UPDATE (as of August 4, 2023):
Step Up has advised that if you received the email that went out the first week of August 2023 confirming you have been awarded PEP for your students--and your scholarship program now shows "FTCPEP" for your student in Step Up's system---then you have been awarded PEP and you will be funded through FTC once everything processes. If you received this confirmation of being awarded PEP and still want to accept the scholarship, you should submit your letter of termination to the county as soon as possible.
(You will find the FTCPEP confirmation by logging into EMA, then "My Students" on your Dashboard, then clicking "View" next to each individual student. Be sure to confirm "FTCPEP" is listed for each student you applied for! See screenshot below for what it should look like.)
If you're seeing that FTCPEP listed there, then you should go ahead and submit your letter of termination to the county. Step Up and DOE will be working with the districts to ensure PEP students aren't registered as Home Ed, so you'll want to go ahead and terminate to avoid any issues there. (You can write in "We have been awarded the PEP scholarship" or "We are switching to PEP" or some other PEP-related explanation as your reason for termination when you submit the form. If you want to, feel free to also write in that you may switch back to home education in the future if PEP becomes unfavorable.)
Hello, thank you for this. Just to be clear, are you referring to the email in my attached image or a subsequent one that comes after I choose PEP for all of my awarded students? I chose the PEP option yesterday for all of my students, but I have not received additional emails yet. All my students show that they've been awarded "FES-EO".
I had assumed that I should send a home school termination letter once I get confirmation of the PEP selections.
Do we know how long it will take for the funds to drop? Ours has been awarded but funds are not available yet.
One of my children recieved the PEP and the other one did not (around Aug 2nd). I submitted both of them at the same time and I have double checked to make sure I entered the information in correctly. Do we know if ther scholarship is full? Or if they are sending out the awarded letters slowly?
We were approved for FES-US and then filled out the PEP form but our account still says FES-UA. What do we need to do?
Hi,
What would happen if halfway through getting the Pep and using some of the funds, a parent decided it's not something they want to continue and wants to withdraw from PEP? I know we can always switch back to homeschool with the district but would we be legally mandated to return the used funds since we're not continuing or testing?
What about if we have applied for PEP and UA and are waiting to see if we will be funded for UA? Do we withdraw from the county for now, and then reregister if we are funded for UA. Or will withdrawing from the county mess things up for us for UA and cause us not to be funded for that?
Where do we send the termination letter to? I have been using this email: homeed@palmbeach.org for palm beach county. Is it appropriate to send the letter/email there?
We received the email in July and her status still says FES-EO. Is there a reason for that? We are terminating with the county on Monday because I just found out what to ever add the "termination reason".
Hi! Just curious if Step Up will be patient with us as many of us with high school juniors and seniors are still waiting for more info and asking questions as we assess if accepting PEP will somehow affect their eligiblilty for Bright Futures. Considering so much is still unknown, it seems risky to rush to terminate. Will Step Up give us a notice or a deadline when we absolutely must terminate before we become unable to continue with PEP? Or will it be a sudden thing without warning if we wait too long?