St. Lucie to offer a la carte courses to scholarship students via Step Up marketplace
Get AI-powered insights, summaries, and transcripts
Subscribe
Summary
District leaders said St. Lucie Public Schools will apply to be a provider on the Step Up for Students marketplace to offer a la carte courses (up to three per student) to PEP/ESA and certain scholarship students; courses would be subject to district code of conduct, require a parent contract and be flagged separately in Skyward. A soft rollout and pilot courses are already under way.
District leaders said Saint Lucie Public Schools will apply to be a provider on Step Up for Students so scholarship families can use Educational Savings Accounts (ESAs) or other scholarships to buy a la carte courses on district campuses.
Dr. Wilde described how ESAs and the Step Up marketplace work and said the district can post approved courses, require parents to sign a PEP contract and accept payment only through the EMA marketplace. Scholarship students enrolled in district courses would be designated separately in Skyward, would not count as district students for FTE or teacher evaluation purposes and would be held to district codes of conduct; courses and some special activities would be nonrefundable.
Presentation slides and discussion cited amounts for scholarship funding: Dr. Wilde said PEP scholarships are $8,000 per student, and unique‑abilities scholarships average higher (presenter cited about $10,000 when weighted for ESE services). He described a soft rollout and pilot offerings already online — examples included an agriculture class at a school listed in the presentation as 'Allapata Flats K‑8' and newly released welding courses — and said the district plans a fuller menu of high‑interest and career‑technical courses next year.
The district emphasized logistics: scholarship students would require separate scheduling and transportation arrangements and would not be included in regular verification rosters or teacher evaluation calculations. The board did not take formal action at the workshop; staff will continue pilot testing and report back before broader implementation.