Step Up For Students Scholarship

This website, Step Up for Students,  provides two options for parents: low-income or special needs.  These two options should be considered when you are looking for alternative education plans for your special needs child.  The first choice most often is for the use of Mackay Scholarship.  Mackay is based on the student having an IEP…

Teacher Truth, Mom Truth

There is a saying in education.  OH, are you one of those public school teachers that puts their kid in private school?! Truth is…. Absolutely, I would and I did.  I am a public school teacher that will put her children in any school or program that meets their needs. Yes, I have placed my son…

Access to Early Education

In a recent Sunday paper from the Tampa Bay Times, I came across an article titled “By age 3, rich kids attend school; poor kids stay with grandparent”.  I only saw the article because I was looking at the picture of the dinosaur bones on that page because my daughter was so excited about Dinosaur…

File Intent for the McKay Scholarship

The deadline to file for intent to use the McKay Scholarship is July 3, 2017 for the 2017-2018 100% award amount.  Parents have to file for intent by July but the paperwork for admission and enrollment at their private school by August 2nd. Just because you file intent does not mean that you have to…

Learning Through The Mistakes

Pretty sure that I have made a big and costly mistake!  Can you help me fix it?! So, this McKay Scholarship is all tricky and complex!  There are all these rules and processes and no real human to walk you thru the system.  It’s one thing to just file intent and fill out some private…

The serious business about the McKay Scholarship

Does your child have an IEP or 504 in the state of Florida? Florida was the first state to implement a scholarship like McKay.  McKay allows for parents of special needs children to use funds allocated to the public school for private school tuition.  (you can use McKay to transfer to another public school as…

holy behavior plan, batman

Yesterday, I amended my son’s IEP and behavior plan.  It was another 2 hour meeting.  My last meeting was 2.5 hours and was to determine eligibility (the longest IEP…) At our last meeting, the behavior plan was so terrible that we had to agree to meet again to change it. A draft copy of the…