We, the parents of homeschool children in the State of Florida, are grateful for the opportunity to receive scholarship funds, made possible by Governor DeSantis’ signing of HB1 in March 2023, to help us homeschool our children through the Personalized Education Program (PEP). Some of us have not been funded and we are not asking for access to funds because of feelings of entitlement or greed.

We are uniting with other parents to show the problems in the disbursement of funds. This is a new system but it is becoming an inefficient system which is not reaching its full potential and these problems must be addressed in the beginning so they do not become entrenched and do not cause further problems in the future. Also, some of the parents have been funded but are running into problems. These problems and some solutions are addressed in the petition and in the comments of the signees.

We ask you, supporters of children who are homeschooled and parents, to sign this petition asking several governmental offices including the Florida Governor’s, the Governor’s Chief Inspector General, our districts' state representatives, the Department of Education, and the Committee for K-12 Education in Florida, to take notice and fix problems associated with the administration and disbursement of PEP funds.

The overall picture is this: SUFS is the main organization which handles funds that average seven to eight thousands dollars per child per year in the state of Florida in the category of the scholarship called Personalized Education Program (PEP). SUFS also handles other program funds including the funds for the Unique Abilities (UA) program which is also seeing lots of delays and problems, most likely to the growth of regulations in regards to home education in the management of PEP. AAA is another Student Funding Organization which is not functioning properly at all, according to reports by parents. Here we will focus on SUFS's handling of PEP.

Many families applied for the PEP scholarship after the application process was opened and many received access to the funds. However, even though we are drawing near to the end of the 1st school semester and to the end of the year 2023, many parents who have applied and have already been enrolled into the FTC/FES-EO programs are not given access to funds.

At first we thought, as we were told by SUFS, these are just problems and glitches with the new system and that SUFS needs more time to adjust and we need to be patient. So we waited patiently because we do understand; new programs take time to become established.

Some parents who have signed this petition have included their own stories in the comments of this petition to give you a picture of the variety of problems that exist. We encourage parents who sign this petition to use the comments section of this petition to let their ideas be heard, to bring to light the problems and present ideas on solutions:

We will review some of the issues present:

1. Random Discrimination: Many students are not given the PEP status after being eligible and being awarded; also, the income tier system not being followed, early applicants are waitlisted while later applicants are funded quickly.

Many have applied and within a matter of a day or two we are told they are eligible, accepted into the scholarship program and on the online portal that they create, it shows that their child is eligible and awarded the total amount allotted by the state to that child, according to the county of residence. After this application, parents are required to fill out a few forms and then are supposed to wait to be given the PEP status and given access to funds to use for their child’s education.

However, this switch to the PEP status is not happening for many children. Some are switched to PEP and we see the stories on Facebook and wonder why is SUFS telling us that they have an income tier system and first come first serve system but not follow it as stated in the statutes of PEP? Some of us have applied since the beginning and are in the lowest income tier and are still not funded.

We see testimonies of parents on Facebook saying they applied in September and are funded, whereas people who applied much earlier are still not funded. Then the funding window of two weeks passed in September when SUFS had stated we would be funded but it is still not happening. If we were to send our children to private school then the funding would be submitted by SUFS to the private school but not if we are homeschooling. We see this as random discrimination against some homeschooled children. We understand it is a new system but it is not being implemented fairly.

In fact since beginning this petition, many of us who have been waiting for the PEP status are now being told suddenly that we are on a waiting list, whereas months ago, when we called the SUFS helpline, they told us we just have to wait until the next disbursement of funds in September which is stated online within the Parent Handbook on the SUFS website. Also, months ago, the 20 000 PEP students cap had not been reached and we had already applied. Now the cap has been reached and we are on a waitlist. That is unfair and it is because this is turning to a huge regulatory system controlling homeschoolers. It is also strange that we were waitlisted after signing this petition.

