Pricing · Canada · Alberta home education
Use your Alberta home education funds for Chalky
Alberta gives funded home education families money every year for instructional materials and services. A Chalky subscription is that kind of expense. There are two ways to buy it: your school buys it for you, or you buy it today and claim it back.
$928.03 per student for 2026-27
How home education works in Alberta
Alberta parents may educate their children at home under the Education Act and the Home Education Regulation, and families choose one of two routes. In a supervised program you notify and register with an associate board or an associate accredited funded private school, and that authority assigns a certificated teacher, often called a facilitator, who carries out at least two formal evaluations of your child each school year. In an unsupervised program you notify the Minister of Education and run the program entirely on your own.
The choice decides whether there is any money. Only supervised programs are funded, and an associate board or associate private school has to have accepted your notification before September 30 for that school year to be funded. The forms, the deadlines and the regulation itself are on Alberta's home education page.
Supervised families also choose how much of the teaching the school does. A parent-directed program leaves the planning and the teaching with you. A shared responsibility program, sometimes called blended, hands part of the program to the school's teachers, and the school holds the funding for the part it delivers. Which program you are in is what makes one of the two payment routes below simpler than the other.
What the Alberta home education funds are
The funding exists to defray what a parent spends on programs of study, instruction materials and other resources for the home education program. Alberta does not treat it as the family's money, so nothing is released without receipts.
- Grades 1 to 12
- $928.03 per student The 2026-27 amount, raised from $901 the year before.
- Kindergarten
- $464.01 per student Half the grade 1 to 12 amount, matching the half-time program.
- How it reaches you
- Reimbursement or direct purchase Your school either pays you back against receipts or buys the resource for you.
- What a claim needs
- Receipts or invoices The Home Education Regulation does not let a school release funds without them.
- When you can claim
- Your school sets the windows Boards publish their own claim dates and a final spring deadline. Ask your facilitator for this year's before you buy.
Alberta Education sets the amount each year, so confirm the current figure with your associate board before you plan a year of purchases around it.
Funding cannot be paid to a parent as personal remuneration, and it cannot cover the ordinary costs of raising a child. It covers the program.
Is an online reading curriculum an eligible expense?
The Home Education Regulation lets the funding cover programs of study, instruction materials and other resources related to the home education program. Associate boards and associate private schools publish their own eligible expense lists inside that definition, and online curriculum programs, online education memberships and educational software appear on them.
Chalky is an online curriculum program: a sequenced reading plan for the grade, the books themselves, and the comprehension work for every book. Boards word their lists differently, so the safe order is to send your facilitator the Chalky invoice and get their confirmation before you file the claim.
On currency: Chalky bills in US dollars. Your invoice shows the US amount and your card statement shows the Canadian amount you actually paid. Ask your facilitator which of the two your board wants to see on the claim, and send both if they are unsure.
Two ways to buy Chalky with Alberta funds
Both routes end with the same thing: your child reading on Chalky, paid for out of home education funding rather than your own pocket. They differ in who buys it and in how long you wait.
Route 1: Ask your facilitator whether the school already has access
Your associate board keeps a share of the home education grant for the resources and services the school provides, and some schools buy online programs for their home education families or already hold a licence. If yours does, your child gets Chalky and your own reimbursement stays untouched for other things. Ask your facilitator two questions: does the school already have access to Chalky, and if not, will it purchase the subscription for you.
- Email your facilitator and ask about existing access or a school purchase.
- Send them our invoice or quote if they need one for the purchase order.
- The school pays us directly and we unlock the account within 24 business hours.
Costs you nothing up front, but the timing is not yours. A purchase order moves at the school's pace, and a school can decline.
Route 2: Pay out of pocket and claim it back from your funds
Buy the subscription yourself, start reading the same day, then submit the invoice with your next reimbursement claim. This route keeps the timing in your hands: nothing waits on an approval cycle, and the invoice Chalky generates is the receipt the claim needs.
- Create a parent account, add your child and choose a plan.
- Download the invoice from the Billing tab.
- Submit it to your school with your reimbursement claim.
- The funds come back to you on your school's claim schedule.
Faster, and we recommend it. Your child starts today, and the money comes back rather than the access being held up.
Why Alberta families choose Chalky
- It is a plan, not a library Chalky sequences eight books a term for every grade from 1 to 8 and paces them day by day, so the reading part of your program is decided before the week starts.
- Whole books, not passages Children read real literature end to end, from Frog and Toad to Animal Farm, and answer questions written from the pages they have just read.
- Evidence for your two evaluations A supervised program is evaluated twice a year. Chalky records the days your child read, the time spent, the books finished and the reading skill behind every question, and prints all of it as one report for the portfolio.
- One receipt covers the year A subscription includes the whole library and every grade plan, with no ads and nothing to buy inside the app, so a single invoice is the whole claim.
- It follows your own book choices Swap any book in the plan for one you already own or one your child loves, and the questions and the record follow the new book.
- Built for a parent who is teaching four other subjects You get the plan, the questions and the record without preparing any of it, which is the part of a reading program that usually eats the evening.
What you get with Chalky
One subscription per child covers the whole reading curriculum for grades 1 to 8.
- A learning plan for every grade, 1–8
- 380+ whole books
- Questions from each book's own text
- A standards record that keeps itself
- Downloadable learning reports for your records
- The full library, swappable any time
Chalky's records name the reading skill behind every question and the Common Core reading standard it aligns with. Alberta teaches its own Programs of Study, so read the report as documentation of reading instruction and measured progress rather than a checklist against Alberta outcomes. What it gives a facilitator is the evidence an evaluation asks for: what your child read, for how long, and what they can do now.
Alberta funding questions
How much is Alberta home education funding for 2026-27?
Alberta set the amount at $928.03 per student for grades 1 to 12 and $464.01 for kindergarten for the 2026-27 school year, raised from $901 the year before. Your associate board or associate private school administers it, either by reimbursing your receipts or by buying resources for you.
Can Alberta home education funds pay for an online reading curriculum?
The Home Education Regulation lets the funding cover programs of study, instruction materials and other resources for the home education program, and boards' eligible expense lists include online curriculum programs and online education memberships. Each board publishes its own list, so confirm with your facilitator before you file the claim.
Do I need a receipt to claim Chalky?
Yes. Alberta does not let a school release home education funds to a family without receipts or invoices showing what the money bought. Chalky generates an invoice in the Billing tab of your parent account, and you can download it as soon as you have paid.
Is it faster to pay myself or to ask the school to buy it?
Paying yourself is faster. Your child can start the same day and you submit the invoice with your next claim. A school purchase costs you nothing up front, but it moves at the school's purchase order pace and the school can decline.
Does my child have to be in a funded program?
Funding requires a supervised program registered with an associate board or associate private school, accepted before September 30 of that school year. Families in an unsupervised program are welcome on Chalky, but they pay for it themselves with no reimbursement available.
Which grades does Chalky cover?
Chalky's reading curriculum runs from grade 1 to grade 8, which is the range the plans, the books and the comprehension questions are written for.
Program facts on this page come from Alberta's home education page and the Home Education Regulation, and the 2026-27 amounts from the rates associate schools published for that year. Amounts and claim rules change annually, and your own associate board is the authority on both. This page is information, not legal or funding advice.