fees for national standardized assessments. Connor said purchases could even be made at a brick-and-mortar retailer, as the purchase would still go through an online portal at the respective, approved vendor. Additionally, services such as tutors go through a verification process before approved for the program.
“It's essentially a closed marketplace, so anyone who wants to participate as a business needs to apply. We have certain criteria that they need to meet,” Connor said. “Beyond that, we actually verify every individual transaction, so every transaction generates an invoice.”
After the two-year Empowering Parents program with Idaho, Connor said he hopes the legislators extend the grant and that Odyssey can continue working with the state. He said there are already upward of 18 other states across the nation utilizing similar grants, and he hopes Odyssey will get to work with some of them on managing their respective programs, although the company, founded in 2021, doesn’t yet have the staff to take on all of them. The new seed funding round, led by the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, will help Odyssey accelerate hiring to meet demands for its services, as well as product development.
“Beyond Idaho, we have had [more] incoming demand for our services than we can probably keep up with. Administrators have reached out from other states based on our early results in Idaho that have been positive, wanting to discuss taking over their program,” Connor said. “So that's why we went out and raised the round to be able to expand. … We've been able to demonstrate that there is a clear market need. We've been able to demonstrate that we can build a product and help states run it.”
Editor's note: An earlier version of this story contained a headline that implied the funds had already been disbursed, and it has been adjusted to make clearer that they have not.