2. Even some children who are funded, are not given access to funds:

As we began to search the Facebook support groups for answers we saw that many parents are in the same boat and not only that, parents whose children have been accepted into PEP are facing growing structural problems. Once a student is switched over to PEP, as required by SUFS, they withdraw from the public school system but some are still not receiving funds. These kids are not in the school system but are waiting in limbo for SUFS to give the scholarship they have been awarded. Also, the SUFS system requires that we have our children officially tested at the end of the year so they can see how the program is progressing but we are not getting the funds to use it for progress.

3. Delays in reimbursement to parents because of a burdensome system of authenticating every purchase made by parents:

First of all, we understand that SUFS has put into place certain rules in order to prevent parents from committing fraud. However, the results show that the policies were drawn in such a way that they tie the homeschooling parent down into a burdensome and wasteful system of accountability which is unreasonable and hinders the choices that homeschool parents make. It also makes it difficult for SUFS to manage everything they have set up, causing delays in reimbursement and disbursements of funds.

The following is the general gist of the process of using the funds. Every purchase that homeschoolers make with their own money and which the parents request scholarship reimbursement for, has to be reviewed by processors at SUFS. That seems to be a very lengthy and detailed process that is probably taking up SUFS's administrative time and resources, resulting is delays in everything else.

Using the PEP scholarship parents cannot use the funds to help with the cost of homeschooling the way they choose and plan. Instead, in order to receive the funds, parents have to purchase products and services that are in the online shop created by SUFS. If they want to purchase products outside of the SUFS shop, they must pay out of pocket and apply for reimbursement. This is also just simply unfair to people who do not have extra money to pay out of pocket.

4. This system is discriminatory against lower income people who do not have out of pocket funds to pay in advance and wait for reimbursements and limits the use of funds to categories set by SUFS:

Instead of paying out of pocket, many parents end up just using the online SUFS shop because it is so much easier than buying and then applying for reimbursements.

For example, a parent asked in one of the support groups regarding a science curriculum offered in the SUFS shop and wanted to know what level should she purchase for her child. The reason she wanted to purchase this product is that she had already planned on using another curriculum for her child which was not in the shop and she could not purchase it out of pocket and wait for reimbursement. This is not an isolated case. It is becoming entrenched into the system. For example, SUFS offers an outdoor science class which is actually all online. That is great for some parents but not all. So then experiences that are actually outdoors have to be paid for by parents and wait for reimbursement with no guarantee of reimbursement because the purchase may never get approved by the processors.

These types of limitations apply to other homeschool experiences as well. For example, if you want to use the scholarship fund for a music teacher, you have to pick from the companies SUFS has picked out unless you have extra money to pay out of pocket for the teacher and then apply for reimbursement. That takes up time and resources we may not have. The reimbursement is taking too long for SUFS to process because they have set up a system with too many controls and guidelines (for example, putting items in limited categories) on how parents are using the funds and that is just clogging up the system.

So then we are forced to use the products and services that are picked out and authorized by SUFS because it is much easier. This takes away the flexibility of our choices.

Homeschooling is about flexibility. Some children learn through field trips and traveling to classes and different locations for community and hands on learning. Parents have transportation costs and budgets set for specific types of learning. For example, some people need a larger internet spending budget, some people need specific teachers, many need special equipment and supplies and furniture for sciences and other subjects, and some need different curricula for different subjects and some need no curriculum at all and create as they learn. There is no way an agency can direct the homeschooling parents' ways of fund allocation.

5. Increasing bureaucratic control:

To remedy this, SUFS has created another chain of control that we must tie ourselves to. If we really want to use another service or product that is not in the list of approved items, we must get pre-authorization to somehow guaranteed that we will be reimbursed. It looks like this part is not set up yet. But once it is set up, one can imagine that the delays to actually use the scholarship funds will get longer.

With the current reimbursement system, many parents who have already purchased or enrolled their children into programs have to withdraw their children from the program because SUFS still has not given them access to the funds and they cannot afford it anymore.

