We lived in the Cincinnati area when my son was diagnosed at 3 1/2 with PDD/NOS. we looked into the Autism Scholarship, but decided to forgo it and keep I in our local school system's preschool as we wanted the socialization. Basically, you have to do the school district evaluations to make sure there are at least 2 deficits. If so, then they develop an IEP. The regular education teacher would be the teacher assigned from the svhool district who is part of the eval team (teacher, school psycologiist, school speech pathologist, school occupational therapist, etc). Then, you indicate to the school district that you are choosing to take the Autism Scholarship instead of your public school services (basically it takes the $20k from the school and you use it for a registered/approved Austism Scholarship provider). I know some families that chose to do that and had a home ABA program and their BCBA was paid from the scholorship. Some choose to send to a private school that is approved for the scholarship and they may have an ABA therapist (or aide) attend school with them. I know in the Cincy area there were very few (3) autism providers/schools, and typically there were moderate to severe children that attended. Coincidently, they would have a 3-day (half) program that would utilize the $20k for the 9 months of school. If you chose to continue in summer or breaks, it is out of pocket to you. Hope that helps!

I don't know about Ohio, but here in Florida the student has to be evaluated by the public school system in order to qualify to receive partial funding at a private school. The public school system will usually place a pre-K student in a class situation where their needs can be watched carefully over the course of a school year before receiving the IEP that would allow for scholarship (here the scholarship is called the "McKay")

Ohio might be different, but I am guessing most school systems will not award scholarship money unless they have at least done their own evaluation.

In any case, make sure you know all the rules and follow them as closely as possible. The last thing you want is to lose out on scholarship money over a technicality.