Texas Governor Greg Abbott speaks to a group of event attendees for his Parent Empowerment Night event where he advocated for school choice and vouchers at Temple Christian School in Fort Worth on Thursday, March 6, 2025.
Chris Torres
ctorres@star-telegram.com
Texas parents have an additional two weeks to apply for the state’s new school voucher program after a federal judge in Houston extended the application deadline on Tuesday just hours before the window was set to close.
The extension comes after no Islamic schools in Texas were approved for the program while thousands of others schools have been. U.S. District Judge Alfred Bennett called that fact “troubling” before issuing a temporary restraining order to extend the window.
The new deadline to apply for the state voucher program is March 31.
Several Islamic schools in Texas are suing Comptroller Kelly Hancock, claiming the state blocked Islamic schools from the $1 billion private school voucher program because of their religion.
Eric Hudson, an attorney for those suing the state, said Tuesday that the goal of his clients was to ensure the appliction window did not block parents from the Texas Education Freedom Accounts as a lottery system decides which families receive a school voucher.
Texas lawmakers started the voucher program last year to assist families in paying for private and religious education. Households can receive up to $2,000 for a homeschooled student, $10,500 for private school, and $30,000 for students who have a disability. More than 200,000 Texas families have applied for the vouchers, as of Tuesday. The lottery system will decide how to spread the funds, but will prioritize families who classify as low income.
Earlier this year, the Council on American-Islamic Relations’ Texas chapter sent a letter to the Comptroller and called on the community to urge Attorney General Ken Paxton to end the exclusion of Muslim families in the school voucher program.
On Tuesday, CAIR-Texas issued a statement welcoming Bennett’s decision to extend the deadline by two weeks, saying there is serious concern about the exlusion of Islamic schools.
“We welcome the court’s decision to extend the application deadline and recognize the serious concerns raised about the exlusion of Islamic schools from Texas’ voucher program,” the statement reads. “All families, regardless of their faith, deserve equal access to educational opportunities supported by public programs.”
This story was originally published March 17, 2026 at 4:01 PM.
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Samuel O’Neal is a local news reporter at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram covering higher education and local news in Fort Worth. He joined the team in December 2025 after previously working as a staff writer at the Philadelphia Inquirer. He graduated from Temple University, where he served as the Editor-in-Chief of the school’s student paper, The Temple News.