Gabriel Lynch III was born five months early and weighed 1.8 ounces when he entered this world fighting for his life. He spent his first three months in an Orlando hospital.
When he was just weeks old, he was removed from an incubator and airlifted to a Tampa hospital for heart surgery. By then, Gabriel already had surgery on his eyes. He developed a grade 4 brain bleed, which doctors told his parents, Krystle and Gabriel II, could lead to cerebral palsy.
It didn’t.
“He had a lot of issues,” Krystle said, “but God is good.”
Gabriel Lynch used the ESA from his PEP scholarship for piano and guitar lessons.
Krystle chronicled it all in her book, “Miracles do Happen. A mother's journey through preterm birth, loss and triumph.”
A picture of tiny Gabriel dominates the cover. He is hooked up to tubes with bandages over both eyes. He’s barely bigger than the length of his mom’s two hands as she holds him.
A current photo of Gabriel might include a piano, which he can play.
Or him holding the book about his faith, which he wrote when he was 13.
Or a cap and gown.
Gabriel, who turns 19 in August, graduated high school in May, having been homeschooled during the past school year with the help of the Personalized Education Program (PEP) that comes with the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship (FTC). The FTC is managed by Step Up For Students.
Signed into law in 2023 as part of HB1, PEP provides an Education Savings Account (ESA) for students who are not enrolled fulltime in a public or private school. The ESA allows parents to customize their children’s education by spending their scholarship funds on a variety of approved, education-related expenses.
“The PEP scholarship has been a blessing,” said Krystle, who along with her husband is a pastor at a local non-denominational church.
All three of her sons received PEP scholarships last year. Before that, they received FTC scholarships and attended private schools near their Apopka home. Gabriel will attend Seminole State College in Lake Mary this fall, while his younger brothers – Kingston (eighth grade) and Zechariah (sixth grade) will continue to receive PEP scholarships.
“There were just certain things about their education that my husband (Gabriel II) and I needed to take control of,” Krystle said. “As a parent we know, and we want to control their education, so we decided to homeschool them.”
What Krystle wanted more than anything else was the ability to tailor the education toward each of her sons’ interests and needs.
“They all have different learning paths,” she said.
For Gabriel, that was an opportunity to use the ESA for dual enrollment. He took English, psychology, and music appreciation courses through the dual enrollment program at Oklahoma Christian University.
He also used his ESA for piano, guitar, and voice lessons and a tutor he worked with three times a week. His curriculum included Spanish I and II, music, statistics, and personal finance.
Kingston has improved in math since being homeschooled because he now has access to a tutor, both during and after school. He will take computer science and coding this school year. Krystle would like him to dual enroll once he reaches high school.
Zechariah is academically gifted, according to his mom. He studied above grade level as a fifth-grader and will do so again this year when his course load will include advanced classes. Krystle is trying to prepare him for advanced placement classes when he reaches high school.
Kingston, Zechariah and Gabriel have thrived academically with the help of the PEP scholarship.
Krystle is also researching hybrid learning opportunities for Kingston and Zechariah.
“That's a game-changer right there because my kids want social interaction, but I don't want them to be in school all five days,” Krystle said. “I can send them to school once or twice a week and they can learn a subject during that time, but then the rest of the subjects I teach at home.”
All PEP students are required to take a yearly state-approved norm-referenced test. (The list of tests can be found here.) The boys took the Stanford Achievement Test Series, Tenth Edition (SAT10).
“We just love the fact that PEP gives students the opportunity to be their best selves,” Krystle said. “They can have guitar lessons. They can have singing lessons. They can have acting lessons. They can have reading tutors, language arts tutors.
“The sky’s the limit, and we just love that.”
Music is a big part of Gabriel’s life. He played the piano in an AdventHealth commercial and placed first in the Sacred Heart Music Competition in May.
He would like to be a composer.
“I’ve had a passion for music since I was 8,” he said.
He also has a passion for social media, with more than 17,000 followers on TikTok and nearly 5,000 on Instagram (GABE4_christ). He has a YouTube channel and a podcast.
His book, “The Destined Place of Living,” is about his faith. He is an ordained minister and a motivational speaker for youth.
Through the Florida Parent-Educators Association, which serves homeschooled families, Gabriel was able to attend a prom and participate in a graduation ceremony in May at the Gaylord Palms Resort and Convention Center in Kissimmee. That’s also where he won the music competition.
It brought an end to his high school education and his one year being homeschooled.
“I will say that homeschooling was one of the best decisions that my parents have made,” Gabriel said. “It gave me more freedom to study music.”
Something about the Periodic Table of Elements grabs Conrad Black’s interest. All those chemicals and their atomic numbers. He heard about it, read about it, but didn’t know anything about it.
Until this past school year.
For his fifth-grade science course, Conrad chose to learn about energy and chemistry, specifically, the Periodic Table.
“He is, in my opinion, the epitome of student-led learning,” said his mom, Melanie.
Conrad and Genevieve display their work during a lesson on Andy Warhol and pop art.
Melanie, a former middle school teacher, now teaches homeschool to her children, Conrad, 11, and Genevieve, 8.
