School FAQ

Arizona Private School Tuition Organization (APSTO) is not tied to any single school, denomination, or organization. We will work with every Qualified School in the state of Arizona. We simply require a Partner School Agreement be completed each school year. Please call 480-256-1001 or contact us if you have any questions or require assistance.

A Qualified School is a preschool that offers services to students with disabilities, nongovernmental primary or secondary school located in Arizona that does not discriminate based on race, color, disability, familial status, or national origin. All teaching staff and personnel that have unsupervised contact with students are required to be fingerprinted.

Qualified school does not include a charter school, or any program operated by a charter school. This means that a private school program which operates in the same facilities as the charter school operates and a private school program that is administered by the same staff as employed by a charter school is not eligible for private school tuition organization scholarships.

APSTO can scholarship students in grades K-12 attending qualified private schools in the State of Arizona and disabled preschoolers with an Arizona public school IEP or MET. Kindergarten students must be 5 by December 31st to receive scholarships.

Unfortunately, state law requires APSTO award scholarships for current year’s tuition only.

APSTO can pay for summer school for high school students only. The classes paid for need to be credit-bearing classes needed for graduation.

Yes

The school must return the amount that is in greater than that of the student’s annual tuition to APSTO.

Your school is required to refund APSTO a prorated amount of the scholarship funds. The returned funds will then be used to scholarship another student in need.

State law allows all students to receive scholarships from any STO at the same time. Some STO’s have policies that may restrict the applicant from accepting other funds. APSTO never restricts students from accepting funds from multiple STOs.

The law does prohibit students from accepting STO funds and Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) funds at the same time. The ESA statue (A.R.S. 15-2402 (B)(3)) requires that if your students have a contract with the ESA program, they cannot accept ESA and STO money for the same period. If they choose to end the ESA contract during the school year, there is no conflict if your students receive STO scholarship funding for the remainder of the academic year.