JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – The diagnosis was Entamoeba histolytica, which is an infection caused by ingesting an amoeba that produces fatigue, abdominal pain, weight loss, and a few more symptoms you don’t want to have when you are more than 9,000 miles from home.
That’s where Christopher Trinidad happened to be during a visit to his parents’ homeland in the Philippines the summer before the eighth grade.
Born and raised in Jacksonville, Christopher’s immune system was not accustomed to some of the pathogens found in the local food. He had not built up a resistance like residents have. Lying in a hospital bed in the city of Bacolod, while the antibiotics did their thing, Christopher had this thought: “This has to be my science fair project.”
And so it was.
After returning home, Christopher ordered microorganisms online. “Safer organisms,” he said, than the one that waylaid him a few weeks earlier. He experimented with various items found in the kitchen pantry – ginger and garlic – mixed them with water and other ingredients and developed a solution that killed the organisms.
“What if,” Christopher thought, “we use these solutions on the actual thing? This can help so many people.”
His project finished first at a regional science fair.
“Impressive, right? Wait until you hear what he did his freshman year,” said Carla Chin, director of marketing and communications at Bishop Kenny High School in Jacksonville.
Christopher, a sophomore, attends the parochial Catholic school on a Florida education choice scholarship managed by Step Up For Students.
He sat in a chair inside Chin’s office. His father, Greg, sat in another and proudly listened as his son, with a mixture of pride and modesty, described the project that earned first place at a regional science fair and then a bronze medal at the Genius Olympiad and a $15,000 scholarship to the Rochester Institute of Technology at a global competition held in Rochester, New York.
Using an electroencephalogram (EEG), which measures electrical activity in the brain, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and violin music, Christopher was able to predict the moods and emotions of stroke victims who are unable to speak, thus creating a line of communication with doctors.
“By using brain waves, doctors can know what their patients are feeling, which would lead to better decision-making,” he said.
Michael Broach is the Vice Principal at Bishop Kenny and the Director of Mission Integration, as well as the AP Capstone Department chair. He was responsible for approving Christopher’s science project.
“That was one of the most sophisticated projects, I think, that I've seen in my years of being here,” Broach said. “And just the way his mind works is well above his peers. Well above what you would expect of somebody of his age.”
Christopher is 15.
He wants to be a neurosurgeon.
“I’ve always been fascinated with the brain since I was little,” Christopher said. “It controls everything in our body. It’s really interesting, and going into surgery, fixing people's brains is really complex, and that's what I love about it.”
His parents – Greg and Shiela – are both nurses, so Christopher was raised around medical science. Their house is filled with textbooks related to their careers. Christopher has read them all.
The valedictorian of his middle school, Christopher has a 4.3 weighted GPA at Bishop Kenny. He chose to attend the Catholic high school because it aligns with his faith and has a high academic standard.
“It challenges me,” he said. “I know there are other people here I can talk to, and it gives me a greater experience.”
He’s not the only student at Bishop Kenny who knows what an electroencephalogram is and how it works.
While he spends a considerable amount of time working on his science fair projects (keep reading to learn about what his plans are for this year’s project), he’s very active at school. Christopher is a member of the Science Club, Medical Career Club, St. Vincent de Paul Society, campus ministry, and the Brain Brawl. He plays the piano at the monthly mass. He’s also first violin for the Jacksonville Symphony Youth Orchestra.
Listening to his son talk, Greg had one feeling. “Blessed,” he said. “He has a humble heart. We try to remind him always what’s hard.”
Greg understands hard.
Raised in a small town an hour’s plane ride from Manila, Greg’s childhood was humble at best. He went through elementary school with only two pairs of shoes. He caught rides to school on trucks headed to the sugarcane fields on days when his mom couldn’t afford bus fare.
“I didn’t have the opportunity to join the Boy Scouts,” Greg said. “My mom didn’t have the money.”
Greg understood the power of an education and where it could lead him. He became a teacher until, at age 26, he immigrated to the United States in search of the American Dream.
He worked odd jobs and became a certified nursing assistant. From there, he attended nursing school in St. Augustine. He now works as a traveling nurse in the cardiac catheterization labs in hospitals around North Florida. He became a traveling nurse for the pay because he and Sheila support three family members in the Philippines.
