What Counts as a Home Education Instructional Program Under PEP, and Why the Answer Depends on Your Funding Organization

If you have paid for a weekly co-op class, a drop-off enrichment academy or a science lab series with PEP funds, you have used the category called a home education instructional program. If you have been told by one parent that a program is covered and by another that it was denied, you have met the problem with that category: Florida law authorizes the expense but never defined what qualifies. Here is where things stand in fall 2026.

What the category is

PEP's statute lists tuition and fees for full-time or part-time enrollment in a home education instructional program among eligible expenses. It is an expense category, not a legal status. Enrolling in one does not change your home education registration, and it is separate from your PEP account itself. In practice it is how families pay for the classes, co-ops and programs that make up part of a child's sequential instruction: a Tuesday science lab, a writing workshop, a three-day-a-week academic program.

Why the answer depends on who holds your account

Because the statute is silent on provider criteria, each scholarship funding organization applies its own test. Step Up For Students asks whether the parent selected the program as part of parent-directed instruction, whether it adds to or enriches the child's learning, and whether it is operated by a business rather than an individual, with narrow exceptions. AAA Scholarship Foundation looks for a publicly reviewable program description and a published tuition and fee schedule, and excludes full-time programs at schools. A third funding organization publishes no test at all. The same program can be a routine purchase under one organization and a question under another.

What changed in 2026

• A statewide definition was proposed and died. Senate Bill 318 would have set uniform requirements for these programs, including background screening for providers who receive scholarship tuition. It did not pass; the bill died on March 13, 2026.
• Step Up relaxed two of its own criteria in July. A published fee schedule is no longer an eligibility test, and the physical-location requirement was removed, according to families and providers tracking the purchasing guide. A fee schedule is still needed for a provider to set up direct billing in EMA.
• Live online instruction is routed elsewhere. Step Up treats live virtual classes under its approved online provider category, and full-time online instruction is not permitted under PEP.

What to get in writing

Because the rules differ and can shift mid-year, the protection is documentation. Save a dated copy of the provider's program description, the current purchasing guide language for your funding organization, the provider's legal name, fee schedule and refund policy, and an itemized invoice showing the student's name and service dates. If a program is not obviously in the category, ask your funding organization to confirm the category in writing before you pay anything nonrefundable. A deposit paid on an assumption is the most common way this category costs families money.

Action items

• Identify which funding organization holds your PEP account; the test you must meet is theirs.
• Read the current PEP purchasing guide's section on instructional programs; it is updated more than once a year.
• Before paying a deposit, ask the provider whether other PEP families have been paid through your organization, and by which route.
• Keep the dated documents above in the same folder as your receipts.

Co-ops and enrichment programs serving Florida scholarship families are listed in our vendor directory and on the co-ops directory, with the spending routes explained in the Step Up guide.

My Learning Source is an independent marketplace and is not affiliated with Step Up For Students or the Florida Department of Education. Program rules and amounts change every cycle — confirm details on the official program pages before making financial decisions.