As we enter a new application season for the 2009-2010 school year, you’ll notice that one thing is changing: It’s our name. After years of dividing the state, one-half served by Children First Florida and the other half by
Florida PRIDE, we’re uniting our scholarship funding organizations together to serve you better. Going forward, we’ll simply be known as Step Up For Students. In preparation, we already have begun combining the efforts of our support teams and have scheduled a formal consolidation to take place on July 1.
For the 2009-2010 school year, parents will follow the same application process as in previous years, with the application format and processing company depending on their county of residence. (Florida PRIDE/Meek Foundation families use PSAS in Ohio – Children First Florida families use FPS in Jacksonville). As award letters are released and school commitment forms start coming in, all scholarship administration efforts will be through Step Up For Students, including enrollments, payments, transfers, and exits. The current regional service centers and staff in Jacksonville, Orlando and Tampa will remain accessible through the same contact means you have always used. By spring of 2010, we will have aligned all of our application processes and services to make scholarship access as easy as possible for eligible families.
Our goals in this consolidation are to provide more tools and resources for quality choices, to provide a higher level of service to parents and schools, and to work toward a more effective and efficient application processing and scholarship administration system. Our mission remains unchanged – to see that children from low-income families in Florida have as many quality education choices as possible.
Our newly united statewide team is committed to stepping up our service, stepping up our support, and stepping up ourselves to offer your students a step up to success. We look forward to serving you in the coming year!