Our private school originally promoted this and hosted the governor for a school choice speech/rally. Then when they evaluated the actual bill, they backed out and decided not to participate. This is to preserve autonomy and religious liberty. They don't trust the state to avoid attaching all kinds of strings to these funds over time. Also, since they seem to have made this a socialist program for those with limited means instead of making it available to all, we're never going to benefit from it anyway.

So in addition to paying rather sizeable property taxes to mediocre school districts our whole lives, we also got to pay 36 years of private tuition (3 kids) only to sweat the 10% rule at A&M now that they're about to apply to college. Many parents from our school then end up paying out-of-state tuition while far less qualified kids from the hood fill up spots at the top in-state schools. Make no mistake, we still live in a socialist state in Texas when it comes to education.

We did the same. Daughter was in private school for K and 1st. We moved to a "more desirable" district and she attended 2nd grade in public school. Nope. Class size doubled. Teachers concentrated on the bottom 50% and my daughter was bored and ignored.

Back to private we went for the next 4 years. Chapel every day, supportive teachers and staff who weren't overwhelmed, and parents who were present and involved. We'll be here until she graduates.

We're 100,000+ on the list, so we may never see a dime from the voucher program, but the comparison of public to private for us is a sacrifice that is easy to justify.

itsyourboypookie said:

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41,000 vouchers went to children with disabilities. 28k to the disabled kids, the rest were siblings.

That's a wild stat

https://educationfreedom.texas.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Lottery-Week-Update.pdf

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Oh damn - IEP gets priority. Checks definition of qualifications...

Quote:

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One common myth is that IEPs are only for students with very severe disabilities. This is not true. IEPs are made for students with a gamut of learning differences and health issues, such as ADHD, dyslexia, depression, anxiety, and deafness to name a few. A student with mild learning difficulties may require an IEP in the same way as a student with a highly visible disability since each IEP is individualized and provides for that student's needs.

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Bet this won't be abused at all.

The Collective said:

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itsyourboypookie said:

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41,000 vouchers went to children with disabilities. 28k to the disabled kids, the rest were siblings.

That's a wild stat

https://educationfreedom.texas.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Lottery-Week-Update.pdf

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Oh damn - IEP gets priority. Checks definition of qualifications...

Quote:

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One common myth is that IEPs are only for students with very severe disabilities. This is not true. IEPs are made for students with a gamut of learning differences and health issues, such as ADHD, dyslexia, depression, anxiety, and deafness to name a few. A student with mild learning difficulties may require an IEP in the same way as a student with a highly visible disability since each IEP is individualized and provides for that student's needs.

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Bet this won't be abused at all.

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Ask any school district you know, how many evaluations were requested for special needs in the weeks after the ESA plan details were released. All of a sudden, parents who had never made such claims were clamoring to become eligible for the increased amounts and higher likelihood of eligibility for the funds.

I don't know why this is so darned hard for the state of Texas. Florida has a full on voucher school choice program with no income limits (essentially available to everyone).

Private schools are thriving. Public schools, not so much. My town of WPB closed/consolidated 5 of them this year.

Come on Texas.

Those IEP evaluations are required by law to be done by the student's local public school district. How much sense does that make? The diags are already understaffed (not enough of them on the street) and then in April / May, the district is required to meet all of these demands of parents that are leaving the district (or intend to). While maintaining the workload of students remaining in the district.

This is an expense to the local districts that may lose the revenue of the student being pulled. Without state coverage of how to cover the expense.

Crazy that there was no forethought into how the mechanics would work on getting the spike in IEP evals done at the last minute. Or maybe there was forethought.

northeastag said:

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I don't know why this is so darned hard for the state of Texas. Florida has a full on voucher school choice program with no income limits (essentially available to everyone).

Private schools are thriving. Public schools, not so much. My town of WPB closed/consolidated 5 of them this year.

Come on Texas.

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Texas House is run by libs. They get a huge say and hosed this up bigtime.

It's not the libs. I watched almost every one of the house committee meetings for public education in the last session. The libs were against the voucher plan as presented and approved.

oldag941 said:

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It's not the libs. I watched almost every one of the house committee meetings for public education in the last session. The libs were against the voucher plan as presented and approved.

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House is run by libs. While they have (R) by their name, they are libs. They made the bill so stupid, we are not going to see any benefits.

That's why Florida's works and our POS won't work.

I'm not sure I'd consider Buckley, Leach, Ashby et al as libs. They are pretty conservative in many facets of government, but not this one. They ran this through the public ed committee and then through the house.

TexasAg95 said:

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like so many new programs from politicians, it sounded great in principle. They get it passed, they can say see we care about xyz. Then it's an absolute cluster when people actually try to use it and it really doesn't accomplish much. Kind of like Obamacare

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No, it sounded bad from the get go for multiple reasons. Those who spoke up were primaries by an obsessed governor.