Taking Ground is an approved Direct Pay vendor for the Arkansas Education Freedom Account (EFA) program. If your student has an EFA, you can use those funds through ClassWallet to purchase eligible books, curriculum, and educational materials from our store — with no out-of-pocket cost to you.

Because we are a Direct Pay vendor rather than a ClassWallet Marketplace store, you won't check out on our site the usual way. Instead, you tell us what you want, we send you an invoice, and you submit that invoice through ClassWallet.

How to place an EFA order

Step 1 — Build your list. Browse the store and add everything you want to your cart. Then either:

• Screenshot your cart. Begin checkout and enter your shipping address so that shipping and sales tax appear, then screenshot the full cart summary. Don't complete the purchase. ClassWallet asks that cart screenshots include shipping and tax, so please make sure both are visible.
• Or email us a list. Product names and quantities are enough — we'll look up current pricing for you.

Step 2 — Send it to us. Email your screenshot or list to contact@takingground.com and include:

• The EFA student's full name, spelled exactly as it appears in ClassWallet
• The email address where we should send the invoice
• Your shipping address
• A phone number, in case we have a question about an item

One student per request, please. Each EFA student has their own account and their own funds, so if you're ordering for more than one child, send a separate list for each child and we'll issue a separate invoice for each.

Step 3 — We send your invoice. We'll email you a PDF invoice, normally within 1–2 business days. It includes everything the EFA program requires: our vendor name and contact information, the date, an itemized description and price for every product, shipping and sales tax, the total amount due, and your student's name.

Step 4 — You submit the invoice to ClassWallet. Log in to ClassWallet, go to Direct Pay, search for and select Taking Ground, upload the invoice PDF, choose the appropriate expense category, and submit the request.

Step 5 — The state reviews it and pays us. Once your Direct Pay request is approved, ClassWallet sends payment directly to us from your student's EFA funds. You never pay out of pocket. Review times are set by the Arkansas Department of Education and ClassWallet, not by us, and they vary depending on how busy the program is.

Step 6 — We pack and ship. We begin fulfilling your order as soon as payment reaches us. You don't need to do anything else, though if you'd like to forward us your ClassWallet approval notice, we're always glad to have it.

How long shipping takes

Everything on our side starts after your Direct Pay request is approved and paid.

• Items in stock typically ship within a few business days of payment.
• Items we need to bring in can take longer. Because approval can take a while, a title that was in stock when we quoted it may need to be reordered by the time funds arrive.

Please allow up to two weeks from approval for your box to ship. We ship orders complete unless you ask us to split the shipment. If anything is going to run past that window, we'll email you.

What we can and can't tell you about eligibility

We're glad to help you find the right resources, and happy to tell you what a product is and how families use it. But we can't tell you whether a purchase will be approved, and appearing on our invoice is not a guarantee of approval.

The Arkansas Department of Education makes every eligibility decision, and evaluates each expense against its “ordinary and necessary” standard — essentially, whether the item is a normal, reasonable, genuinely useful part of a K–12 education. Curriculum, textbooks, workbooks, and instructional materials are commonly approved. Items that read as devotional, recreational, or general-household are less likely to be.

Two things worth knowing as you plan:

• Some categories, including extracurricular, PE, and field-trip expenses, are capped at 25% of your student's annual EFA funds.
• Items purchased with EFA funds are meant for the participating student's educational use.

When you're not sure, ask ADE before you submit. They would much rather answer a question up front than sort out a problem later.

Prices, availability, and changes

• Your invoice is good for 30 days. We honor the prices on it for that window, even if an item changes price on our site.
• If something sells out or goes out of print before your funds arrive, we'll email you. You can swap it for something else or drop it — either way we'll send a revised invoice, which you'll need to resubmit to ClassWallet.
• We can't add items to an approved request. If you want more, it's a new list and a new invoice.
• Sale prices and promo codes are applied when we build the invoice. We can't apply a discount retroactively to an invoice that has already been approved and paid.

Returns and refunds

EFA funds are public dollars, so refunds work a little differently than a normal purchase.

• Any refund goes back to your student's EFA account through ClassWallet. We can't issue a cash refund, a card refund, or store credit on an EFA order.
• If something arrives damaged or defective, contact us and we'll replace it.
• Our standard return window and condition requirements otherwise apply.

A few things the program doesn't allow

So there are no surprises:

• Gift cards can't be purchased with EFA funds.
• We can't offer cash back, rebates, or store credit as an incentive for using EFA funds with us. If any vendor ever offers you that, the state asks that you report it.
• We can't ship before payment, or extend credit against a pending approval.
• We can't invoice you for something you already bought and paid for. That's a reimbursement request, which you submit yourself through ClassWallet.
• We can't combine multiple students on one invoice.

Questions

About an order, an invoice, or a product: contact@takingground.com

About the EFA program itself — eligibility, your balance, ClassWallet, or whether an expense qualifies — contact the Arkansas Department of Education, Office of School Choice and Parent Empowerment:

• ade.efa@ade.arkansas.gov
• 501-683-1876
• dese.link/efa

Taking Ground is an independent retailer participating in the Arkansas EFA program as a Direct Pay vendor. We are not affiliated with, employed by, or speaking on behalf of the Arkansas Department of Education or ClassWallet, and we cannot make eligibility determinations. Program rules are set by the state and can change; this page describes our process and is not a substitute for the official EFA Family Handbook. Student names collected here are used only to prepare your invoice and to meet EFA documentation requirements.