An approved ESTF Education Service Provider for South Carolina families

What SCDE approval means

South Carolina’s ESTF statute and the SCDE call the businesses that can accept ESTF funds Education Service Providers (ESPs). The approval pipeline runs year-round: a provider applies through the SCDE’s application, the department issues a decision in roughly 10 business days, and an approved provider then receives a ClassWallet registration email (typically within about 3 business days) and links a bank account. That last step matters — an approved-but-unregistered provider cannot be paid. The SCDE publishes the approved-provider list on its ESTF page, and the same listing appears inside ClassWallet where families actually submit payments.

One more rule worth knowing: parents choose providers and judge their effectiveness, but a parent must not submit a provider application on a provider’s behalf — the state rejects those automatically.

The tutor credential rule — and how we exceed it

The 2026-27 ESTF Service Provider Guide sets a clear floor: every tutor must hold at least a bachelor’s degree; educational therapists must hold a valid license in the therapy they provide; and all providers complete the state attestation, which includes background checks (facilities attest for their staff, and individual providers complete the attestation directly).

Our tutors are teachers certified in special education. That is a higher bar than the bachelor’s-degree minimum the state requires for tutoring — families working with us get certified special education teachers, not generalists who merely cleared the floor.

How Pay Vendor invoicing works

The ESTF is unusual among state scholarship programs in a way that favors families: there is no reimbursement path. Every payment runs through ClassWallet, so families never front money and never wait on a check. For tutoring, the route is Pay Vendor:

1. We issue an invoice containing all seven items the Participant Guide requires: our provider name and address, the student’s name, the parent’s name, the invoice date, the date of service, the type of service (the tutoring subject), and the total amount due. No handwritten documents.
2. You submit the invoice in ClassWallet under the “Tutoring (either in-person or online)” expense category. Families with more than one student submit a separate invoice under each student’s account.
3. Program administrators review the request. Once approved, the funds go straight from your child’s ESTF account to the provider, settling to the provider’s bank in 2-10 business days.

Billing cadence is the provider’s choice — weekly, monthly, or quarterly — and both prepay and postpay arrangements are allowed under the program.

If a payment is rejected

Rejections are low-risk by design: the parent receives an email, and the funds return to the student’s ESTF wallet immediately for reuse. Most rejections trace to an invoice detail, so the fix is simple — we correct it, you resubmit.