That’s why Christopher traveled to the Philippines the summer before eighth grade, to see where his parents’ stories began.
“I wanted him to see and feel the difference of being here in this world compared to a third-world country,” Greg said.
The lesson wasn’t lost on his son.
“I just feel really lucky that I'm here in America and I have more opportunities than some kids have in the Philippines, and I’m not going to let this go to waste,” Christopher said.
Greg said he is grateful for the Florida education choice scholarship that helps pay Christopher’s tuition at Kenny.
“In the Philippines,” he said, “if you don’t have money, you don’t go to school.
“He has this opportunity of having this scholarship, and I'm telling him, you're way more blessed than what other people have in other states. We're so thankful that all these opportunities are coming for our son.”
Christopher’s next opportunity is this year’s science fair, where he will take last year’s project a step further.
“I'm planning to build a rehabilitative exoskeleton so it can help people with movement disabilities,” he said. “I can also use an EEG in that, so they can think about what they're going to do with their exoskeleton, which basically helps them move. It would correlate to their actual thoughts. So, if they wanted to walk, they would be able to think it, then the exoskeleton would help them walk.”
TAMPA, Fla. — Amelia Ramos recalls her oldest child’s first school experience after moving to the Grant Park neighborhood in 2018.
“It was not a good fit,” she said. “She lasted about four months.”
In addition to academics, Ramos cited safety as a big concern.
“You couldn’t even ride a bicycle down the street,” she said.
Ramos found hope after learning about Grant Park Christian Academy, a private school affiliated with the Faith Action Ministry Alliance. The nonprofit organization’s stated mission is “to strengthen neighborhoods through meaningful engagement, collaboration, and strategic partnerships.”
Grant Park Christian Academy prides itself on its record of providing strong academics and spiritually based character development. Ramos learned from the school’s principal about a state education choice K-12 scholarship program administered by Step Up For Students that would help cover the tuition.
With that, Ramos was sold.
Her daughter thrived at Grant Park and now attends a district high school. Her son and twin daughters now attend the private school, which serves 70 students in grades K-8.
“We love the school and the staff,” she said, adding that she appreciates the assurance of knowing that her children are safe when she leaves them at Grant Park Christian Academy.
“If only they had a high school,” she said.
Although there are no plans to add a high school, an expansion will soon more than double the school's capacity, located inside a gated property owned by a non-denominational church.
The project is just one example of a broader statewide trend resulting from the Florida Legislature’s passage of HB 1 in 2023. The landmark legislation made all K-12 students eligible for education choice scholarships regardless of their household income and gave families more flexibility in how they spend their students’ funds.
Putting parents in the driver’s seat supercharged the demand for more learning options.
In the 2023-24 school year, after Gov. Ron DeSantis signed HB 1, Florida saw the largest single-year expansion of education choice scholarships in U.S. history. That growth continued in 2024-25. Recent figures from the Florida Department of Education show that more than 500,000 Florida students were using some type of education savings account.
The expansions at Grant Park Christian Academy and other schools across the state, such as Jupiter Christian School in Palm Beach County, couldn’t come at a better time. The latest figures from Step Up For Students show that the number of approved private schools has surpassed 2,500. That figure doesn’t include a la carte options, including those now being offered by public schools. State figures show 41,000 parents received scholarships in 2024-25 but never used them. According to a survey by Step Up For Students, a third of the 2,739 parents who responded said there were no available seats at the schools they wanted.
The Rev. Alfred Johnson, who founded the ministry alliance and Grant Park Christian Academy in 2014, said the school is just one of the ways the ministry works to support and improve the neighborhood. A look outside the window once a month will show teams of alliance volunteers in neon yellow vests cleaning up roadside trash. Johnson estimates that over the past three years, the group has cleared 70 tons of garbage, including old mattresses, furniture, and household appliances.
Johnson and his volunteers regularly knock on doors and survey residents and business owners about community needs. They also host events; the annual Fall Fest offers families a safe and fun alternative to Halloween trick-or-treating.
“I know what they do to really make a change in this community,” said Hillsborough County Commissioner Donna Cameron Cepeda, a Republican who represents District 5 and the county at large. She said she had known Johnson for years before she ran for office. “You can see the lives, how they have been changed because of the environment they are able to be in now.”
