SAN ANTONIO – Texas will join more than a dozen other states in launching a school choice program when the application portal opens on Feb 4.
The program is called Texas Education Freedom Accounts. TEFA will provide families with an opportunity to apply for financial assistance to homeschool their students, send them to private school or provide their child with personalized tutoring.
Families like the Aragon family in San Antonio are excited for the TEFA program because it gives them hope that they’ll be able to send both of their children to a tuition-based school.
Currently, Vanessa and Sam Aragon’s 3-year-old, autistic son, Appa, attends the Rise School in San Antonio. The Rise School helps students with disabilities get a head start in school both academically and by teaching life skills.
“Speech therapy, music therapy, social media therapy, occupational therapy,” Sam Aragon listed the access to opportunities his son gets through the Rise School.
Through these programs, Sam and Vanessa said they’ve seen the most improvement in their son, Appa.
“When he started at two years old to know … his vocabulary is crazy,” Vanessa Aragon said. “He was not a very social person.”
The Aragon family has a younger child they want to enroll in The Rise School, but they won’t be able to make ends meet without financial assistance.
Their family receives financial aid from the school but enrolling a second child will add thousands of dollars in a bill they may not be able to foot without the TEFA program.
“[TEFA] would help ensure that we can put both of them through The Rise School so that they can both learn the same things and grow in similar ways,” Vanessa Aragon said.
What are Texas Education Freedom Accounts?
Texas Education Freedom Accounts will provide families an opportunity to use state taxpayer dollars to fund their student’s private or home-schooled education.
The TEFA portal will accept applications between Feb. 4 and March 17. The application will require families to provide information about their financial status and where they plan to enroll their students for the upcoming school year.
The TEFA program pay scale will be:
Families intending on sending their student(s) to private school can receive up to $10,474 per student per year.
Families with students with disabilities who have an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) through their local school district can receive up to $30,000 per student per year.
Families who plan on homeschooling their students can receive up to $2,000 per student per year.
Parents can inform the state through their application if their child has a disability. Students with disabilities who come from low-income families will be the highest priority to receive funding.
Families applying for their students with disabilities will need an Individualized Education Program (IEP) to qualify for the amount provided for students with disabilities.
The IEP requires an assessment that families must schedule with their local school district, even if the student has never attended that district.
“There are a lot of important verifications that are required to make sure that taxpayer funding is used appropriately,” Travis Pillow said.
Newly-hired Travis Pillow serves as the TEFA spokesperson to help launch the program and host events to give parents a better picture of what the program is and how to be a part of it.
Pillow previously worked in Florida as the director of thought leadership at Step Up for Students, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit assisting families with access to private and out-of-district schools.
“One of the things that we’ve seen is that when parents have the power to choose the best possible education for their child, everyone wins,” Pillow said. “In states where these programs have scaled up, public school performance has actually improved as the programs have scale up.”
How to apply for, receive Texas Education Freedom Accounts
The portal to apply for Texas Education Freedom Accounts opens on Feb 4, and closes March 17.
Families can apply at anytime during the application period, as applications are not reviewed on a rolling basis and instead viewed once the portal closes.
Families can download a checklist of what’s needed to make the application process as smooth as possible.
“Families will get up to about 25 percent of their total funding on July 1 so that they can get ready for the school year, pay their initial costs, acquire curriculum, pay their tuition and fees at their school,” Travis Pillow said.
Pillow said families can expect their next installment in October after the state can verify which students are still enrolled in the school selected on their application.
The goal of providing the funds in installments is to prevent fraud, so families are not pulling their students out of private school and pocketing any remaining funds.
“Our goal is to protect taxpayer dollars while making the process and participating in the program as simple and user-friendly as possible for the family,” Pillow said.
He said the state will check on enrollment status again in February and then release the final funding installment to families in the spring. The total pot of money set to be distributed is one billion dollars.
“One billion dollars is going to be enough to allow us to launch the largest first-year school choice program in the nation’s history,” Pillow said.
Arizona, a state that prides itself on being the first in the nation to have a universal school choice program, now has 100,000 students enrolled in its education savings program.
“There are 20 other states across the nation with similar programs like this,” Pillow said. “We have the opportunity now to learn the best of what they’ve figured out, as well as to look at some of the cautionary tales of things that haven’t gone so well that we can improve.”
KSAT visits recipients of first universal school choice program
Arizona was the first state to launch a program allowing families to use taxpayer dollars toward their students’ private or homeschool education.
The program is called the Arizona Empowerment Scholarship Program and provides families with an average of $7,500 per student.
Kayla Parra, an Arizona mother of two, has two students with disabilities who use ESA’s.
