PEP scholarship allows for 'A-plus homeschool experience' for one family

In July, Jessie Pedraza was reading through posts on a Facebook page for mothers who homeschool their children when she saw three words jump off her screen.

Personalized Education Program.

“I responded, ‘Hello. What is this?” Jessie said.

So Jessie texted one of the moms.

Then they met for coffee.

“I picked her brain and got more information,” Jessie said.

This is what she learned:

Florida students not enrolled full-time in private or public schools can access the Personalized Education Program (PEP) through the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship Program, which is managed by Step Up For Students. It operates as an Education Savings Account (ESA), which enables parents to customize their children’s education by allowing them to spend their scholarship funds on various approved, education-related expenses.

Jessie and her husband, John, who live in Naples, had been homeschooling their daughters Annaliyah (now in the fifth grade) and Gianna (third grade) since 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic first closed schools.

“We said, ‘We can do this. We can provide something better and a little bit more tailored to the kid’s needs,’” Jessie said. “COVID, honestly, is what pushed us, so we went full-time.”

After learning about PEP, which was added to the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship for the 2023-24 school year, Jessie applied and was accepted.

“PEP has allowed us to level up our homeschool experience,” she said. “It gives us the opportunity to really create an A-plus homeschool experience versus an A or B-plus.

“It is really growing the homeschool experience.”

Jessie and John have teaching experience from their prior professions.

They use a homeschooling curriculum for reading, spelling, science, history, language arts, and math. They paid for it out of pocket for this school year because it was purchased before they received the scholarship, but the ESA will cover the curriculum in future years.

This year, Jessie and John are using the ESA for field trips and memberships to STEM programs near their home in Naples.

They also use it for the physical education portion of their daughters’ education. Annaliyah is enrolled in martial arts and recently earned her first belt.

“That's been huge,” Jessie said, “because her confidence has just gone up. And that would not have been a possibility if we had not gotten the scholarship.”

Gianna has joined a local gym that has a program aimed at kids, ages 7-11.

“They focus on developing the overall athleticism of kids,” Jessie said. “Gianna is 8. She’s still trying to figure out what she’s interested in. This will focus on athleticism, agility, building muscles. From there, we can get a little more specific.”

Both girls have joined the local 4-H association. Annaliyah is in the cooking program, and Gianna takes crocheting.

“The cooking is actually a year-long project,” Jessie said. She can put together a portfolio and learn about nutrition. These are life skills that she’s going to have, and this became an opportunity because of the scholarship.

“I tell them, ‘You guys can do this, and you guys can do that.’ I don't know if they're as excited (about the scholarship) as I am. I think to them, they're just like, ‘Oh, mom makes it happen.’ But it’s just been a huge blessing for us.”

The cooking and crocheting, the gym and martial arts, and even some of the field trips Annaliyah and Gianna take with other homeschool students in Collier County wouldn’t have been available to them before they received the scholarship.

“When you're homeschooling, you have to look at what are the priorities first, right? And then those extracurriculars come in second,” Jessie said. “So, the scholarship, for us, allows us to place the same kind of priority on the extracurriculars. This is a good overall experience. They’re not missing anything that a student (who attends a school) would have access to.”

Jessie is a co-leader of a local homeschool group with 10 mothers and 30 kids. The mothers know the ins and outs of homeschooling. Jessie is somewhat surprised she didn’t learn of PEP until its second year. When she did, she spoke to parents who received the scholarship and researched it on the Step Up website.

She also attended a PEP meeting in Naples hosted by Step Up program administrators.

“I had all this information, but you always want to go straight to the source, and the source was here,” Jessie said. “[They] solidified it. I said, ‘OK, this is it. This is the direction that we're going,’ and it's been good. Well, it's great, actually.”

Roger Mooney, manager, communications, can be reached at [email protected].