She was among a group of 50 community members at a recent ribbon-cutting ceremony for a new 2,660-square-foot modular building that will open after crews add the finishing touches.
Those attending the event represented a broad swath of community leaders, from local law enforcement officers to staffers at the Temple Terrace Uptown Chamber of Commerce, who brought the ceremonial oversized scissors. A representative of the Hillsborough County Clerk’s Office also attended. So did a group of leaders and students from Cristo Rey Tampa Salesian High School, which has some Grant Park Christian Academy alums.
Hillsborough County Commissioner Gwen Myers, a Democrat whose district includes Grant Park, joined her Republican colleague in praising the alliance and the school. The two commissioners also presented Johnson with a commendation honoring his contributions to the community.
“Our children are our future leaders, and when we can give them the basic foundation of education, they are going somewhere,” Myers said. “Just remember where they got their start, right here in Grant Park. What you’re doing is being a true public servant. Thank you for your vision.”
A husband, father of six, and grandfather of 12, Johnson refers to the students at Grant Park as “our babies” and describes the school as a haven of safety and peace.
“We hardly ever have any fights here,” he said. The school day starts at 7:30 a.m. After-school care is available until 5 p.m. Grant Park also offers summer camp, tutoring, mentoring and career preparation programs for the community, where the median household income stands at $32,216, and 72% of households make less than $50,000 per year. About 20% of the population did not graduate from high school. Although the area still has crime, Johnson said it has decreased over the past five years. Educational opportunities such as Grant Park Christian Academy and adult education and training play a role in improving the area’s quality of life, he said.
Johnson said he has seen many students turn their lives around. He told guests about a boy who was put outside the room for disrupting class on his first day.
“I don’t like this school,” he snarled.
“Give us a chance,” Johnson replied. He encouraged the boy to focus on his studies and respect his teachers. “You’re going to be a great leader and a great man.”
By the second year, the boy’s attitude completely changed. Test results that year showed he had the highest reading score in the school.
“That’s just one of the stories,” he said. “We have a plethora of them.”
SAFETY HARBOR, Fla. – Edelweiss Szymanski turns 10 on a Friday in December. She will celebrate the milestone by running a 5-kilometer race in Daytona Beach. The next day, she’s scheduled to compete in a triathlon.
No pizza party. No theme park.
How many 10-year-olds want to run three miles on their birthday, then swim, bike, and run some more the day after?
“This one does,” Lacey Szymanski said, pointing to her daughter with both index fingers.
Meet Edelweiss, a young triathlete on the rise who’s as tough as the flower she’s named after. Meet her brother, Spartacus, too, 14 months younger and just as tenacious.
The SkiSibs, as they are known throughout Florida’s triathlon community.
The SkiSibs: Spartacus and Edelweiss. (Photo by Roger Mooney)
Their bedrooms are filled with trophies, medals, and plaques – the spoils of reaching the podiums (finishing in the top three) at triathlons, road and bicycle races. The garage of their Safety Harbor home is packed with bicycles.
“We are an active family,” Lacey said.
Lacey and her husband, Jacek, have participated in triathlon relays.
Some mornings, Jacek and the kids can be found riding the bike trails around Pinellas County, waking as early as 3 a.m. so Jacek can get in a long ride before heading to his job as a sergeant with the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office.
If they time it right, and they usually do, the trio will stop along the overlook on the Courtney Campbell Causeway and snack on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches while they watch the sun rise over Tampa Bay.
“We really like watching the sunrise,” Edelweiss said.
She and Spartacus receive Florida education choice scholarships for students with unique abilities managed by Step Up For Students. Edelweiss is dyslexic. Spartacus has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). They are home educated by Lacey, who taught in a private school for 10 years before the family adopted this educational format.
Edelweiss benefits from one-on-one instruction with her mom, while Spartacus is not required to sit at a desk and complete his assignments, something that was an issue when he attended a brick-and-mortar school.
“The scholarship has been a game-changer. It’s awesome that Florida offers this,” Lacey said. “I have my doctorate in education, so I'm really happy that I'm able to help them in the ways that I can and create a curriculum that is specialized to their individual needs, as well.”
The scholarship covers Spartacus’s occupational therapy, as well as art class and piano lessons for Edelweiss. And learning at home allows for flexible schedules. It’s not unusual for Spartacus, an early riser, to complete his math assignments before the sun is up.
