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Florida PEP Scholarship for Homeschool Curriculum

2026-10-18 · 7 min · English

If you homeschool in Florida, the Personalized Education Program is probably the most useful thing the state has done for you in years. It is also the thing families ask us about most, and the thing most publishers are happy to be vague about so that you will assume their products qualify.

We are not going to do that. Here is what the program is, how the money moves, what the published rules say about curriculum and instructional materials, and what you have to confirm yourself before you spend anything.

What PEP actually is

The Personalized Education Program is an education savings account for Florida students who are educated at home rather than enrolled in a public school. It is administered by Step Up For Students, a scholarship funding organization. Instead of a tuition payment going to a school, money sits in an account in your student's name, and you spend it on approved educational expenses.

Two things about it matter more than anything else:

• It is not income-dependent. There is no earnings ceiling that quietly disqualifies working families.
• It is roughly $8,000 per student per year. Award amounts are set by the state and can change, so treat that as the order of magnitude rather than a promise.

Participation is capped and awards are not automatic. Apply, wait for the award, and do not spend against money you have not been told you have.

What the published rules say about curriculum

Step Up's own purchasing guide lists the expense categories that PEP allows. Two of them are the ones homeschool families care about:

Other categories cover tuition and fees at eligible schools, testing and assessment fees, part-time tutoring, and contracted services from a public school or district.

Three details in that guide catch families out:

1. Curriculum that is not publicly available needs a pre-authorization request before purchase. If a publisher does not sell openly to the public at a listed price, expect extra paperwork.
2. Self-paced, pre-recorded online courses fall under curriculum. Live online instruction has to go through the approved online or virtual provider category instead, and scholarship funds cannot pay for full-time online instruction.
3. An approved pre-authorization does not confirm that the provider is eligible. Those are two separate questions.

The part where we do not overreach

UpOnly Learning is not an approved PEP vendor, and we are not telling you our products are reimbursable. We would like them to be. We are not in a position to say they are.

Step Up For Students is the only party who can answer that, and their own guidance says to contact your scholarship funding organization with questions about whether a purchase is eligible before you make it, and to verify eligibility for reimbursement before you pay out of pocket. That is their instruction, not our hedge. Follow it.

So: go to stepupforstudents.org, open your account, read the current purchasing guide, and ask. If the answer is no, you have lost nothing. If the answer is yes, you knew before you spent.

How the money moves

There are four routes, and they are not interchangeable.

• MyScholarShop. Step Up's marketplace. You buy from inside it and the item ships to the Florida mailing address on your account.
• Find Providers. For services such as tutoring, from vendors who have already been approved.
• Direct pay. For approved pre-authorization requests, purchased through MyScholarShop.
• Reimbursement. You pay, then submit the request in the EMA portal. Cash payments to private sellers are not eligible, which in practice means no marketplace handoffs and no paying a friend for her old curriculum.

If you are buying from a publisher's own website, reimbursement is usually the route, which makes your receipt the whole ballgame.

Keeping receipts so the reimbursement survives

Reimbursement requests fail for boring reasons. Avoid them:

• Save the itemized receipt, not the card statement. A line that says the merchant name and a dollar amount proves you spent money. It does not prove what you bought.
• Keep the order confirmation email too. It usually carries the product names, grades and quantities that the receipt abbreviates.
• Pay from an account you can produce statements for. Not a relative's card, not cash.
• Note which student the purchase was for. One file per student per year, even if it is just a folder on your laptop.
• Screenshot the product page. Price, title and description, on the day you bought it. If a reviewer asks what "grade 3 workbook bundle" was, you have the answer.
• Do not mix a PEP purchase with a non-educational one in the same order. Split the cart.

A tip that has nothing to do with scholarships and everything to do with sanity: do this weekly, the same evening you fill in the attendance log. Rebuilding a year from memory in April is the part nobody enjoys. Our printable record-keeping pack exists for exactly that reason.

What we sell, in case the answer comes back yes

So that you can price it out while you wait: printable workbooks are $9.99 each; a subject bundle covering kindergarten through grade 5 is $39; every subject for one grade is $49; every book we publish in one language is $349. The All Subjects subscription is $39 a month for up to ten students in a household, and Full Access is $1,199 once. Prices and what is in each are on the store and in the pricing section.

Kindergarten through grade 5, nine subjects, in English, Spanish and Portuguese. That is the whole catalog — we do not sell grades 6 through 12 or test prep, and we will not imply otherwise to get a line item on your scholarship paperwork.

A sentence about the law

Scholarship rules, allowable expense lists and state homeschool requirements all change, sometimes mid-year. Nothing here is legal advice, and nothing here replaces what Florida requires of you as a home education family. Confirm the current rules with Step Up For Students and with your county school district.

If you want to see whether the curriculum is any good before you involve anyone's money: the first topic of every grade in every subject is free, and so is a sample workbook. Start at the curriculum page, or read the FAQ if you have the kind of question that deserves a straight answer first.