That hurts the children and parents. Not only have the children lost valuable instruction and care time with their parents who have to deal with bureaucracy and debt but they also have to now stop the educational experience they were enrolled in. The child is not winning here.

Even some companies who have chosen to opt into direct payments from SUFS are not getting paid after parents have enrolled their children into their services and to continue operating, they have to use their own company and personal funds. Often these are small mom and pop businesses who do not have the lawyers that big companies have to fight this injustice. We are aware that some of these stories have reached you outside of this petition. Also, we have companies who refuse to be part of this and we don’t blame them. We have heard that it is an expensive and lengthy process to become part of the SUFS agency vendors.

We have to stop this progression of increasing bureaucracy and control over how we homeschool before it becomes worse than the IRS and it easily can with education.

Conclusion:

The StepUp for Students bureaucracy is harming our children because they are trying to prevent fraud in the wrong way. Instead of having our say in the decision making, now we are being tied up with chains to an online red-tape system with decision makers who control us through a scholarship fund. We must spend hours a week dealing with reimbursement requests, rationalizing each unapproved purchase to convince the processor of that purchase with all the details, crashing websites because of too many lists, lists of products we must look through because our own choices are not in the shop and lists that are supposing to be categorized, categories we must adhere to and which do not add up properly in the computer system, hours on the phone and the online “support” chat, endless rules and regulations, money we must pay out of pocket with no reassurance of repayment, funds we cannot use for what we actually need, and if we don’t have money to pay out of pocket or don’t want the middle man then we have no choice but to use the online shop of products and vendors that work directly with SUFS. This is inefficient and wasteful for those who choose freedom. It is a great system for those who like the ease of buying from the agency shop. Do we have to adhere to a system that is so difficult and unreasonable and ends up changing our choices just so we can have "help" with a scholarship to homeschool?

As for the reimbursements; once a parent receives reimbursement, SUFS deposits the money into a USBank Visa card which they send to the parent. There are several problems associated with this system. This bank does not have bank branches in Florida so you must go to the ATMs in gas stations in unsafe neighborhoods to use the machine to withdraw the cash. That puts the parents of homeschoolers and their children in a vulnerable and sometimes dangerous situation. The system does not allow the parents to simply use today’s modern banking technology to reliably transfer the funds to their own bank account. The SUFS handbook makes it seem like you can use PayPal and Venmo but not all bank accounts work well with that and it is causing other problems.

Homeschooling is About Parental Authority and Freedom:

Not only is this system not right to manage and regulate homeschoolers, which is the job only of the parents, but it bodes danger to the freedom and individual power over the decisions we make for our families every day by tying us down to an agency which is ending up managing our homeschooling instead of just disbursing funds. The agency means well but too many controls over what we purchase and how we access funds is stalling the whole thing.

Parents of homeschoolers are asking our supporters to sign this petition to ask our government officials to help us maintain the freedoms and privacy we have and cherish in our homeschool journeys by giving us direct access to the scholarship funds in a timely and efficient manner and also letting us just make our own decisions on how we want to use the scholarship to help us.

Many of us homeschool because we want to control all aspects of our children’s education. A scholarship for homeschoolers has to be designed not to hinder our educational independence.

We believe that educating and raising our children in the way we see fit is central to the future of not only of our own children, but of our nation and of the whole world. Don’t tie us down in a growing procedures of SUFS to control every move we make for money.

Please help us with homeschooling our children in the way we choose. The help we can receive with these funds has marvelous potential to empower homeschooling and you can make it happen.

Thanks for taking the time to read this petition. Please discuss this in your next legislative session as we are already nearing the end of the year 2023 and many have not received their funds and many are having trouble with the process that is set up. We do not want a faulty system to be entrenched into homeschooling to create another overly expensive and inefficient government program.

Sincerely,

People Who Care About Independent Homeschooling in Florida and want to Use Scholarships to Help Children's Education.