“For my son, I take the money he gets, and I use it to pay for a private kinder program for him that is specifically for children on the autism spectrum,” Parra said. “For my daughter, that is being home education. So we use hers to pay for curriculum, to pay a reading specialist and math specialist to come into the home and meet her where she’s most comfortable.”
Parra said without ESAs, she would not be able to send her son to the private school he is attending.
She said she also would not have been able to move her daughter out of public school and into a homeschool learning option with tutors because of the financial strain.
“I’m a single mom, I don’t got that kind of money,” Parra said. “For the half-day kinder program my son is in, it is over $16,000 a year in tuition.”
The ESA money Parra receives for her children to get an education that works for them not only pays for private school and tutors, but also educational games that help her students learn at home. She has also been able to offset the costs of therapy.
“Even if insurance doesn’t pay for all of their therapies because they’re SpEd (special education), I can use ESA also to help cover any leftover balance on their therapies as well.”
Parra said she is grateful for the program, and both of her children said they enjoy their schooling now more than they did prior to switching to private school and at-home schooling.
Issues with Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Accounts
Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Accounts benefit 100,000 children across the state, but it is getting to the point where serving that many students has run into issues.
One fraud scheme landed a married couple pleading guilty in Maricopa County Superior Court.
Ashley Meredith Hewitt, also known as Ashley Hopkins, and her husband, Johnny Lee Bowers, were indicted on multiple felony charges of conspiracy.
An indictment for the two writes that they “would engage in conduct constituting … fraud schemes and artifices, forgery, money laundering and aggravated taking identity of another person or entity.”
According to the indictment, the two forged several birth certificates, applied for ESA’s under their names and created aliases for the application.
The indictment says the two received $110,258.28 and used the money on themselves while living in Colorado and then moved to Utah.
Hewitt and Bowers both pleaded guilty to the charges. Bowers was sentenced to prison until October 2027.
Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne told KSAT that safeguards have been implemented to prevent this from happening again.
“There was a problem in the past, and it won’t be a problem in the future,” Horne said. “We will eventually have an automated system to identify things that aren’t valid educational, and so we can stop it before payment is made.”
Arizona has also had an issue with inappropriate purchases being made using ESA funds.
Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes sent a letter to Horne in August 2025 threatening to investigate inappropriate purchases.
The letter said ESA holders have used their accounts to illegally purchase diamond rings, lingerie, above-ground pools and more.
“As soon as we discover something like that, we suspend their account so they can’t do anything until it’s all resolved,” Horne said about families inappropriately using ESA funds. “We demand the money back. If they pay the money back, they’re reinstated.”
However, if the money is not paid back, Horne said the case is sent to the Attorney General or the County Attorney.
Horne said the state has received $1.2 million back after inappropriate uses of funds were found. The state has also hit a milestone of 100,000 students enrolled in an Empowerment Scholarship Account.
Horne said the reason they have had these issues slip through the cracks is because of staffing.
He said the ESA department has not had an increase in staffing since the program was in its early stages. Considering the lack of staffing, he said the audit structure that works is auditing every purchase over $2,000.
“Under $2,000, we pay it first, and we do what’s called risk-based auditing later,” Horne said. “Risk-based audit is expressly authorized by the legislature … but some people are taking advantage, and they buy things that are inappropriate, and we pay if it’s under $2,000, and then we audit later, and we get the money back.”
Arizona uses ClassWallet, a vendor that pays for parent’s educational purchases if they have an ESA.
“ClassWallet is developing for us an automated system where eventually we will be able to audit everything,” Horne said, “but it’s not ready yet.”
Why do families choose private schools?
Arizona has private schools all across the state that tend to various student and familial needs. This includes private schools that cater to students with disabilities and private schools offering faith-based education.
Pardes Jewish Day School in Phoenix is one of the many private schools in Arizona that accepts Empowerment Scholarship Accounts.
“It has done wonders for our family,” Simon Kreisberger said.
Kreisberger’s three children all went to Pardes Jewish Day School, and their family had access to Empowerment Scholarship Accounts.
“It literally afforded us the opportunity to give our kids that secular and Judaic education that we really strive for,” Kreisberger said, “but originally couldn’t give our kid and then really that ESA program helped bridge that gap.”
The school offers a private K-8 education for families looking for a Judaic-faith-centered education.
Carrie Lehrman’s children also attended Pardes Jewish Day School. Her oldest daughter has since moved into a different school as she graduated from the K-8 day school.
“She’s had such a good span of teachers and opportunities,” Lehrman said. “She’s now in high school, a junior in high school, and she’s on track to go to some absolutely amazing universities.”
