Idaho's Largest Virtual School Left $16M in Teacher Funding Unspent
Summary
Idaho's nonpartisan Office of Performance Evaluations found that the Idaho Home Learning Academy, the state's largest virtual charter school, left $16.1 million in state salary funding unspent in 2024-25 after hiring less than half its funded teaching positions -- then paid most of the savings to three private vendors, whose family reimbursements included a meat thermometer, MP3 players, and water park tickets, while the school's math scores ranked 147th of 176 districts and charters statewide.
Funded for a teacher who isn't there
IHLA started as a small non-charter virtual school with 238 students in 2016-17; enrollment surged during the pandemic, and by 2024-25 it reported an average daily attendance of 7,719 students⧉ -- 97% of enrollment, above the 93% statewide average for brick-and-mortar schools, because virtual schools set their own coursework-based attendance standard. That attendance produced $47.8 million in state foundation funding. Idaho pays for teacher salaries through a formula that allocates a set number of funded positions per support unit; districts must hire within 9.5% of their allocation to keep full funding, but charter schools keep it regardless of how many positions they actually fill. IHLA used that flexibility more than any charter school in the state: the state funded 567 full-time positions worth $29.1 million in salary money, but IHLA had hired only 258 full-time-equivalent staff -- 232 of 373 allocated instructional positions -- by the time of the report.
The school paid $13.0 million in actual salaries, leaving $16.1 million to become non-staff discretionary funds -- a gap the evaluators found was more than three times larger than any other Idaho charter school posted that year. Combined with unspent health-benefit and general-discretionary money, IHLA reserved $31.2 million of its $47.8 million in state funding for non-staff spending.
View data as table
| State salary apportionment (567 positions funded) | $29.1M |
|---|---|
| Actual salaries paid (258 FTE hired) | $13.0M |
| Unspent, redirected to non-staff discretionary funds | $16.1M |
Where the money went instead
IHLA reported $46.3 million in total 2024-25 expenditures from state funds; only 36% went to staff. Instead, the school paid $20.6 million -- 45% of total expenditures -- to three contracted "education service providers": Braintree ($12.9 million), Home Ed 360 ($5.7 million), and Harmony ($2.0 million). Those companies deliver curriculum and administer the "supplemental learning funds" that let IHLA families buy educational materials and enrichment activities with public dollars, by direct order or reimbursement. The providers spent about $12.5 million of what they were paid on those family funds and kept $8.1 million for their own operations -- money that, evaluators found, never has to revert to the school or the state if families don't spend it. Two of the three providers also made $92,000 in direct payments to private schools under memoranda of understanding IHLA does not monitor for compliance.
Evaluators pulled a random 1% sample of roughly 1,560 family receipts and found the largest categories were technology, physical-education activities, and performing arts. But they also flagged an "approval concerns" category -- items reimbursed with public money despite appearing on IHLA's or its providers' own "Never Approved" lists. Examples in the report's appendix⧉ include a meat thermometer, mason jars and BBQ tongs; smartwatches and MP3 players; a Meta Quest virtual-reality headset and Nintendo Switch controllers; and admission passes to a water park, despite IHLA's policy explicitly barring gaming systems.
View data as table
| Technology equipment | $30k |
|---|---|
| Physical education activities | $24k |
| Performing arts | $21k |
| Specialized instructional tools | $15k |
| Approval concerns | $13k |
The teachers who were hired, and the scores that resulted
The staff IHLA did hire were paid less than almost anyone else in the state. In 2024-25, IHLA spent an average of $40,976 per teacher on salaries -- the bottom 2% of Idaho districts and charter schools -- while other schools statewide spent almost $17,000 more per teacher on average. Most IHLA teachers work part time: 269 of 311 instructional staff were under 1.0 , and only 3% had reached the career ladder's advanced-professional tier, versus 36% of teachers statewide.
Academically, IHLA lagged. Its math proficiency rate on the state's ISAT exam was 25% in 2024-25 -- 18 percentage points below the 43% statewide average, ranking 147th of 176 districts and charter schools with reported data. Its English language arts proficiency was 42%, 12 points below the 54% statewide average, ranking 141st of 177. Evaluators also found students transferring in from other Idaho public schools saw their test-score growth fall sharply in their first year at IHLA -- and recover once they left.
