As school districts around the country aim to educate students remotely throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, a new Chicago startup working to improve remote education for students with disabilities has raised a round of funding.
TeleTeachers announced Tuesday that it raised $2.7 million in a Series A round led by Seyen Capital's Senior Managing Director George Spencer and Jerry Putnam, the founder of Archipelago Holdings, which was acquired by the New York Stock Exchange in 2006. Both Spencer and Putnam are joining TeleTeacher’s board of directors.
TeleTeachers was founded last year by CEO Emily Smith, a certified speech-language pathologist. Her startup makes a technology platform designed to help schools remotely deliver special education and related therapy services through video calls.
TeleTeacher’s software allows school districts to transition special education instruction and related therapy services to remote as needed, recover funding for eligible services from complex systems like Medicaid, and have access to a growing roster of certified teletherapy providers, who work as an extension of school district partner teams to deliver hard-to-find services.
With the new funding, TeleTeachers says it will expand its provider base to satisfy a surge in demand, hastened by the coronavirus.
"We will be successful when every student requiring special education has an exceptional experience and outcome with online learning," Smith said. "This funding round provides the resources to make tremendous progress toward that vision."
