What Step Up was saying about PEP the week of July 6

This was filed as a briefing on July 6, 2026. It is not a sent Tuesday issue and does not imply email history. Live program windows live on /now.

This is a look-back for the week of July 6, 2026. It is not a sent Tuesday issue, and it is not a live application calendar. The pages below were re-opened on August 19, 2026.

That week, Step Up For Students published a parent story about the Personalized Education Program. It was not a handbook update. Here is what the story said, what the live PEP page says now, and what the 2026 statute display adds — including the part the story blurred. Live windows belong on This month in Florida homeschooling.

What Step Up published that week

On July 6, 2026, Step Up ran a piece by Roger Mooney about Lily Wheeler, a kindergartener in St. Augustine. Her parents, Erica and Courtenay, had chosen a parent-directed year and were using the scholarship Step Up manages.

The article's PEP claims were short. Lily receives the program "that comes with the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship (FTC)." It is "for students who are not enrolled full-time in a public or private school." It "enables parents to customize their children's education by allowing them to spend their scholarship funds on various approved, education-related expenses."

Erica's line became the headline: PEP is "for kids whose needs don't fit inside the one-size-fits-all system."

The family's example was a split week. Lily attends Free Kids Academy, a K–8 microschool in Hastings, twice a week, and does the rest at home. Step Up presented that mix as something the scholarship made possible. Their older son, Liam, is at an online charter — a different path, same household.

The story did not publish an award amount, an application date, or a 2026–27 window. It called the program the "Personal Education Program," dropping the -ized, and it used "home education" the way a parent talks, not the way the statute defines it. Step Up was selling flexibility. It was not teaching the legal category.

What the live PEP page says now

The program page, re-read August 19, 2026, uses the official name: Personalized Education Program. It still frames PEP as a Florida Tax Credit Scholarship education savings account for a student who is not enrolled full time in a public or private school. Families spend the account on approved educational expenses. The page names categories — instructional materials, part-time or hybrid private-school tuition, a home-education instructional program, testing fees, tutoring, Choice Navigator services, and several postsecondary or virtual options — and sends families to the PEP Family Handbook for the actual eligible-expense rules.

On eligibility, the live page says students in grades K–12 who are not enrolled full time in a public or private school may qualify, "open to all families, regardless of household income," if the student is at least 5 by September 1 and younger than 21 on or before September 1 of the application year, and is a Florida resident or fits one of the listed military exceptions.

That is Step Up's current eligibility language, not an award table. The page links a 2026–27 amounts-by-district PDF, says the Legislature sets the amounts each year, and notes that EMA still displays 2025–26 figures while systems are updated. This briefing does not reprint those numbers. The page also carries a closed-window notice and an interest-list signup. Treat that as an August 19 snapshot, not as this briefing's calendar. Check This month in Florida homeschooling before you plan around a date.

What the statute adds — and does not blur

The 2026 Florida Statutes display for 1002.01, opened August 19, defines two different parent-directed programs.

A home education program is sequentially progressive instruction directed by the parent to satisfy attendance under sections 1002.41, 1003.01(16), and 1003.21(1). That is the district-notice, portfolio, annual-evaluation path.

A personalized education program is sequentially progressive instruction directed by the parent to satisfy attendance under 1003.01(16) and 1003.21(1) while registered with an eligible nonprofit scholarship-funding organization under 1002.395. A personalized education student gets the same flexibility and opportunities as 1002.41(3)–(12). The student is not, in that definition, a 1002.41 home-education student.

Section 1002.395 makes the split operational. A student is not eligible for the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship while "participating in a home education program as defined in s. 1002.01(1)." PEP is not a stipend you add on top of a district home-education file. It replaces that status.

The parent of a student who will not be enrolled full time in a public or private school applies as a personalized education student, signs an agreement with the organization, submits a student learning plan and revises it at least annually before renewal, and must have the student take a nationally norm-referenced test identified by the Department of Education, or a statewide assessment under 1008.22, and send those results to the organization before renewal. The organization is to fund a scholarship after that annual plan is submitted. That is not the 1002.41 evaluation menu.

It is also not FES-UA. A parent may not apply for scholarships under 1002.395 and 1002.394 — the Family Empowerment statute — for the same student at the same time.

One caution: 1002.395 still lists household-income priority bands for Florida Tax Credit awards generally. That is not the same sentence as Step Up's "regardless of household income" eligibility line. Do not flatten them into one rule.

One next step

If this child is already on PEP, follow the scholarship-funding organization's agreement — the learning plan, the approved-expense rules, and the test the statute ties to renewal. Do not copy a county 1002.41 evaluation checklist onto that year.

If you are only considering PEP, read the live program page and the handbook it links, then check This month in Florida homeschooling for the current window. Do not budget from a July parent story, and do not treat a sibling's FES-UA or charter arrangement as the same program.

This is informational, not legal advice. Confirm the live page before you act.

Official references

Opened August 19, 2026, for this look-back of the week of July 6, 2026.