Taking control of their children's education with the help of the PEP scholarship

Gabriel Lynch III was born five months early and weighed 1.8 ounces when he entered this world fighting for his life. He spent his first three months in an Orlando hospital.

When he was just weeks old, he was removed from an incubator and airlifted to a Tampa hospital for heart surgery. By then, Gabriel already had surgery on his eyes.

He developed a grade 4 brain bleed, which doctors told his parents, Krystle and Gabriel II, could lead to cerebral palsy.

It didn’t.

“He had a lot of issues,” Krystle said, “but God is good.”

Krystle chronicled it all in her book, “Miracles do Happen. A mother's journey through preterm birth, loss and triumph.”

A picture of tiny Gabriel dominates the cover. He is hooked up to tubes with bandages over both eyes. He’s barely bigger than the length of his mom’s two hands as she holds him.

A current photo of Gabriel might include a piano, which he can play.

Or him holding the book about his faith, which he wrote when he was 13.

Or a cap and gown.

Gabriel, who turns 19 in August, graduated high school in May, having been homeschooled during the past school year with the help of the Personalized Education Program (PEP) that comes with the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship (FTC). The FTC is managed by Step Up For Students.

Signed into law in 2023 as part of HB1, PEP provides an Education Savings Account (ESA) for students who are not enrolled fulltime in a public or private school. The ESA allows parents to customize their children’s education by spending their scholarship funds on a variety of approved, education-related expenses.

“The PEP scholarship has been a blessing,” Krystle said.

All three of her sons received PEP scholarships last year. Before that, they received FTC scholarships and attended private schools near their Apopka home. Gabriel will attend Seminole State College in Lake Mary this fall, while his younger brothers – Kingston (eighth grade) and Zechariah (sixth grade) will continue to receive PEP scholarships.

“There were just certain things about their education that my husband and I needed to take control of,” Krystle said. “As a parent we know, and we want to control their education, so we decided to homeschool them.”

What Krystle wanted more than anything else was the ability to tailor the education toward each of her sons’ interests and needs.

“They all have different learning paths,” she said.

For Gabriel, that was an opportunity to use the ESA for dual enrollment. He took English, psychology, and music appreciation courses through the dual enrollment program at Oklahoma Christian University.

He also used his ESA for piano, guitar, and voice lessons and a tutor he worked with three times a week. His curriculum included Spanish I and II, music, statistics, and personal finance.

Kingston has improved in math since being homeschooled because he now has access to a tutor, both during and after school. He will take computer science and coding this school year. Krystle would like him to dual enroll once he reaches high school.

Zechariah is academically gifted, according to his mom. He studied above grade level as a fifth-grader and will do so again this year when his course load will include advanced classes. Krystle is trying to prepare him for advanced placement classes when he reaches high school.

Krystle is also researching hybrid learning opportunities for Kingston and Zechariah.

“That's a game-changer right there because my kids want social interaction, but I don't want them to be in school all five days,” Krystle said. “I can send them to school once or twice a week and they can learn a subject during that time, but then the rest of the subjects I teach at home.”

All PEP students are required to take a yearly state-approved norm-referenced test. (The list of tests can be found here.) The boys took the Stanford Achievement Test Series, Tenth Edition (SAT10).

“We just love the fact that PEP gives students the opportunity to be their best selves,” Krystle said. “They can have guitar lessons. They can have singing lessons. They can have acting lessons. They can have reading tutors, language arts tutors.

“The sky’s the limit, and we just love that.”

Music is a big part of Gabriel’s life. He played the piano in an Advent Health commercial and placed first in the Sacred Heart Music Competition in May.

He would like to be a composer.

“I’ve had a passion for music since I was 8,” he said.

He also has a passion for social media, with more than 17,000 followers on TikTok and nearly 5,000 on Instagram (GABE4_christ). He has a YouTube channel and a podcast.

His book, “The Destined Place of Living,” is about his faith. He is an ordained minister and a motivational speaker for youth.

Through the Florida Parent-Educators Association, which serves homeschooled families, Gabriel was able to attend a prom and participate in a graduation ceremony in May at the Gaylord Palms Resort and Convention Center in Kissimmee. That’s also where he won the music competition.

It brought an end to his high school education and his one year being homeschooled.

“I will say that homeschooling was one of the best decisions that my parents have made,” Gabriel said. “It gave me more freedom to study music.”

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