This is not IHLA's first funding-accuracy problem. A 2022-23 Department of Education investigation⧉ found the Oneida School District, IHLA's charter authorizer, had claimed salaries as though all IHLA teaching staff worked full time while paying most of them hourly wages for part-time work -- a discrepancy that overpaid the district $9.3 million that year. The department had authority to recover three years of distributed funds; it recovered $4.3 million by withholding it from the following year's payment.
The takeaway
- $16.1 million meant for teachers went unspent, then became discretionary. IHLA received state funding for 567 full-time positions but had hired only 258 by the time of the report; the resulting gap between allocated and paid salaries -- more than three times any other Idaho charter school's -- became non-staff discretionary money instead of staff pay.
- Most of the redirected money flowed to three private companies, with little oversight of how families spent it. IHLA paid $20.6 million to Braintree, Home Ed 360, and Harmony in 2024-25; evaluators found IHLA does not verify whether the vendors monitor supplemental fund spending at all, and a 1% sample of the reimbursements they approved included a meat thermometer, MP3 players, and water park tickets.
- Idaho has already found one large overpayment in this system. A 2022-23 investigation found the Oneida School District had claimed full-time salaries for IHLA's mostly part-time teaching staff, producing a $9.3 million overpayment -- of which the state recovered less than half.
All figures are from the Idaho Legislature's Office of Performance Evaluations, Idaho Home Learning Academy (Report 2502, December 2025), a 130-page evaluation directed by the bipartisan Joint Legislative Oversight Committee in March 2025 and read here in full via direct PDF fetch. The supplemental-learning-fund spending figures (Exhibit 31 and Appendix G) come from a random 1% sample of roughly 1,560 family receipts, not the full population of IHLA transactions; evaluators note the sample was intended to identify spending patterns, not to total every dollar spent.
The 55.3% unspent-funding share, the 45.5% position-fill rate, and the 18-point and 12-point proficiency gaps are this outlet's own arithmetic on the report's own dollar and percentage figures (methods and caveats in analysis.json); the report states each underlying figure individually but does not itself state these derived comparisons. A blind adversarial verifier, working from the primary report alone with no access to this draft, independently checked every itemized fact; see verification.json.
Sources(1) ▾
- Idaho Legislature, Office of Performance Evaluations (OPE), Idaho Home Learning Academy — Evaluation Report (Report 2502) (2025-12-02) — The primary document: OPE's evaluation of the Idaho Home Learning Academy (IHLA), directed by the Joint Legislative Oversight Committee in March 2025. Source for IHLA's enrollment and average daily attendance; the $47.8 million in 2024-25 state foundation funding; the salary apportionment formula and the 567 funded vs. 258 hired full-time-equivalent staffing gap; the $13.0 million actually paid in salaries and the resulting $16.1 million in unspent, redirected funds; the $20.6 million paid to three education service providers and their individual shares; the $12.5 million providers spent as supplemental learning funds vs. $8.1 million they retained; the receipt-sample spending categories and the "approval concerns" items (including a meat thermometer, MP3 players, and water park admissions); IHLA's ISAT proficiency and growth rates against state averages; teacher pay and career-ladder data; the 2022-23 Department of Education overpayment finding; and the organizational-accountability findings on vendor staff overlap and MOU payments to private schools. legislature.idaho.gov · original document
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The Idaho Legislature's Office of Performance Evaluations⧉ found that the Idaho Home Learning Academy (IHLA) -- the state's largest virtual charter school, with about 7,600 K-12 students in 2024-25 -- left $16.1 million of the $29.1 million in state salary funding⧉ it received unspent on teachers after hiring only 258 of the 567 full-time positions the state funded. Most of that redirected money moved through three private companies IHLA contracts to run its classrooms -- companies whose reimbursement receipts to families, OPE's own sample review found⧉, included a meat thermometer, MP3 players, and water park admission tickets.