Lehrman’s son still attends the school while using the ESA program.
KSAT’s Zaria Oates spent a day at Pardes Jewish Day School, going to classes with some of the students.
The students learn in typical and atypical settings, sitting through regular math classes while also having moments where the students teach each other the math lesson.
Similarly, the art class offered an option for students to move around and learn from each other during the class.
“ESA has become a game changer and is making it where families who could never even imagine this type of education, it’s a reality for them now, and their kids can go,” Lehrman said.
What about public schools?
Arizona’s Superintendent of Public Instruction, Tom Horne, said they have seen a decline in public school enrollment since making their Empowerment Scholarship Accounts universal.
Each time the school choice conversation was addressed in Texas, prior to the bill passing in the state legislature, opponents of the bill mentioned the price that public schools would have to pay if they began losing students who moved to private schools.
Horne said his state has experienced that, but that the funding offsets itself.
“Although they lose the income that comes with the students, they also lose the cost of educating the student,“ Horne said. ”And what really matters is not total dollars, but dollars per pupil.”
According to the Arizona Department of Education, “an ESA consists of 90% of the state funding that would have otherwise been allocated to the school district or charter school for the qualified student.”
Families are receiving a portion of what a public school would have received from the state if that student were enrolled in the public school.
”Now that there’s competition, I think it creates a good incentive for the public schools to do better,” Horne said.
When asked if the state has seen a drop in educational value, Horne said the competition helps, but the teacher shortage is also a shortfall for the state to be able to retain students and provide them with the valuable education they attend school to receive.
“We have a very drastic teachers shortage, and I think the answer to that is to increase their salaries,” Horne said.
He also said he is pushing for an increase in teacher salaries in the upcoming Arizona legislative session.
Travis Pillow, with the Texas Education Freedom Accounts program, said something similar about the increased competition for public schools now that the state will have school choice.
“The more competition there is for public schools, the more public schools rise to the occasion and step up their game,” Pillow said.
What programs accept Texas Education Freedom Accounts?
The Texas Education Freedom Accounts website has a map that shows schools accepting TEFA. More schools can be added as regularly as every day.
Travis Pillow addressed a question specifically pertaining to some schools not being approved to accept Texas Education Freedom Accounts.
Pillow cited “compliance with state law” and “affiliations with terrorist groups” as reasons a school with a particular religious-based education could be prevented from accepting TEFA.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton ruled that the Comptroller’s office can block certain schools and vendors from receiving TEFA funds if they are tied to terrorists or foreign adversaries.
The transcription of question and answer between KSAT Reporter Zaria Oates and TEFA Spokesperson Travis Pillow is below.
Zaria: “Is there a limit to which private schools are considered accredited? There are obviously always going to be rumors online.
“But there are rumors circulating online that, depending on religion, will depend on how they’re accredited and that has already happened. But that’s a rumor. Can you talk about that?”
Travis: “We are required to ensure that every participating school follows all the applicable laws.
“In addition to that, the Comptroller has sought guidance from the attorney general regarding the authority of the Comptroller’s office to ensure all schools that are participating in this program comply with the law and there aren’t any affiliations with terrorist groups or foreign adversaries or anything of that nature.
“Those are the verifications that we are performing. And if a school is barred from this program, it would be based on their compliance with state law.”
ZARIA: “Currently, are there any schools in the state of Texas that are barred from being accredited with this program?”
TRAVIS: “So the decision about whether a school has an appropriate accreditation is between the school and their accreditation agency, and those accreditation agencies are vetted and approved by the Texas Education Agency.”
Families can locate schools that are already approved to accept Texas Education Freedom Accounts on this TEFA finder website through the TEFA homepage.
Assistance applying for Texas Education Freedom Accounts
If you need assistance applying for TEFA, there are opportunities focused on providing free assistance to families applying to the program.
The system TEFA is using for the application portal is supposed to be user-friendly so families can apply at-home.
However, it is important to have as much information as possible so the application process can be completed.
“The one thing the system won’t find automatically is tax returns,” Inga Cotton with School Discovery Network said. “So families should definitely be prepared with their most recent federal tax return so they can prove income, because that’s another factor that determines their priority.”
School Discovery Network is an independent organization assisting families who plan on applying for Texas Education Freedom Accounts.
“Families need to not just apply for the TEFA, but they also need to apply to the private schools that they’re interested in,” Cotton said.
Families who have students with disabilities should also contact the local school district to ensure any child with a disability has an IEP on-record with that local school district.
There will also be Texas Education Freedom Accounts informational sessions that can be found here.
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