I think parents that choose to reenroll their students before the end of the disbersement period should simply be required to pay back a pro rated portion of the funds.

I wanted to add to my comment here, because I received more information about where the request to change the disbersement into 10 seperate payments came from. From the Facebook post, it seems that this request came from the FLDOE as a result of students who were pulled from school getting double funded. While these types of issues should be avoided, it seems like a sweeping change for a problem that was the result of a very small subset of the population of PEP and UA recipients, and one that could easily be remedied by sticking to the 4/1/25 application deadline, or simply by conducting a more thorough audit of students switching to PEP or UA mid year, if the deadline was extended (I know the deadline does not apply to UA students, but since UA typically fills, it still seems like a similar situation). Funding is already often delayed, and reimbursement requests are inconsistent and often erroneously processed, resulting in further delays before parents see money back for expenses. I would encourage HEF to work with our legislators to find a solution to the double funding issue that doesn't negatively affect the majority of parents, who are either renewals or families that complete an entire year with the scholarship. Another example of how the 10 disbursement rule would negatively affect families falls with those that utilize FLVS Flex (not fulltime) for several courses. Each segment is $375, and a smaller disbursement would mean my students could not afford to start all 3 of their FLVS courses at the same time, significantly disadvantaging them compared with public school students, who have an entire year to complete a course. We (and many scholarship families) use FLVS for some courses because we are guaranteed to be able to use scholarship funds (they are a direct pay provider and have certified teachers), the curriculum is standardized and allows students to prepare for college entrance requirements (ie they offer AP and honors courses), and because some families intend to send their students back to public school at some point. FLVS is an excellent resource, and one legislators should be encouraging students to use. 10 payments will make it more difficult to access these and other high level courses from outside providers, resulting in a lower quality of education overall, and more financial burden for those parents who choose to proceed and put these expenses on a credit card.

Please advocate against the currently language in this bill. It will create a lot of headaches for parents and result in students having a more difficult time accessing services. We have had PEP for two years , and Here are some of the issues I see: 1) dividing payments up more frequently makes it difficult for parents to pay for curriculum and classes and big ticket items, many of which are concentrated in the beginning of the year. For example, we pay yearly for several classes, and if this bill passes I would not be able to submit those reimbursements in early fall, but would have to wait until enough money had acrued. Parents are able to manage their children’s funding without additional disbursements, and bigger ticket items (like the cello we will be purchasing for my student) would also take longer to get reimbursed as we would have less $ available at each disbursement. For example, each fall I pay for yearly orchestra, cello class, 3 FLVS flex classes and an online math class for my students. The total of this is approximately $2500. If I only receive $800 per month, I would have to wait 3 months to submit all these, meaning we will have to put them on a credit card, and pay interest. If I get $2000 in the first of only 4 disbursements, I am much more quickly going to recieve reimbursement and be able to continue to pay for other educational expenses. Step up has also struggled to send our money in a timely fashion, so having more disbursements would likely worsen this issue. This effect would be further worsened for families of limited financial means, because they would not be able to buy bigger ticket items or even pay for classes up front and wait longer to be able to submit a reimbursement. 2) the second issue is the background check. As homeschoolers we interface with many small businesses in the community. Requiring them to complete a background check at their expense is a burden for them and would drive up costs. It is also unnecessary as we often stay for classes and would complicate reimbursements which already suffer from a lack of consistent processing. Can you imagine submitting a background check for every gym employee, soccer coach, art teacher etc that your child attends? Even for online tutoring? This section of the Bill takes more power away from parents and will limit our provider options. My child’s 80 year old cello teacher is not going to get a background check for us- nor should she have to, if she is not a direct provider. 3) taking the funding away for secondary education. Families with older kids are budgeting their current expenses and planning to use some of this $ for post secondary education. Removing this option is unfair and disincentivizes parents to save money now for future expenses. 4) I realize that this bill also allows PEP parents to purchase electronic devices. While that is nice, it is not in any way worth these negative changes. Please help us busy homeschool moms by advocating for changed language and against these provisions in the bill.

Crystal, I have submitted a qualifying invoice for a HEIP for 24/25 that states it is non refundable. SUFS changed the amount to cover only registeration fees and said I was not able to submit for tuition until 7/1. This is directly contrary to your post on this subject above- how can I proceed and how can we hold them accountable for what they told you?