I want a therapy scholarship for my child, but don’t know where to start. What are these Jon Peterson or Autism Scholarships that I keep hearing about!?
What are the Jon Peterson Special Needs Scholarship and Autism Scholarship?
These scholarships are for students in Ohio for therapies and interventions. The Jon Peterson scholarship ranges from $9,585-$32,445 per school year and the Autism Scholarship is $32,445 per school year. These funds can be used with multiple therapy or tutoring providers, but cannot be used to purchase items, like curriculums or equipment. They pay for direct person-to-person services only.
To receive a Jon Peterson Scholarship, students must:
be homeschooled, or in a private school
not enrolled public school
have an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) through your school district (Even when homeschooled or private schooled, the public school district is responsible for the IEP.)
be in Grades K-12
To receive the Autism scholarship, students must:
be homeschooled, or in a private school
not enrolled public school
ages 3-21
have an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) through your school district, with autism listed as the category of eligibility, OR have a medical diagnosis of autism.
Can my child receive BOTH Scholarships?
No, you can only have one at a time.
What are the steps to receiving a scholarship?
Get an Individualized Education Plan (IEP), and be a homeschool or private school student.
Choose a provider, which is a therapy company that accepts the scholarship. A provider may be a speech therapist, intervention specialist or other type of therapist that has been approved by the Ohio Department of Education to accept the Scholarship. Not all providers accept these scholarships, as it is a rigorous process to become approved. You cannot apply for a scholarship without a therapy provider.
Fill out the scholarship application with your provider.
Start services at no cost to you! Therapy may begin as soon as the application is submitted, even before it is approved.
Can homeschoolers still have an IEP?
Yes! Even if you are homeschooled, the public school district is still required to identify students with disabilities. Many of our clients are homeschoolers with an IEP from the public school district.
What is an IEP?
An Individualized Education Plan (IEP) is a document that a school district writes for a student who has been identified with some type of education disability. This plan lists out what services or therapies the student will receive (e.g, speech therapy, academic tutoring, etc) and gives goals for the student to work on. Acquiring an IEP is the first step in accessing funds through either scholarship. You cannot receive a Jon Peterson Scholarship unless you have an IEP. Click here for more info on how to get an IEP.
At Massery Speech Therapy, we are here to make this easy!
We are a provider for BOTH the Jon Peterson Scholarship and Autism scholarship. We are specialists in online therapy and can serve any student in Ohio. We can answer your questions to see if your child is eligible for a state scholarship during our free consultation.
We give you the application, you fill it out and return it to us, then we submit it for you. (You can only get an application from a scholarship provider. It is not available directly to families.) The Ohio Department of Ed will then review the application.
We work with you to choose the frequency: Speech or Occupational therapy can be 1, 2 or 3x a week.
We bill the scholarship programs directly each month.
We give you a monthly receipt showing much we bill.
We use a straightforward monthly tuition plan with no hidden fees. We don’t inflate our billing amounts. Ethical billing is very important to us.