Texas families have one week left to apply for the state’s new school voucher-like program.
The application window for Texas Education Freedom Accounts — a $1 billion program that would give participating families state funds to cover tuition, textbooks and other education-related costs through education savings accounts — closes March 17 at midnight.
TEFA awards are not first-come, first-served. Officials from the Texas Comptroller’s Office of Public Accounts, which is overseeing the program’s rollout, said all applications submitted by the deadline would be reviewed, and families can edit their submissions, upload additional documents and update their children’s information up until the deadline.
While the TEFA program is universal, available to all families with K-12 students in Texas, there are different priority groups. The highest-priority group is students with disabilities. After that, tiers are determined by family income, with lower incomes receiving more priority.
In the first three weeks since the portal launched in February, Texans submitted more than 130,000 applications and more than 2,000 schools signed up to accept TEFA dollars, according to the comptroller’s office. As of March 8, the number of applications surpassed 160,000.
When state officials created the program, they estimated the first year of TEFAs would serve about 100,000 families, with awards averaging about $10,000, or 85% of the amount their local school district receives in state funds per student.
Depending on need, special education students could receive up to $30,000 awards. Travis Pillow, a spokesperson for the TEFA program, said parents should provide documentation of their child’s disability and check on the application that they qualify for special ed.
In the case that demand exceeds the program’s $1 billion in funding, Senate Bill 2, which passed TEFAs into law, requires that 80% of the program’s funding be reserved for families who make less than or up to 500% of the federal poverty line.
Who is applying for vouchers?
In the Education Service Center Region for San Antonio, which includes all of Bexar County, surrounding counties and stretches southwest to the Mexico-Texas border, 19,422 families have applied for a TEFA as of Sunday.
Families in the Northside Independent School District have submitted the fourth highest number of applications in the state, at 4,102. In San Antonio, that number is followed by North East ISD at 3,386 and 1,335 in San Antonio ISD.
According to a report shared by state officials, the first priority group accounts for 11% of TEFA applicants across Texas. Students with family incomes at or below 200% of the federal poverty line make up 30% of applicants, and students between 200% and 500% of the federal poverty line make up 31% of applicants. The rest are families above that threshold.
An income for a family of four that’s 200% of the federal poverty line is $66,000 a year.
While the number of applications has surpassed initial estimates, officials say a large chunk of applications — 21% — have been for homeschool families, which can only get $2,000 awards per student.
The Texas Center for Voucher Transparency, launched by the nonprofit Our Schools Our Democracy around the same time the state launched education savings accounts, found that 76% of TEFA applications came from families whose children aren’t currently enrolled in public school.
As of March 4, approximately 36,000 families statewide who applied to TEFA had children enrolled in public schools, representing less than 1% of the state’s 5.5 million publicly-enrolled students.
“Early voucher application data suggests that the overwhelming majority of families continue to choose and trust their local public schools to educate their children,” said Dee Carney, director of the voucher transparency center.
Final application numbers won’t be available until after March 17.
What you need to know
As schools are closed for spring break this week, the Archdiocese of San Antonio and other education groups are hosting TEFA workshops to help families navigate the application process step-by-step. In October, the archdiocese announced its Catholic schools would participate in the voucher-like program and accept state dollars for private tuition.
When applications first opened in February, about 178 schools in the San Antonio area had already signed up to participate. As of today, more than 230 local schools and a handful of vendors for therapy, tutoring, supplies and testing services have enlisted to receive TEFA funds.
If they are chosen, TEFA recipients will start getting funding notifications in early April and receive at least a quarter of their funds by July 1. Private school students have until that date to select a school which would then confirm enrollment.
Pillow said that students who select “homeschool/other” as their educational setting won’t be able to switch to a private school and qualify for a higher funding amount after the March 17 deadline. Families who select private school, however, will have the option to switch to homeschool/other and accept $2,000.
There is no deadline for private schools or vendors to apply to participate in the program.
