Hi, everyone! We're getting some reports about confusion regarding PEP and letters of intent/letters of termination to the school districts.
PEP and Home Education are two separate attendance tracks. (Please see this post in our forum for more explanation as to why it's set up that way: https://www.flhef.org/forum/pep-faq/what-are-the-main-differences-between-being-a-pep-student-and-being-registered-with-the-county-as-a-home-education-student.)
So, here are three scenarios for clarification:
If you have been awarded PEP and your child was NOT already registered in Home Education with the county: Do NOT submit a letter of intent and/or a letter of termination to your county. Your registration in PEP through the Scholarship Funding Organization (Step Up or AAA) is your attendance track, and PEP enrollment is not handled through the school district.
If you have been awarded PEP and your child WAS already registered in Home Education with the county: You DO need to submit a letter of termination* to your county to inform them you are withdrawing your child from Home Education and will be doing PEP instead. (We have a sample Letter of Termination you can use on our Helpful Docs page. It is actually the same one Step Up has on their website, because they asked permission to use ours!) [NOTE: You will need to submit your annual home education evaluation as part of the termination process, to complete the requirements for your previous home education year.]
If you have applied for PEP, but have not yet received your award email, wait until you receive your official status email. Do NOT submit a letter of intent to the county in the meantime. This is one we need to clarify--We've had some parents concerned about truancy if their children were previously in public school and do not return when public school resumes, but are not yet officially awarded PEP. According to statute [s.1002.41(1)(a)], you have up to 30 days from the "establishment of the home education program" to submit your Letter of Intent. In this case, the "establishment" of your home education program would be the moment you choose NOT to accept the PEP scholarship (or are denied or waitlisted) and decide to home educate, instead. The DOE and the SFOs have requested that families do NOT submit their Letters of Intent only as a fail-safe while waiting to see if they are awarded PEP. Instead, the DOE advised that parents wait until September 15 (which would be 30 days from the start date of public schools this year), and then if you still have not heard back from Step Up/AAA about your PEP award, you could submit a letter of intent to inform your district that you have begun a home education program. (If you do later receive the PEP award, you would need to submit a letter of termination to switch to PEP.) Home Education programs do NOT have to begin on the same date the public schools resume classes.
Why are we clarifying this?
Some counties' Home Ed offices are being flooded with letters of intent where the parents have hand-written in that they are doing PEP (which means a letter of intent was not actually required), and/or are sending in a request that the county supply a letter of termination for them to send to Step Up, when the child was not previously Home Education. They are also receiving large numbers of Letters of Intent, simply for the parents to immediately terminate when they receive their PEP award soon after. This is flooding out their processing departments and creating a lot of extra work -- and also, it's a sign that there is some confusion circulating among some homeschooling communities in those counties.
Here are the important takeaways:
You do NOT need to send your county/school district a letter of intent to home educate if your child is doing PEP. PEP and Home Education are two separate tracks.
If your child is awarded PEP and was NOT previously registered as home education, you do NOT need to submit a letter of termination to your county.
If your child is awarded PEP and WAS previously registered as home education, you DO NEED to submit a letter of termination to your county (once awarded PEP).
The Scholarship Funding Organizations (SFOs) do not need you to send a letter of termination or proof of termination directly to them. You submit that to the county (again, only if you were previously home education), and the SFOs and the DOE do enrollment cross-checks as part of the funding process.
If you applied for PEP and have not yet heard back, do NOT submit a letter of intent in the meantime. Wait until you have your official award status email. You would only need to submit a letter of intent if your PEP award is denied and/or waitlisted, or you choose not to accept it. (See above for more details.)
I also created some flow-charts, for easy reference (and for sharing on social media, etc. NOTE: Please include a link that refers back to this post for further explanation if you share these images elsewhere!)
One last request for those who see this post: If you are involved in any homeschooling groups in your area, especially if you are in a leadership role, please help us get the word out that you do not need to submit a letter of intent to your county if your child is in PEP! You can refer them to this post, and/or to the linked post above which explains how PEP and Home Education are two different attendance tracks. Thank you!