Haha we've had the same exact experience. Let's say I searched Star Wars (since after 30 years I've finally seen one of the movies with our kids haha)....I get like 10 results of random Star Wars stuff. But then I search Legos and I'll find two dozen Star Wars Legos sets haha. It's very inconsistent and I find many things on accident when searching for unrelated items.

Ahh yes! This was one of my thoughts but I never went back to see if there was a spending cap. I did see they have flashlights in the MSS, so my example isn't very good either haha.

I found the LEGO example strange. There's a category specificially listed under the maniuplatives and doesn't require any type of pre-approval, as you mentioned. My thought was they used it as an example, where a curriculum may require a specific item that isn't already approved in the guide. For example, if your curriculum required a flashlight, or some other item that isn't obviously approved or in the scholarshop, you can use that form to get a flashlight approved and use the curriculum to show you need it. I also found the Q&A really unhelpful. They were obvious questions and some repetitive. Spending a few more minutes on the Q&A, they could knock out a lot more questions. I'll add the MSS is an awesome resource, but the orgazination needs A LOT of work. You really have to search and sift through everything at length. I've spent hours going through page after page of irrelevant items in a search.

Thank you, I learned from the webinar today there's a queu of submissions. So I'll definetly get to submitting our asap.

Wow, I guess I could start submitting all the easy ones and leave the complicated receipts after further clarification. I didn't want to submit them all just to find out I was doing something wrong, in regard to my original questions on this thread.

Has anyone received a successful reimbursement yet? It's been about two weeks since we've submitted a couple, and I wanted to wait until those were approved before I submit more.

Thank you! I'm looking forward to the webinar tomorrow and hopefully we'll get further clarification on this process. I saw StepUp just put out a video on YouTube, but it was just a how to naviage the reimbursement steps on the website. We made our first order in the Scholar Shop and that has been very convenient!

Thank you so much! We paid out of pocket for 2 months of private school and their books and fees. I'm hoping there's a way we can get some of that reimbursed. That was also a really bad experience unfortunately.

Following up on that question. We applied in the beginning of June and were plagued with glitches. We were finally awarded FTC/FES-EO for all of our kids on Sep 13th and filled out the PEP surveys on Sep 14th. I believe the deadline was Sep 15th and we had everything in by then. However, we didn't get the PEP award until today. Do you think we'll be able to reimburse everything in the 1st quarter? Thanks so much for your work! It's been such a stressful process haha. EDIT: We just received funding for all three kids shortly after I wrote this. I'm assuming that's for the first quarter?

Thank you, we submitted it again two days ago and still haven't seen any progress.

Thank you! A few days ago we received an automated email letting us know one of the applications would be expiring soon after being on hold for 60 days. I replied to the email, not anticipating a response, and was pleasantly surprised to find they contacted the IT dept and fixed the issue holding up our applications. I called StepUp this morning to confirm everything, and we received an award ID and filled out the PEP survey/application. It seems about 3/4 of the calls to StepUp will get you someone who's very helpful and polite. If you don't get a good answer on one call, try calling again. We decided to cut our losses from the money we gave the school for their books and first two months of tuition and go straight for the PEP scholarships. Any idea if we'll be able to reimburse those costs with the PEP funds? I'm thinking not. Praying we're able to get a PEP award soon :)

We seem to be in limbo as well. We applied in early June for the FTC-EO (2 kids) & FTC-UA (1 kid). In EMA it shows the EO applications are "submitted" and the UA application is "on hold". We've been told by three different people at StepUp the applications are approved, but a glitch has caused them not to receive an award yet. We're in queue to be fixed and we were told it would take about 7 days to get an award ID. That was over two weeks ago and still no change. Our kids were enrolled in a private school and we've been paying out of pocket while we wait for the award. However, we've had so many issues with the school and pulled our kids last week and going back to homeschooling. I don't think we could continue paying out of pocket for much longer anyway. We should be in the tier 1 priority for PEP and I'm concerned we may be out of luck for ANY scholarship this year if the 20k limit is hit soon. I'm not sure if we'll be able to get reimbursed for what we've already paid the private school this year either. Ugghh this is frustrating. Aside from venting, I guess I can confirm they're having glitches and some of their call reps are clueless, while others seem to know the status of applications.