Getting Started… Scholarship

Hurdle # 2: Finances

The first hurdle was me. The feeling of “I’m not good enough to do this”. After overcoming that feeling I was very quick to jump to “We cannot afford this.”

Our financial situation is rather unique since my husband is home with us and receives payments through the VA for his time while he served in the Navy but as most veterans and families will tell you that is not enough to get by, especially with this economy. So I have worked as a photographer and writer (and for a while as a cottage baker) to supplement our income. I had to still.

We had been very blessed to utilize a scholarship program devised for children in the state of Florida to attend private schools with the help of funds donated by businesses in the state. We have everything we need as a family but we wouldn’t have had the additional funds to pay for one, much less three or four, private school educations. Since our income fell under a financial maximum we qualified to receive funding through the scholarship that was managed by a scholarship funding organization known as Step Up For Students (SUFS).

(https://www.stepupforstudents.org)

Rosie and Mary Evelyn at the beginning of our school year (2023).

Step Up manages several different scholarships including ones for private schools, transportation, unique abilities (which help children with a range of different disabilities or struggles that affect their education), reading, and starting this year they have a scholarship that helps with personalized education.

The personalized education program (also known as PEP) is a new program that started in the 2023-2024 school year that would provide the same style of funding to parents who homeschool their children. There is one distinction I want to make because it was put in place as a protection for homeschoolers. Homeschool students usually register with their county as being educated and then in St. John’s, where we live, you can either supply testing or a portfolio every year that a teacher checks to show that your student did learn something while being home with you. The portfolio option is what we would have chosen personally. To protect homeschoolers (through the county) the children enrolled through SUFS through PEP are enrolled through the state, not the county. People were concerned with any overreach the state might have over the program and controlling how parents taught their students at home were safe because they were not titled “homeschoolers” but instead “personalized education program” students. Both programs are home education programs and enrolling in PEP does not make you any less of a homeschool student. It is just legal terms that are used to protect both options for homeschooling in the state.

It took us a while to decide that we wanted to use PEP because it is slightly different than the county in that you are required to utilize the testing option. My children hated testing when they were in private school so I was concerned about that option but after a lot of prayer and discussion, we decided to go forward with it. My concern was that they would be required to go to a school to take the tests but it has since come out that you will be able to proctor those tests at home. That made everything easier for me because my concern was the anxiety that testing caused my children. To be clear, I don’t think that testing teaches our children very much other than sometimes in life you have to do things that you don’t see a purpose in because someone else requires it. I am sure someone out there who has more degrees and experience than me will disagree but in my experience, I learned nothing and I’m pretty good at standardized tests.

Okay, so we’ve decided we are going to enroll in PEP. Does that mean they are in charge of what my kids learn? NO! Thank goodness or we wouldn’t have done it. We get to teach our children whatever it is that we want to teach our children just like regular homeschooling but we have help with funding to provide the experiences we want our children to have while schooling.

Here is a list of some things that PEP has provided for my children:

Curriculum

Books

Art Supplies

Art Classes

Instruments

School Supplies

… and that is not an exhaustive list.

It has opened doors for our family that we are so grateful for and it wouldn’t have been possible if we hadn’t chosen to utilize PEP. When we decided to homeschool we were in the middle of rebuilding our house (mostly on our own with a few contractors seasoned in here and there) because we lost our home to Hurricane Ian and Hurricane Nicole. So financially our savings were drained to nothing and we were deeply struggling. Still, we knew that God was calling us to educate our children at home and prioritize family in this next season. We took that leap and a few months later PEP was introduced to me through a friend. That’s always how it seems to work. God puts something on our hearts, we choose to jump all in without knowing how it will work, and he provides the way.

I am going to be talking a lot about the PEP process so if you are in Florida and interested in using this scholarship next year for the 2024-2025 school year I will keep you up to date on applications and any changes to the program. We are also in the process of preparing a child’s application for the UA program so I will be able to give details to that as well.

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The Florida Scholarship

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Getting started.