Frequently Asked Questions
Do you accept payments directly through Step-Up-For-Students (PEP/UA) in Florida? We are currently an approved provider of Home Education Instructional Programs for the Personalized Education Plan (PEP) and Unique Abilities (UA) Scholarships through Step-Up-For-Students. Once enrolled in one of our Flex Courses, families can pay directly through MSS. Project Pod families who choose to pay through SUFS can elect to divide the pod cost out over four equal quarterly payments.
Where is HillsLight Located? For the 2025-2026 school year, Hillslight currently has one location in Port Charlotte, Florida. We hope to expand our offerings in the future. Most of the time electives, clubs, and microschools will be held at the teaching mentor's home. However, sometimes students will have the opportunity to go on fieldtrips and participate in other fun activities out in the community. Your student's teaching mentor will be sure to discuss these opportunities with you first.
Question Answer
What curriculum do you use? Each HillsLight class or pod has the freedom to choose the curriculum that best suites their community's needs. Often times, students will work on interest-led projects of their own choosing. You will need to read the description of the individual class/pod for this information. However, we do encourage and endorse several curricula for certain grade levels. They are to be considered as "spines" to give our instructor's a firm foundation to structure their lessons around. We highly encourage interest-led learning within these parameters. A pod may spend an entire month on a topic that was only scheduled for one week, or they may skip a topic altogether if it does not spark their students' curiosities. Here is a short list of curricula that we recommend: 1. Beautiful Feet Books offers literature based curriculum options for history, geography, and science. This is often used for grades K-8. 2. BiblioPlan is a curriculum that integrates multiple resources for history, Bible, and literature into one comprehensive lesson guide. It can be used for any grade level, and we highly recommend this curriculum to our microschool leaders because it works well for both encouraging group discussions and for creating individually tailored assignments. 3. Our teachers often choose Bible studies from Not Consumed Ministries, Answers in Genesis, and/or Apologia. Students are encouraged to participate in group discussions, each at their own level. 4. We highly recommend classes that use Institute for Excellence in Writing (IEW) and Fix-it-Grammar for students in 3rd to 8th grades. We encourage teachers and parents to consider supplementing their lessons with real-world experiences.
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