Hello, everyone!
Lately, we've been receiving a LOT of requests for help related to scholarships.
So, can we help you with your scholarship issue?
The answer may be yes, depending on the situation.
Let me explain.
Since some may be new here and not as familiar with HEF/HEFX (Home Education Foundation/HEF Connect), I need to start by explaining who we are and what we do.
Who (or What) is HEF/HEF Connect?
HEF (the Home Education Foundation) has been around since the 1990s, but the work of Brenda Dickinson and her husband Craig, who founded HEF, began in the 1980s. They were directly involved in getting home education legalized in Florida in 1985, and Brenda has been fighting to protect and expand those rights and freedoms ever since. She has been Florida's only full-time home education/parent-directed education lobbyist for nearly 40 years, and now Jason has come alongside to take on that mantle moving forward.
Our primary focuses are protecting parents' rights and freedoms to direct their children's education (by lobbying and helping to shape the education-related statutes in Florida), providing accurate information to parents about the statutes related to parent-directed education, and advocating for parents when their rights as afforded by Florida statutes are being violated.
To accomplish this, we have two organizations/arms:
1. HEF (our original lobbying arm, through which Brenda--and now also Jason--actively lobby for parents' rights during legislative season and beyond, and directly participate in helping to write and craft the text of the statutes surrounding parent-directed education in Florida)
2. HEF Connect, our newer non-profit arm, through which we now direct all of our community outreach, advocacy work, and work to expand non-traditional education opportunities for students.
Is HEF/HEF Connect directly connected to Step Up for Students or AAA Scholarships?
No. We are not a scholarship funding organization, nor are we an extension of the customer-service department for either of these organizations.
Florida education statutes and freedoms for parent-directed education are our area of focus, not specifically scholarships.
That said, obviously there are areas where statutes/freedoms overlap with scholarships, and we do have longstanding connections with some contacts at Step Up (and to a lesser extent, AAA), which are relationships built on trust developed over the work HEF/Brenda Dickinson has done the past 40 years. We do at times leverage those connections to ensure parents' rights and freedoms are being upheld in how scholarships related to parent-directed education (UA/PEP) are being implemented and administered, and in special circumstances, we can even advocate for individual parents when it is an extreme or longstanding issue, or when the issue is widespread or indicative of a broader policy or implementation issue.
So, can you help me with my specific scholarship issue?
As I said above... maybe!
Many of our contacts at Step Up are in key, higher-up positions. We cannot flood them with every individual parent's issue, nor can we risk trivializing the relationships we've worked so hard to build with key contacts at the scholarship funding organizations (SFOs) by asking them to address simple issues that could be handled by the typical customer service channels.
HOWEVER...
There are some situations in which we can (and have!) advocated for individual parents and, through the gracious help of our contacts, aided in getting issues resolved. And when an issue has indicated a larger concern related to the statutes or to parent rights and freedoms, we are very active in immediately opening conversations with the SFOs to get the issues addressed.
So which individual scholarship situations can we help with?
We can advocate for individual parent/student scholarship situations if:
1. You have already gone through all the provided customer service/support channels with the SFO, and have either been outright denied help or given a response that directly contradicts information in the handbook/guide. (Inaccurate information from customer service is one that we do want to make our contacts aware of, so they can follow up on appropriate training.)
2. You have been waiting weeks/months for a response from customer service/support and have not heard back. (We can ask our contacts to look into situations where a support ticket has not been addressed or may have fallen through the cracks, but customer service issues do often take time, so we cannot forward situations where a ticket has recently been created unless it falls into #3 or #4 below.)
3. Your issue is part of a larger-scale or widespread issue that our Step Up contacts have specifically asked us to gather info on. (Occasionally there is a known glitch or a known issue where our contacts will request that we send them the individual parent/student info of those who have been affected, so they can look into those individual situations. When this happens, we will generally create a post here in the forum and/or I will respond to posts I see in PEP Facebook groups from parents who have experienced that issue and request those parents to email us.)
4. You believe your issue represents an infringement on parents' rights and freedoms as afforded by Florida statutes. (This last point is directly in our wheelhouse, and we do want to know if an SFO--or even a local school district--is failing to abide by statues in how they implement the scholarships, how they address individual students' situations, etc.)
If your situation fits into any of the above 4 categories, then feel free to email us at info@flhef.org, and we'll see how we might be able to advocate for you!
NOTE: If it's about a specific student's scholarship account with Step Up for Students, be sure to include the name of the parent on the account, the name of the student, and the email address used to log in to EMA or Legacy (so our contacts can look up the accurate account).
On the other hand, here are some things that are not our role/we do not help with:
• Checking the status on your child's scholarship application
• Following up on customer service requests that were recently submitted
• Checking the status on submitted reimbursements
• Escalating normal customer service issues because you're in a hurry/on a time crunch
• Appealing denied reimbursements (with the exception of it fitting into #3 or #4 above)
• Questions about your specific child's SUFS/AAA account
• Filing complaints or customer service requests for you (rather than you going through the normal channels first)
The SFOs already have processes in place to handle those issues, and we ask that parents follow the provided channels for those.
We love all the freedom-minded parents in our community, and we do our best to advocate for individual parents and students where we can!
Thank you all for understanding our need to stay on mission and to preserve the vital relationships we've built with our contacts over the years.
Sincerely,
Crystal Crawford
HEF Community Manager