Biking is the favorite part of a triathlon for Edelweiss. (Photo by Roger Mooney)
The family home borders a wetland, which is ideal for interactive science lessons. It also provided the sticks the kids used to carve their own forks, and the twigs Edelweiss used to create a bird’s nest.
“Her art style isn't cut and dry, like paint a picture of this penguin. It's more abstract,” Lacey said. “That’s the way her brain works. Music, art, and athletics are a lot easier for her. When dyslexia held her back from other things, she kind of poured herself into those things.”
Lacey was pregnant with her daughter, and she and Jacek had yet to settle on a name when she came across a music box she bought during a trip to Germany. It played the song “Edelweiss” from the movie “The Sound of Music.” An edelweiss is a stout flower that grows in the rugged high-altitude terrain of the Alps and the Carpathian mountain ranges in Europe and blooms in the winter.
“I thought, ‘That’s what I want to name my daughter,’” Lacey said.
She and her husband believe that people can become the personification of their names. That holds true with Edelweiss.
“She is very hearty, and it aligns with being a triathlete. She can endure a lot and has a high tolerance for the sport,” Lacey said. “And at the same time, it’s a very beautiful flower. It doesn't look like your normal flower. It's very different and unique, which is what she is.”
And Spartacus? Well, he was making a fist in his first ultrasound.
Jacek said he looked like Spartacus, the ex-slave who became a gladiator and led a rebellion against the Roman Republic in 71 BC.
“He said his name is going to be Spartacus, and I said, ‘Yeah, right. There's no way I would name my son Spartacus.’ And here we are,” Lacey said.
“We do get odd looks when we call his name at a triathlon,” Jacek said. “I’m not saying it’s like yelling ‘Fire!’ in a crowd, but almost.”
You will often find Edelweiss on top of the podium on race day. (Photo courtesy of the Szymanski family)
Edelweiss competed in her first triathlon when she was 5. The family belonged to a local YMCA, and Lacey saw a post about the race on the morning of the event. So, she woke Edelweiss and asked her if she wanted to give it a try. Edelweiss said yes.
“It gave me something to do,” she said.
The race consisted of one lap in the 25-meter pool, a half-mile bike ride, and a quarter-mile run. Competing on a bike that had pom-poms and a basket on the handlebars, Edelweiss won her age group.
She had one question for her mom when she finished.
“When can we do this again?”
The answer? As often as possible.
She and Spartacus have moved up to sprint triathlons – 400-yard swim, 8.1-mile bike ride, and a 5K run.
The hardest leg for Edelweiss is the run. The best part, she said, is crossing the finish line.
“Because I don’t have to run anymore,” she said.
She’s been known to finish a race in her socks. Once, when she developed blisters and tossed her shoes halfway through the race, and another time when she was having trouble getting them on during the transition from the bike to the run and didn’t want to waste more time.
Jacek was born in Poland and immigrated to the United States at 19. He was an avid cycler in his native country and passed that love on to his children.
Edelweiss and Spartacus also compete in long-distance cycling races, where they are often the top finishers in their 7-11 age group.
“They goof around when they’re going for a ride with dad,” Jacek said. “But something switches when they are in the competitive world. They put on their game face.”
Before being immersed in the world of triathlons, Edelweiss was all about her ballet lessons.
“She was very into ballet, but now she doesn’t want to go back,” Lacey said. “It’s not the same adrenaline rush.”
Their weekends are loaded with triathlons across the state and cycling races as far north as Virginia. Lacey keeps track of the schedule.
“It’s our lifestyle now,” Lacey said. “We’re always in the water or on bikes, doing something like that. Edelweiss doesn’t feel like she’s actually competing. She’s doing what she loves. Spartacus is a ball of fire, too. Both of them together just constantly amazes me about what they're capable of and the grit that they have to compete.”
It’s been a month since classes started, and Matthew Ottenwess is settled into his freshman year at Tampa Catholic High School.
He’s made friends and likes his teachers.
His high score on the school’s entrance exam gained him admission to three honors classes and one AP course. He plays linebacker on the junior varsity football team.
This was the educational landing his mother, Maggie, was looking for when she learned the family would move from New Mexico to Florida after her husband Chris, a Chief Master Sergeant in the United States Air Force, received a transfer to MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa.
