{"id":22470,"date":"2014-07-25T15:09:14","date_gmt":"2014-07-25T19:09:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/?p=22470"},"modified":"2014-07-25T15:09:14","modified_gmt":"2014-07-25T19:09:14","slug":"applications-for-new-school-choice-program-higher-than-expected","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/2014\/07\/25\/applications-for-new-school-choice-program-higher-than-expected\/","title":{"rendered":"Applications For New School Choice Program Higher Than Expected"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_22471\"  class=\"wp-caption module image right\" style=\"max-width: 300px;\"><a class=\"fancybox\" title=\"An ad for the new scholarship program.\" href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/files\/2014\/07\/7-25-PLSAad.png\" rel=\"\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-22471\" alt=\"An ad for the new scholarship program.\" src=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/files\/2014\/07\/7-25-PLSAad-300x124.png\" width=\"300\" height=\"124\" srcset=\"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/files\/2014\/07\/7-25-PLSAad-300x124.png 300w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/files\/2014\/07\/7-25-PLSAad.png 566w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-media-credit\">Step Up For Students<\/p><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">An ad for the new scholarship program.<\/p><\/div>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">If you want one of the roughly 1,800 new scholarships for students with disabilities that allows parents to mix and match services for their children, you\u2019d better get an application in soon.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">More than 1,200 families applied for a Personal Learning Scholarship Account, or PLSA, in the first week of applications. The scholarships are awarded on a first-come, first-served basis and are intended for students autism, cerebral palsy, Down syndrome and other significant learning challenges.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">\u201cWe really didn\u2019t expect to see this much demand this quickly,\u201d said Patrick Gibbons, spokesman for Step Up For Students, which administers the state scholarship program.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">State leaders weren\u2019t sure how many parents would be aware of the scholarships when lawmakers approved the program this year. But word spread quickly, and more than 700 families said they were interested before enrollment opened July 18th.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Gibbons said the scholarships are more flexible than the state\u2019s other school choice programs.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">\u201cYou can mix and match public school and private school. You can pay for tutors, speech therapies and even save that money for college.\u201d<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">The scholarships range in value from about $4,500 to more than $19,000 dollars depending on a student\u2019s grade, school district and disability.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Florida is the second state to approve scholarships of this type, after Arizona. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.edchoice.org\/CMSModules\/EdChoice\/FileLibrary\/1015\/THE-EDUCATION-DEBIT-CARD-What-Arizona-Parents-Purchase-with-Education-Savings-Accounts.pdf\" data-cke-saved-href=\"http:\/\/www.edchoice.org\/CMSModules\/EdChoice\/FileLibrary\/1015\/THE-EDUCATION-DEBIT-CARD-What-Arizona-Parents-Purchase-with-Education-Savings-Accounts.pdf\">A 2013 report found two-thirds of Arizona parents used their scholarships like a traditional voucher.<\/a> A third of Arizona parents used the scholarships to supplement private school tuition with tutoring, therapy or additional curricula.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you want one of the roughly 1,800 new scholarships for students with disabilities that allows parents to mix and match services for their children, you\u2019d better get an application in soon. More than 1,200 families applied for a Personal Learning Scholarship Account, or PLSA, in the first week of applications. The scholarships are awarded [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":31,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22470"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/31"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22470"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22470\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22473,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22470\/revisions\/22473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}