Originally, the legislators were planning to make it a scholarship/voucher available to all home education families, which would have meant that any future regulations added to the program would have affected home education law in the state. This was why all the alerts went out (from Brenda and from other organizations) encouraging parents to contact their legislators.
However, that issue did get resolved in the updated wording of HB1.
Brenda worked to get the legislators to create a separate option for parents to meet compulsory attendance requirements, ( a separate chapter of law) from home education in statute, so that if regulations are added to this program in the future, they will be imposed on parents who have chosen traditional home education and will not impact home education laws in our state.
In the end, this is what happened. PEP is considered separate from home education under statute.
We now have SIX options for compulsory attendance in the state:
--public school
--private school
--parochial school
--home education
--private tutor
--personalized education program
Because home education and PEP are two separate options, any regulations added to PEP in the future will not affect home education law. (We have another FAQ going into more detail on the differences between PEP and home education, and why this separation matters, here.)
The PEP scholarship program is set up to match the home education law in terms of opportunities and benefits. (That is included in the statute.) But because PEP is such a complicated program, and so new, we still don't have all the answers on how that's going to work.
Brenda feels safe for the 20,000 students who will be awarded the scholarship THIS year. But moving forward, there could be more regulations added to the statutes, so we just need to keep an eye on things.
NOTE: Having to watch home education law and changes is not a new thing. Brenda and HEF are constantly keeping an eye on potential changes and anything that could impact home education... and as we said, this is nothing new. Brenda has been constantly keeping this watch for 35 years--that's why we need a full-time lobbyist in the capitol.