The Ottenwesses have a Florida education choice scholarship to thank for that.
“It’s a game-changer,” Maggie said.
Maggie, Chris and Matthew visit Yellowstone National Park. (Photos courtesy of Maggie Ottenwess)
While the family was still stationed at Kirtland Air Force Base in Alburquerque, Maggie was able to apply for a Family Empowerment Scholarship for Educational Options (FES-EO), managed by Step Up For Students.
“The scholarship made the (moving) process easier, gave us more choice, allowed us to take a breath and not have to worry about additional stresses, both monetary and interpersonal,” Maggie said. “It eased the PCS (Permanent Change of Station) experience. There are countless other things that change – doctors, dentists, specialists, church, youth group, scouts. This took one of the larger chunks off the list.
“Box checked.”
Matthew had been homeschooled during the past five years. Chris and Maggie decided he would return to a brick-and-mortar school setting for high school. They also wanted that setting to be at a faith-based school, preferably a Catholic school.
They understood that would burden the family’s finances, but it was a sacrifice they would accept.
Chris received his Permanent Change of Station order on Dec. 23, 2024. Soon, Maggie was told of Florida’s private school scholarship program from other moms within the military community.
“I couldn’t believe what I was hearing,” Maggie said. “It was too good to be true.”
Maggie set her alarm for 7 a.m. local time on the first Saturday in February. Families could apply for FES-EO scholarships that day at 9 a.m. EST. Since Albuquerque is two hours behind, Maggie wanted to apply as soon as the session opened.
“In the military, on-time is late,” she joked.
Maggie found the “Scholarships for Military Families” page on the Step Up website and entered her family’s information. The process went smoothly until Maggie came to the screen that required her to enter her Florida address. Since the move wouldn’t happen until June, and since the family would live on the Air Force Base, they had yet to be assigned housing, so no Florida address.
“I was in panic mode,” she said.
Her fear was quickly defused during a live chat with customer service.
“You’re not the first,” Maggie was told. “We get this a lot.”
She just needed to upload Chris’s Permanent Change of Station order in the proof of residency screen on the application.
Once Maggie learned that Matthew was awarded a scholarship, she started researching private faith-based schools in the Tampa area and settled on Tampa Catholic because of its challenging history and science curriculums. He was accepted Feb. 28.
“Our Christian faith is important to our family,” Maggie said. “It is the foundation that makes all the complications, moves, hardships, financial struggles, stress, and the like possible. We incorporated religion into Matt's homeschool curriculum and wanted to keep that moving forward. We were open to both Christian and specifically Catholic options. We believed a faith-centered school would continue to support his character and moral compass.”
The FES-EO scholarship covers more than half of the yearly tuition at Tampa Catholic. Maggie said they can afford to cover the rest without her getting a job, something that is not easy for military spouses. Local businesses are not quick to hire someone who could be moving in two or three years.
This allows Maggie to continue her work as an advocate for younger enlisted Airmen, military families and dependents. She works on various committees, task forces, and councils that deal with medical, special needs, and religious issues.
“So, the scholarship is not only helping my son get a quality education, it's helping the mission of the military by me having the breadth and space and time to do those things,” Maggie said. “The scholarship is allowing a difference to happen.”
Chris, who is the Command Chief of the 6th Air Refueling Wing at MacDill, has been in the Air Force for 28 years. He and Maggie have been married for 18 years. They’ve lived on five bases in four different states.
Matthew, who was born when his parents were stationed in New Jersey, his mom’s home state, has lived in Mississippi, Illinois, New Mexico and now Florida.
When asked about the latest move, he said, “I was super excited, a little nervous for all the changes, but definitely excited to get a whole different experience of school.”
The experience was somewhat of a jolt at first. He said it took him a few weeks to become comfortable with the return to the classroom setting. He had attended Catholic school before being homeschooled.
He said he likes living in Tampa, and being on the football team allowed him to make friends quickly, since fall practice began before the first day of classes.
“It's really good,” he said. “(Tampa Catholic) has a really good curriculum. I like the teachers, and it's fun to hang out with my friends all day.”
