New Colorado service offers students private tutoring for just 99 cents an hour

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. -- With many students from elementary school to college struggling with their education during the COVID-19 pandemic, and hourly rates as high as $40 or more, families had few affordable options.

Until now.

Last summer, Kaleb Neal was one of two college students who started Tutors for Change, a nonprofit online service designed to provide low-cost tuition, out of concern for learning challenges brought by different education styles during the pandemic.

"We keep costs low by accepting donations and using students, as well as active and retired teachers, as tutors," he said. "The 99 cents an hour is actually just optional. It's not about the money for us. It's about helping students who need it."

Neal is a mathematics major at the University of Oklahoma and will return to Colorado or graduate school.

"Math is the subject students have the most trouble with," he said.

So far, Neal said, the service has hired 100 tutors, assisted more than 100 students and provided 500 hours of instruction.

"It's a nationwide service but two-thirds of the students we've helped live in Colorado," he said. "We expect this service to grow and continue after the pandemic. I don't think anyone else is doing this."

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis has remarked on several occasions about how important it is to keep students from falling behind in their education because of the pandemic.

"There are some students who have been kept at home by their parents and not learning at all," he said in a previous media briefing. "We hope to return schools to in-classroom learning, and have all students learning in some fashion, by January."

Neal said that even his college will have a hybrid learning system when he returns to campus next week.

For more information about Tutors for Change, visit: https://www.tutorsforchange.org/.