With the help of the Personalized Education Program (PEP) that comes with the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship (managed by Step Up For Students), Melanie and her husband, Wesley, can tailor the curriculum to fit the needs of her children, letting their interests guide the curriculum.
“One of the things that we are so grateful for with regard to homeschooling is the flexibility and freedom,” Melanie said. “Conrad really appreciates that.”
The Blacks, who live in Jacksonville, have homeschooled their children for the past two years. The 2023-24 year was their first with the PEP, which was part of House Bill 1 that was signed into law in 2023. HB1 allows for an Education Savings Account (ESA) for students who are not enrolled full-time in a public or private school. It enables parents to customize their children’s education.
All PEP students are required to take a state-approved norm-referenced test annually. (The list of tests can be found here.) Conrad and Genevieve take the Iowa Assessment-Core Battery, which includes tests for science, math, social studies, and language arts.
Conrad loves coding, and through the program Scratch he has made stop-action videos and created a video game. His physical education class is karate, where he is two belts shy of being a black belt. The PEP covers his piano lessons. He developed an interest in cooking this past year, so the PEP paid for two cooking classes.
Genevieve learned to sew during the 2023-24 school year, and the scholarship has covered supplies for that craft. She competes with a local swim club, which constitutes her physical education class.
Both kids are active readers. Melanie has assigned books purchased through PEP. Conrad is a few chapters shy of finishing “The Hobbit.”
A science lesson on plate tectonics theory included sticks and marshmallows.
The PEP also covers field trips, and the Blacks have been on the go.
There were field trips to the children’s museum at Bonnet Springs Park in Lakeland, the Cade Museum for Creativity & Invention in Gainesville, and the Jacksonville Zoo and Gardens. During a family trip to the Florida Keys, they visited the The Turtle Hospital in Marathon.
“They always have ideas,” Melanie said. “I always ask them, ‘What's on your wish list for the school year? Where do you want to go? What kind of things do you want to learn about? What do you want to do?’ ”
Both Conrad and Genevieve said they enjoy being homeschooled.
“I can complete all my schoolwork and then just go on to the next one, instead of sitting around waiting for everybody else to complete whatever we're doing and waiting for the teachers to say what to do next,” Conrad said.
“One thing I noticed with homeschooling versus traditional schooling is the use of time,” Melanie said. “With homeschooling, I feel like we're able to get the most out of our time. Whereas what I noticed from when I worked as a teacher as well as when Conrad was in his neighborhood school, is that he would be waiting. He would finish his work and then he's waiting around.”
At home, when Conrad finishes one subject, he can move on to, say, the Periodic Table of Elements and satisfy that curiosity while learning the basics of chemistry.
“I've seen a bunch of stuff about it, and I knew nothing about it,” he said.
And?
“It’s pretty interesting,” he said.
For a creative project, Conrad and Genevieve both wrote books this year with a kit purchased with PEP funds.
Genevieve’s book was about two siblings who fought over ice cream.
“At the end, they got ice cream, but they probably weren't going to get ice cream if they didn't behave,” Genevive said.
So, who did they have to impress?
“Mom,” she said.
Conrad’s book is a little more involved.
Titled “Diary of an Insane Dream Warrior,” the plot includes a group of friends, a black hole, an alternate reality with floating islands, a massive, super-strong Minotaur, goat warriors, gun-slinging rabbits that resemble cowboys, an apple that can shapeshift, and government officials that cannot be trusted. He hasn’t finished it yet so he isn’t sure how it will end – other than the good guys win.
He does know that if it is made into a movie, the cast will include Chris Pratt, Chris Brown, Ryan Renolds, and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.
“The Rock would be great,” he said.
That is what Melanie means when she talks about the flexibility and creativity that comes with homeschooling with PEP. She can hone in on what interests her children and be innovative as they learn.
“[We use] the lessons that I create and anything they want to do. They have ideas, too, and we can say, ‘OK, let’s do it,’ ” she said. “It really offers us that ability to be so creative with learning, and so I think that's what we really appreciate most about homeschooling.”
Cooper Campen, right, met House Speaker Pro Tempore Chuck Clemons, R-Newberry, while serving as a student page during this year's legislative session. Cooper and his younger brother, Alexander, receive education savings accounts as part of the state's Personalized Education Program.
More students would be able to use scholarships at hybrid schools, scholarship programs for students with disabilities would grow more quickly to meet demand, and religious virtual schools could become eligible to participate in scholarship programs under a bill passed during Florida’s 2024 legislative session.
Provisions in HB 1403, by Rep. Josie Tomkow, R-Polk City, and Sen. Corey Simon, R-Tallahassee, would:
The bill will be sent to Gov. Ron DeSantis for his signature.
The bill’s bipartisan passage drew praise from the Foundation for Florida’s Future, the nonprofit education organization founded by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.
“As Florida’s parental choice landscape continues to expand, we look forward to working with Gov. DeSantis, the legislature and the Department of Education to ensure Florida remains the national leader in parental choice,” the foundation said in a statement on its website.
