For Florida families
Your Unique Abilities pays for music, voice and dance classes
What we do at District with this scholarship, where our limits are, and how to use it. And why the list of who qualifies is wider than it looks.
The name works against it. Unique Abilities sounds like something very specific, and most of the families who qualify do not see themselves in it.
It happens all the time. Someone has had the scholarship approved for months, uses it for school or for materials, and it has never crossed their mind that it also covers their daughter’s music classes. Nobody’s fault. Nobody told them.
The list is wider than it looks
Step Up qualifies this scholarship through a fixed list of twenty-three situations. Some of them are things a family would not normally call “a condition”: difficulties with speech, with language, with hearing or vision, and specific learning difficulties, among others.
We are not going to reproduce the list here, and we are not going to tell you whether you qualify. That is not ours to say, and they are the ones who change it. It is published in full on their site, and theirs is the only version that counts. All we ask is that you look at it before assuming it is not for you.
What we do at District
The same classes. There is no separate program, no separate room, no separate schedule. Piano, guitar, voice, drums, strings, art, theater and dance, with the same teachers and in the same rooms as everyone else.
The same stage. Anyone who wants to plays at the recital, with their family in the seats. And anyone who gets that far records at the District Records studio and releases their own music, like any other student.
However long it takes. One teacher who knows their student, a room that becomes familiar, and a routine that repeats every week. If a class needs to go slower, it goes slower.
We start from something simple: every child has an ability and a talent. We do not say that to sound good. We say it because we have spent years watching talent turn up where nobody was looking for it, and because it is the reason nobody here starts out in a different category.
And what we don’t do
Almost nobody puts this part on their page, and it is the part worth reading slowly.
We are not music therapy. That is a different discipline, with its own credentials, and Step Up lists it as a separate category that we are not part of. Our teachers are working musicians and artists, not therapists. If what you need is clinical intervention, the honest answer is that this is not the place.
We do not provide one-on-one support inside the class. If your child needs someone beside them continuously, the family covers that.
And we do not process the scholarship. We do not decide who qualifies, we do not fill out the application, and we do not move the deadlines. All of that is Step Up. What we know first hand is how to use it once you have it, because we do that with families every week.
Why we put it this way
A family arriving with an approved scholarship has already fought through enough paperwork. The last thing they need is a school that says yes to everything and finds out along the way. We would rather tell you the limits up front, even if it costs us an enrollment.
An age detail worth money
We take students from age 4. Of the two Step Up scholarships we work with, Unique Abilities covers from age 3 and the other one, PEP, starts at 5.
So if your child has not turned five yet, this is the one that reaches. It is the kind of detail that appears in no brochure and decides a whole school year.
How it works
First, write to us and tell us about it: the age, what they enjoy, what they need. That conversation commits you to nothing.
Then the trial class, free and twenty minutes long. It lets you see how the teacher works, and it lets us see whether we can support them properly. If the answer were no, we would tell you.
And if we go ahead, we walk you through our side of the paperwork. Payments for this scholarship go through the Step Up platform, and we are registered there.
If you don’t have a scholarship yet
One dated fact, because it changes what you can do today.
PEP applications for the 2026-27 school year are closed. The deadline was April 30, 2026, for new and renewing students alike. Through that route, all you can do now is join their list to be notified about 2027-28.
Unique Abilities is still taking applications. Its page keeps the apply button active and does not carry the closing notice that PEP does. Check it yourself before you start on the paperwork: they move the deadlines and they do not tell us.
Before you decide
If you want to look at the numbers calmly, here are the class prices in Kissimmee, division by division.
If what is on your mind is age, we cover that separately in this article on when to start piano.
And if yours is the other scholarship, here is our general guide to Step Up For Students.
Tell us about it
Write to us with the age and what you would like them to learn. We will tell you plainly what we can do, and what we can’t.
Message us on WhatsApp →Where this comes from
The age range, the existence of the list of twenty-three situations and the status of applications come from the Unique Abilities page and the PEP page, both read on October 16, 2026.
Requirements, amounts and dates are set by Step Up and can change. The valid source is always stepupforstudents.org, not this page.
We are at 1048 East Osceola Parkway, Kissimmee, Monday through Saturday (Mon 1–7pm · Tue 3–7pm · Wed 2–7pm · Thu 3–6pm · Fri 2–8pm · Sat 11am–4pm). You can see the four divisions or text us at 321-337-9594.