SARASOTA, Fla. – Duct taped to the wall of Eliah Hillebrand’s bedroom, next to the light switch, is the engine from one of his remote-controlled cars. Attached to that is a small, arm-like device. Using the remote, the 11-year-old can turn the ceiling light on or off from his bed.
“Genius,” said Eliah’s mom, Jennifer. “I don’t know how he even thought to do that, but I definitely would credit Fab Lab.”
Ella Hillebrand and her brother, Eliah, display their LEGO robot named 'Chungus' that they built at the Fab Lab. The robot placed third in a recent RoboRumble. (Photo provided by Jennifer Hillebrand.)
Fab Lab is the Suncoast Science Center/Faulhaber Fab Lab in Sarasota. It is a haven for students engrossed in all things STEAM.
If you are stimulated by science, tickled by technology, energized by engineering, mad for mathematics, or if art is your jam, you are among your people at Fab Lab.
A Florida education choice scholarship can help get you there.
The place has everything one needs to create nearly anything one can imagine.
“Any technical skill you can think of you can probably do it here,” Jenn Sams Scott, Fab Lab’s marketing and communications director, said.
There are screws, nuts, bolts, nails, and electrical wire.
There are saws, grinders, sanders, and routers. Laser cutters, 3D printers, and a Computer Numerical Control (CNC) mill that’s as big as the chassis of a small car.
Students from grades K-12 attend after-school and Saturday workshops during the school year, and camps during the summer.
A dinosaur with a moving tail and lava from a volcano are just two of the obstacles participants in Fab Lab's RC car wars have to navigate. (Photo courtesy of Fab Lab.)
They build remote-controlled cars and participate in “car wars.” The RC cars race around a course filled with obstacles. The last race had a dinosaur theme, which meant the cars had to dodge a moving dinosaur tail and a volcano spewing lava. The winning car earns a place of honor on a wall of fame.
They construct robots for the equally popular LEGO RoboRumble. There, robots force each other out of the ring. The winner is the last robot standing.
Hanging from the ceiling are rockets built by the members of the Rocketry Club, including one that soared 6,400 feet.
There are STEMinars for leather artistry, timber and blade, and steel ideas.
There’s a Gardenpalooza and a Halloween workshop where participants laser-etch designs on pumpkins. There’s also a workshop to laser-etch designs on pumpkin pies.
“There are a lot of interesting things happening there,” said Elisa Rothbloom, whose two sons use their Personal Education Program (PEP) scholarships to attend Fab Lab’s Lego Robotic camp. PEP, which is funded by corporate donations through the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship program and managed by Step Up For Students, is available for K-12 students who aren’t enrolled full-time in a public or private school.
PEP scholarships can now be used for STEAM Saturday classes, and Sams Scott is hopeful RoboRumble will soon be available under the scholarship. Both programs are scheduled to begin in October.
Sams Scott said enrollment has increased since the advent of the PEP scholarship for the 2023-24 school year.
“It’s been crazy,” she said. “At least 10% of the participants are on PEP, and it’s growing.”
The LEGO RoboRumble always draws a crowd. (Photo courtesy of Fab Lab.)
Eliah and his younger sister, Ellah, 8, are among the growing group of PEP students who use the scholarship to pay for Fab Lab’s camps and classes.
Together, Eliah and Ellah built a LEGO robot they named Chungus, after the Minecraft character. They finished third in the RoboRumble’s fourth-to-sixth-grade division.
“We keep things pretty simple—mostly pen and paper, very little online. Even so, they worked so hard and came in third place, competing alongside kids with much more technology experience,” Jennifer said. “It was amazing to see how they took what they knew, learned from Fab Lab, and really ran with it. I’m so proud of them.”
Fab Lab opens a new world for students like Eliah, who, according to his mom, “likes to tinker.”
“I like how they teach me how to invent things,” Eliah said.
Like a remote control to turn off his bedroom lights.
“I just wanted to invent something fun,” he said.
While the word “fun” is not in Fab Lab’s name, it could be.
“They don’t realize they’re learning because they’re having so much fun,” Sams Scott said while giving a visitor a tour of the building on a recent morning, while camps were in session.
She had to raise her voice to be heard over the steady whack, whack, whack coming from a classroom, where the second- and third graders attending the Little Builders camp were learning how to pound nails into a piece of wood.
