Hello, everyone!
In case you are unable to attend today's online PEP Open House that Step Up is providing, I thought I'd share the highlights here. (I just attended the noon session.)
They walked through some tutorials for how to find providers inside EMA.
They walked through how to log into/use MyScholarShop. (Be sure to log out of MSS completely when you finish shopping for a child, and then log back in to EMA fresh to switch to a different child!)
They also answered parent questions which had been pre-submitted on the survey they provided beforehand. I'll include the screenshots of those Q&A slides below for reference.
A few final notes:
They will have the recording of this session available for rewatch later (I'm not sure exactly when it will be up & available).
There was a survey at the end of this Open House which had a place to submit questions for future Open House webinars--so if you have a chance to attend any of these monthly webinars and have questions you want answered, that's a good way to submit them!
Hope this helps those who weren't able to make one of the webinars today!
One thing they stated toward the beginning of the webinar was that in order to get Legos reimbursed, as an example, one needs to fill out the Educational Benefit form and cite a curriculum that requires the Legos. This is vastly different from citing supporting curriculum or just saying it's a parent-created curriculum or some example of how they could be used as manipulatives (or whatever your reason for purchasing Legos might be). I think that is a bit of misinformation, which sort of defeats the purpose of doing the open houses in the first place.
I didn't find anything helpful about the open house since the things covered were already being discussed amongst ourselves in groups such as having to log out to switch kids within MSS (which is really a glitch THEY need to fix at some point). They had no real answers to the questions still remaining such as how to get funds off the card, how many students have been switched to PEP, how things are categorized within MSS, why some kids are still waiting from months ago when newer applicants have been switched, etc. It has been extremely frustrating for so many people, yet we try to be patient because the money is a blessing in the long run.
I do still think our legislators need to provide oversight and force them into getting their act together because IMO, this is beyond just normal growing pains of a new program. It is incompetence at the very least, and there are some saying there is a level of corruption involved. They are going too far with how they interpret and implement the legislation which is causing more problems than it solves. This is where we as parents NEED to "step up" and contact our elected officials so they are aware of what is happening.