Outschool is an approved vendor for many charter schools. If your learner is enrolled at a charter school home-study program, the school may make funds available for you to spend on learning materials and service providers such as online classes with Outschool. Note that classes sell out quickly, so we recommend giving your school your top three time choices when submitting requests to your school, as Outschool cannot guarantee there will be available spaces in your preferred time.
Enrolling in classes
If your charter school has approved Outschool as a vendor, then it’s easy to apply your school funds to our classes. Here’s how the process typically works:
You should reach out to your Education Specialist (ES) or another person who handles charter fund purchases at your school. Provide them with the full name of the class and the section you would like to sign up for, along with the email associated with your Outschool account and your learner’s name and age.
Your ES will decide whether or not to approve the purchase and will complete any other necessary steps on their end.
Your school will send along a purchase order or voucher to Outschool. Please note that the time between steps 2 and 3 varies from school to school and can take as long as a few weeks.
Outschool will process the purchase order or voucher within one business day of receiving it from your school. We will enroll you in the requested class and send over an email confirmation once we have done so.
After step 1, there’s no need for additional action on your part to enroll in courses, but you can follow the steps below if you’d like to reserve a spot in a class without waiting for your school to send us a purchase order.
Outschool receives a high volume of purchase orders each day. Please only reach out to us about the status of your enrollment if your class is coming up in the next three days.
Reserving a place in a class
If you want to reserve a place in a class, either because it may sell out or because it is starting very soon, you can simply enroll via credit card. We consider this a deposit to hold your place, and will refund the deposit as soon as we receive the purchase order from your charter school. However, if the school does not approve a purchase order for that class and enrollment, the card holder will be responsible for this payment. Please note that you cannot reserve a spot via credit card for Ongoing classes.
Parents from Visions in Education should not reserve a place in their classes, as their school uses a different process to complete enrollments. Outschool cannot guarantee refunds for spots reserved in advance of Visions funds.
Please check with your specific charter school to make sure reserving a spot in class via credit card works with their process.
Purchase orders and Outschool credit
Please note that Outschool vouchers can be applied to courses purchased with charter funds until the order has been invoiced. Similarly, teachers can issue partial refunds for these courses during that time as well.
Ongoing classes
Families are able to request an Ongoing Class in up to 16 consecutive-week increments on each Purchase Order (PO) from their charter school. Once the requested amount of weeks have been completed on the first PO, the learner will be withdrawn on the Sunday after the last class ends. Outschool support can then re-enroll the learner for additional weeks if we have another PO, or the family can resume their subscription with their own credit card on file by going to Transactions -> View Class Page under the class title then clicking resume subscription.
Groups
Group subscriptions are only supported by charter admin accounts at this time, not with purchase orders. Your school can request a charter admin account at support@outschool.com.
Approved vendor programs
Outschool is a pre-approved vendor for over 50 charter schools in California, Alaska, Arizona, Wisconsin, and Canada. If you'd like to register for Outschool classes, ask your charter school to partner with us. Please have them reach out to support@outschool.com and we will start the process to become an approved vendor with your school.