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DISCORD ANNOUNCEMENT!
Welcome! Get the latest on how to join our discord
1Who Do You Know?
Do you personally know or have connections with a Florida Senator, Florida House Representative, etc? Let us know!
12025 Legislative Updates
The place to follow for updates and special alerts regarding the 2025 Legislative session!
7Questions and Answers
Have a question about home education in Florida? Post it here, and one of our HEF Admins will answer!
48Connect with Evaluators
Interact with qualified Florida homeschool evaluators
10Scholarships
Info on available scholarships for home educated students in Florida
123PEP - FAQ
All of these questions are regarding the Personalized Education Program, introduced in HB1 known commonly as PEP.
84FES-UA Q&A
Questions about the FES-UA scholarship? Post them here and an HEF Admin will answer!
17New to Home Education
Connect with home educators with years or even decades of experience. No fear - dive in and get help!
1Co-Op Leaders
Interact with co-op leaders in your area
4Laws + Q&A
Info about Florida's home education laws, and a place to ask questions about them!
2Urgent Issues
Find info on urgent issues affecting home educating families
0Resources Made by Parents
This section is for helpful, parent-created resources that you wish to share with other home educating or PEP parents.
2Special Needs
For parents of children with special needs to connect & share experience, resources, and more.
4HEF Ambassadors
A place for communicating with our Ambassadors! (If you'd like to become an official HEF Ambassador, let us know!)
2Testing
Info about any related to standardized tests for home ed and/or PEP students. Feel free to ask questions here, too!
5Review Committee Volunteers
Find out more about the Home Education Review Committee required by statute, and comment if you're willing to volunteer!
12024 Legislative Updates
Updates on what's happening in 2024 Legislative sessions.
27Social Media Contests
A Place to house contests or ideas from social media.
1
- Questions and AnswersWhat is the actual rule about reimbursement timing? I submitted a reimbursement request for a 3/31/2025 purchase of an online curriculum (book lists and lesson plans). The curriculum is available from February 2025 through June 30, 2026. I am using the curriculum now and intend to use it through the year. I was only reimbursed for a third of the cost of the curriculum and was told to submit the rest of the charge after July 1 because Step Up is "not yet reimbursing for the 2025-2026 school year." The Step Up representative said, “Your parent handbook states that reimbursements should be submitted during the school year in which the curricula will be used, but the proof of purchase may be from the immediately preceding fiscal year. You can submit anything now for the 24/25 school year. If anything such as a subscription or other item extends into the 25/26 school year or if it is to be utilized in 25/26 you will currently only be eligible for the portion from 24/25 school year and the remainder will be submitted on or after July 1st, 2025. Anything after July 1st will be reviewed as the 25/26 school year. Please resubmit for the remaining cost for this request on or after 7/1/25.” My understanding from the handbook was that curriculum purchased in the immediately preceding fiscal year prior to the CURRENT school year could be reimbursed during THIS school year, not that all curriculum had to exclusively be reimbursed during the year it is used? Applying the handbook statements regarding 2023-2024 purchases to materials purchased during the 2024-2025 school year penalizes those of us who school during the summer or purchase early to prepare for the next school year. Doesn't the handbook say that reimbursement requests are specific to the year when the purchase was made? Is the Step Up representative’s interpretation accurate? I know others who have had the same purchase denied until next school year and some who had the entire thing reimbursed this year.
- DISCORD ANNOUNCEMENT!AND YOU'RE INVITED. Here is the link to join. https://discord.gg/BH2zJcBQgC How to get started: Discord has created a guide for beginners if you're unfamiliar. It's got tips, tricks, and Q&A about WHAT EVEN IS DISCORD. Check it out here: https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/articles/360045138571-Beginner-s-Guide-to-Discord One of my favorite aspects of this (Jason) is that you can be around all of the conversations, but you don't have to be swallowed up by the notifications in them. You can mute specific channels by disabling the notifications on some channels while keeping others active. Here's a quick support article on how to do that. https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/articles/209791877-How-do-I-mute-and-disable-notifications-for-specific-channels There are so many beautiful aspects of having a community together online where we can live voice chat, or post announcements in message boards on a local level or a state-wide level. We can host townhall Q&A discussions with hundreds of participants if we want. We can host a prayer group for a handful of people, or the entire state. We can give leadership a place to discuss things, setup moderators, and provide a place for people who want to volunteer to help us coordinate events, fundraising, important messages about legislation updates, etc. This is a massive endeavor and it takes a lot of work to maintain, so any volunteers are welcome to apply. SHARE THE COMMUNITY: The invitation link above is set to not expire, so feel free to share it and invite your friends. I ALREADY HAVE A COMMUNITY: That's great! You're still invited. If you are someone who runs a community, let me know and we can setup a special place for your existing community in our discord and you can have your own channels to continue here. Why? Discord offers customizable moderation options. We can hold people accountable to communication standards, and we can easily share documents and links as well as providing a measure of privacy that public groups (like Facebook, etc.) can't achieve with their current settings. So, if you're thinking about joining or migrating your group here - or even just bringing a large handful of active community chatters - then do it and we'll help you onboard them.
- Questions and AnswersWe have a Hillsorough county homeschool parent who is being asked to submit test scores in addition to her annual homeschool evaluation form. This is against the state mandate requirements, correct?