NOTE: This is Part 2. See Part 1 for the initial summary and earlier notes!
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Some statistics from this year about the use of online shops/direct-purchase platforms:
AAA stated that they do not have a direct-purchase store, but they use Amazon and BestBuy accounts, which they allow parents to go on to select items, then the parents submit those desired items for AAA to approve. They do not limit the parents to only what's on these platforms, though.
Step Up stated they have processed 312,000 MyScholarShop transactions totalling about $81 MILLION already so far this year. (Up from $53 MILLION and 350,000 transactions for the entirety of last school year.)
They have direct-payed to providers about $23 MILLION, in over 80,000 transactions for this year. He also stated that parents "absolutely have the right" to purchase items not on the platform and be reimbursed.
About the SFOs approaches to what they approve and reimburse (in response to a direct question from a Representative about news articles, etc., accusing Step Up of being irresponsible in the handling of funds by approving TVs, theme park passes, gaming systems, etc.):
AAA's answer (they responded first):
Patti Froebel stated that AAA does not approve TVs or field trips to theme parks or gaming systems, because they are not "educational use" of the funds.
John Kirtley's answer (responding on behalf of Step Up for Students):
He said, in other states, the DoE will determine what's an eligible purchase--"not that I'm recommending that here."
He said that Step Up is "more toward the other end of the spectrum" and strive to allow parental choice to ensure parents have the power and flexibility to customize their children's education.
He said that some categories in statute are very clear, while others (like instructional materials), are less defined, and that Step Up has worked very hard since the first ESA was established years ago, to define this based on what is used in schools.
"If the legislature wants to become more involved in setting those parameters, we welcome that."
He also discussed the careful balance in Florida of empowering parents but also being fiscally responsible.
About the difference in how "instructional materials" is interpreted by the SFOs:
Representative Bankson made the comment that he loved the discussion of Instructional Materials and defining what that includes, and thought it was fascinating that Step Up and AAA have such different approaches to interpreting what falls within that category, and he thinks they're "both right." He said he would be resistent to having the Legislature define "instructional materials." He thinks the current setup is a good balance of empowerment and accountability, and would want the state to stay out of that defitionitional process. He believes it is working well to allow the SFOs to define that (since they are working directly with the families they serve and are able to make "context-dependent" decisions).
When asked if they have identified any processes or ideas that would make for better collaboration between the SFOs and parents and schools and providers to help identify what their frustrations are and address those in a systematic manner that wouldn't require speaking personally to all 400,000 families:
Step Up's Chief Customer Experience Officer said they collect feedback from families, schools, and providers in a number of ways. They have a Quality Team who listens to over 2500 calls a month, reads over 200 chats a month, to gather insights on the pain points and frustrations, which are documented and fed to the appropriate departments. They also have an analytics platform that allows them to analyse calls and interactions to better understand frustrations and top reasons for contact, so they can proactively reach out to parents and attempt to prevent a need for those customer service contacts in the first place. They also have a third-party research firm conducting research on the customer experiences with their platform, etc., so they can continue to improve their processes. They also host advisory councils with the schools, and are looking into resurrecting family advisory councils and provider advisory councils. They also have community teams doing educational outreaches in local communities and interacting in social forums to gather feedback. All of this is documented for what's working and what isn't, so they can continue to make improvements. (For example, they identified that many families this year were reaching out to Step Up on social media, so they implemented a social media team which is now managing over 3000 interactions per week.)
AAA said they send out newsletters and communications to the schools, and have reviews and communications with the families, and famliies can also reach out to their customer service. They try to also have informational meetings at schools to let parents know what they need to do, the processes, etc.
When asked how income priority (as dictated by statute) was handled by the SFOs to ensure that priority was being met:
Step Up said they batched the applications every 30 days, to prioritize by income to ensure those were processed first. With the large volume of applications they receive, this was the only practical way to do it. They opened for applications May 2, so if they had waited until the end of July to start processing and prioritizing applications, they would not have had time to get through all the applications in a reasonable timeframe.
AAA said they also prioritized according to "the tiers" and were able to implement a new application that accommodated this prioritization and advise the families what those "tiers" meant. (But she did not give any further details on how.)
Representative Chambliss asked, when a private school is removed from the scholarship programs due to non-compliance, what happens to the students who were using scholarship funds at that school.
The DoE said they would inform those students and provide them options of other schools in their area who are qualified for scholarship funds. And they also have a hotline for families.
Representative Garcia acknowledged to the panel that she understands that it has been a "heavy lift" to implement HB1, but stated that she loves what's being done with HB1, because "different kids need different things, and this is wonderful."
Representative Garcia then asked if the DoE has any measures in place to prevent private schools from intentionally raising their rates of tuition for families in light of the passage of HB1:
The DoE said private schools do have the freedom to adjust their own rates, and circumstances from one school to the next may warrant a tuition increase. However, in at least one of the cases he's seen where a school raised rates in an extreme manner, the outcry from parents was enough to make them rescind that rate increase.
Virtual private school classes and hybrid programs (private schools that offer some on-campus days combined with the remainder done at home) were discussed:
John Kirtley would like to see some work done on providing more flexibility for parents to utilize scholarship funds for these kinds of programs (which are right now excluded by the wording of the statutes).
The DoE representative said that the statutes currently require that students be on campus physically for "regular and direct contact" with their instructors at a private school. He did say that he's encountered many innovative programs serving families in this way, and that the DoE has done their best to find other ways within the bounds of statute to qualify as many of those as approved providers for the scholarships as they could.
Members of the public were given a brief time to speak at the end:
Jose Suarez (Hope Ranch Learning Academy)
Lynn Belyle (unsure of spelling of the last name, but she was a scholarship parent)
Mara Hudson (a mom of 8, and owner of VOW NOW Academy)
Julie Ravenel (LaVonte School of Excellence)
They all spoke (VERY briefly) about the positive opportunities HB1 has created for their children and/or for the students they serve in their communities. They were asked "Thumbs up or thumbs down on HB1?" and all said "Thumbs up."
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This does not include all the details of what was covered in the meeting--I just tried to capture the highlights. If you'd like to watch the full meeting, you can find it here! https://www.myfloridahouse.gov/VideoPlayer.aspx?eventID=9182
I think the content didn't post.