The campers were supervised by high school students, who volunteer their time and share their knowledge. That’s a unique setup that parents enjoy. It seems their children are eager to work with the high schoolers, who they see as role models.
“It’s incredible that high school students are creating and leading these programs,” said Holly Atkins, whose son Ethan, 11, and daughter Ella, 8, receive the PEP scholarship and have attended Fab Lab for the past two years. “They really connect with the younger kids.”
At home, Holly said her children complete their core classes — reading, math, and writing.
“Then we look for activities that spark their curiosity, that light them up,” she said. “Fab Lab checks that box.”
Ella gravitates toward hands-on experiments, food science, and crafts, while Ethan is drawn to science and engineering. Recently, he joined a four-member team that designed, built, and raced a remote-controlled car. The project required collaboration from start to finish: choosing a theme, designing the car, creating a presentation board, and fielding questions from a panel of judges.
The team ultimately placed second in design.
“They had to practice communication, teamwork, and leadership skills,” Holly said. “Ethan was learning all of that and having a blast at the same time.”
Sams Scott said one reason why Fab Lab is so popular is that it’s not a school.
Fab Lab is a learning center where students don’t have to worry about grades. Trial and error are great teachers. What might not have worked on one project might be just what’s needed for another.
There is success in every room, at every workstation.
A big win for some students came the day a local automation company visited Fab Lab with a robotic arm used in the assembly process. The students programmed it to hold a squeegee and clean a window. They were told that if they wanted to use the robot for its intended purpose, they would need to learn a certain computer-aided design (CAD) program.
“They have,” Sams Scott said. “It’s a program they learned here that they use here.”
By Ron Matus and Dava Cherry
Florida’s choice-driven education system is the most dynamic and diverse in America, but it’s facing new tests. This year, 41,000 Florida students were awarded school choice scholarships but never used them.
We wanted to know why, so we surveyed their parents.
The 2,739 who responded had a lot to tell us. Not only about supply-side challenges, but about the extent to which families are migrating between different types of schools, and their expectations for finding just the right ones.
As education choice takes root across America, we thought other states could learn from these parents, which is why we boiled their responses down into a new report, “Going With Plan B.”
We saw three main takeaways:
A third of the respondents (34.7%) said there were no available seats at the school they wanted. This, even though the number of Florida private schools has grown 31% over the past 10 years. Meanwhile, a fifth of the respondents (19.7%) said the scholarship amount wasn’t enough to cover tuition and fees.
Even without scholarships, a third of the respondents (36.5%) switched school types (like going from a traditional public school to a charter school). And between their child’s prior school and the school they ended up in, more experienced a positive rather negative shift in satisfaction (20.4% to 10.5%). We didn’t see that coming.
Two thirds of the respondents said they’d apply for the scholarships again, including 63% of those who switched school types, and 55.5% of those who were satisfied after doing so.
Things got better, it seems, but not better enough.
Perhaps as choice has grown, so too have parents’ expectations.
See the full report here.
Dava Cherry is the former director of enterprise data and research at Step Up For Students, and a former public school teacher.
This school year, Florida is empowering half a million students to direct funding to education options of their family’s choice.
In the 2023-24 school year, after Gov. Ron DeSantis signed HB 1, Florida saw the largest single-year expansion of education choice scholarships in U.S. history. That growth continued in 2024-25.
Florida’s education choice scholarship programs have grown steadily over the past decade. *Numbers for the 2024-25 school years are preliminary. In 2022, the McKay Scholarship and Unique abilities programs merged.
The numbers look like this:
With more than 500,000 K-12 students participating in some type of full-time education savings account, Florida is home to nearly 7 of every 10 students using such programs nationwide.
If the students using these programs in Florida counted as a school district, it would be the largest in the state and third-largest in the country, trailing only New York and Los Angeles.
Add it all up, and half a million Florida students will direct funding from a state-supported program to access a learning option of their family’s choice. This is a milestone 25 years in the making.
In July, Jessie Pedraza was reading through posts on a Facebook page for mothers who homeschool their children when she saw three words jump off her screen.
Personalized Education Program.
“I responded, ‘Hello. What is this?” Jessie said.
So Jessie texted one of the moms.
Then they met for coffee.
“I picked her brain and got more information,” Jessie said.
