I would argue that no one needs to be spending the money on trampoline parks when you can buy a personal trampoline for less than $100. I agree with limits on the price of individual items. No one needs a $400 mixer, but there are plenty of decent quality ones for $50-$150 that should be allowed. The point is that micromanagement of what PEP students are spending the money on has to stop. The comparisons of homeschool spending to public school spending has to stop. I'm not particularly thrilled about PEP students being criticized for how they're spending $7k when my school district just spent $55 million "modernizing" an existing school. If the parents of public school children are unhappy with the quality of their child's education, it's up to them to advocate for change, or they can always apply for one of the school choice scholarships.

I'm confused about the concern that parents won't have any say in the development of the guidelines for FES-UA. The last page of the bill has a section that says "The center must consult with parents of a student with a disability participating in the scholarship program in the development and revision of the guidelines..." So, they did include that, although it may need to be revised to say "parents of students" instead of "parents of a student" to ensure multiple perspectives, but that seems like a minor correction compared to the rest of the issues that aren't included at all. My question is why are we not suggesting the same sort of guidelines for PEP? It would make more sense to require a collaboration with parents and the SFOs, and perhaps with an advisory board of "Choice Navigators" since the language for that is already in there. Homeschool evaluators are at least knowledgable enough about homeschooling that we could trust their input probably better than the SFOs alone. Also, I think parents really need a working definition of instructional materials to use, because everyone is simply complaining about electives and the reps aren't listening because they believe elective classes are still covered. I think most of us have quit mentioning digital devices because it seems impossible to have something added now that it seems like they are trying to take most of what we have away.

Thank you so much for this explanation. Does the DOE have the authority to allow an exception or do we for sure have to wait until next year before any change could be made?