This is what she learned:
Florida students not enrolled full-time in private or public schools can access the Personalized Education Program (PEP) through the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship Program, which is managed by Step Up For Students. It operates as an Education Savings Account (ESA), which enables parents to customize their children’s education by allowing them to spend their scholarship funds on various approved, education-related expenses.
Jessie and her husband, John, who live in Naples, had been homeschooling their daughters Annaliyah (now in the fifth grade) and Gianna (third grade) since 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic first closed schools.
“We said, ‘We can do this. We can provide something better and a little bit more tailored to the kid’s needs,’” Jessie said. “COVID, honestly, is what pushed us, so we went full-time.”
After learning about PEP, which was added to the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship for the 2023-24 school year, Jessie applied and was accepted.
“PEP has allowed us to level up our homeschool experience,” she said. “It gives us the opportunity to really create an A-plus homeschool experience versus an A or B-plus.
“It is really growing the homeschool experience.”
Jessie and John have teaching experience from their prior professions.
They use a homeschooling curriculum for reading, spelling, science, history, language arts, and math. They paid for it out of pocket for this school year because it was purchased before they received the scholarship, but the ESA will cover the curriculum in future years.
This year, Jessie and John are using the ESA for field trips and memberships to STEM programs near their home in Naples.
They also use it for the physical education portion of their daughters’ education. Annaliyah is enrolled in martial arts and recently earned her first belt.
“That's been huge,” Jessie said, “because her confidence has just gone up. And that would not have been a possibility if we had not gotten the scholarship.”
Gianna has joined a local gym that has a program aimed at kids, ages 7-11.
“They focus on developing the overall athleticism of kids,” Jessie said. “Gianna is 8. She’s still trying to figure out what she’s interested in. This will focus on athleticism, agility, building muscles. From there, we can get a little more specific.”
Both girls have joined the local 4-H association. Annaliyah is in the cooking program, and Gianna takes crocheting.
“The cooking is actually a year-long project,” Jessie said. She can put together a portfolio and learn about nutrition. These are life skills that she’s going to have, and this became an opportunity because of the scholarship.
“I tell them, ‘You guys can do this, and you guys can do that.’ I don't know if they're as excited (about the scholarship) as I am. I think to them, they're just like, ‘Oh, mom makes it happen.’ But it’s just been a huge blessing for us.”
The cooking and crocheting, the gym and martial arts, and even some of the field trips Annaliyah and Gianna take with other homeschool students in Collier County wouldn’t have been available to them before they received the scholarship.
“When you're homeschooling, you have to look at what are the priorities first, right? And then those extracurriculars come in second,” Jessie said. “So, the scholarship, for us, allows us to place the same kind of priority on the extracurriculars. This is a good overall experience. They’re not missing anything that a student (who attends a school) would have access to.”
Jessie is a co-leader of a local homeschool group with 10 mothers and 30 kids. The mothers know the ins and outs of homeschooling. Jessie is somewhat surprised she didn’t learn of PEP until its second year. When she did, she spoke to parents who received the scholarship and researched it on the Step Up website.
She also attended a PEP meeting in Naples hosted by Step Up program administrators.
“I had all this information, but you always want to go straight to the source, and the source was here,” Jessie said. “[They] solidified it. I said, ‘OK, this is it. This is the direction that we're going,’ and it's been good. Well, it's great, actually.”
Enrollment in Florida’s Catholic schools, which rebounded slightly last year after a pandemic dip in 2020-21, is now the highest it’s been in more than a decade. Figures released this week by the Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops show total enrollment at 88,031, an increase of 4.5% from last year and 3.1% from pre-pandemic numbers.
The total enrollment is now higher than it was in the 2008-09 school year, though less than its peak of 95,000 in 2005-06.
The rise in Catholic school enrollment also paralleled the Legislature’s $200 million expansion of state education choice scholarships. HB 7045 granted scholarship access to tens of thousands more students.
Billed as the largest expansion of education choice in Florida history, the law merged the state’s two scholarship programs for students with unique abilities and combined them with the Family Empowerment Scholarship program approved in 2019. The law also made it easier for families to qualify by removing the requirement that students must spend the prior year in a district school and expanded eligibility to dependents of active-duty members of the U.S. Armed Forces. Lawmakers followed up in 2022 with laws that granted automatic eligibility to dependents of law enforcement officers regardless of income.
