A hallway is seen in the high school building at the Westview School in Houston, Friday, Oct. 3, 2025.
Kirk Sides/Houston Chronicle
Texas families interested in school vouchers will be able to apply beginning in February, according to newly obtained documents outlining the rollout of the landmark $1 billion program.
The window for families to sign their children up is set to run from Feb. 4 to March 20. Decisions about awarded vouchers will be finalized by May 1, with the money accessible in digital wallets beginning July 1.
The timeline, detailed in contracting documents obtained by Hearst Newspapers via a public records request, is the most specific plan seen so far for the new Texas Education Freedom Accounts program, which will provide state dollars to pay a wide variety of educational expenses, including private school tuition and homeschool costs. Families had previously been told to expect applications to open in “early 2026.”
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The program is meant to prioritize low-income families and projected to serve around 100,000 students. Families will be eligible to receive up to $10,500 for children in private school, up to $30,000 for children with special needs, or $2,000 for homeschoolers for the 2026-27 school year.
SURVEY: Interested in a voucher for a Texas private school? We want to hear from you.
The proposed timeline conflicts with the typical application deadlines for many private schools, with some accepting applications only until the end of 2025 or early 2026. That means many families may need to decide to apply to private school before knowing whether the school will be approved for use with a voucher, or whether they will receive a voucher at all.
For example, at Awty International School, a highly rated private school in Houston with tuition at $36,610 for this year, prospective students must apply before Jan. 15 and will receive admissions notifications by March 5, according to the website. Students must reply to the offer of admission and enroll by March 25, almost two months before families are scheduled to receive final notification of a voucher award on May 1.
NEWS: Exclusive: Texas comptroller selects Odyssey to run private school voucher program
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Awty has not yet made a public statement about whether the school will apply to be part of the program. Many area schools, like The Westview School, a private school for students with Autism, are awaiting the release of the final rules for the program by the comptroller before making a decision, which are expected by the end of the month.
The documents also show that Odyssey, the New York-based technology firm selected to run the program last week, received a contract worth $26 million that runs over the next two years, with an option for the state to renew it for two more years.
Before the year’s end, eligible private schools and vendors can apply to be recipients of the allotted funding, according to the contract. Odyssey expects to open those applications on Dec. 2.
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Odyssey, which was founded in 2021 and also runs school choice programs in Louisiana, Georgia, Utah and Iowa, was selected as the vendor from among 11 companies that submitted bids for the lucrative contract, which is expected to grow alongside the program in coming years.
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Legislators had budgeted up to 5% of the program’s costs for a technology vendor, or up to $50 million over the first two years.
The contract outlines some penalties that would be imposed if Odyssey does not meet certain performance standards, such as keeping its online platforms running and processing transactions quickly.
Odyssey was the top-scoring company in previous performance and its proposal, according to a scoring rubric of the finalist proposals. Both Classwallet’s and Student First Technologies’ bids also came in at a much higher estimated cost, priced at around $40 or $50 million, respectively, over the two years.
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The comptroller’s office has also initiated a plan to market the program to families statewide, slated to begin Oct. 31. Odyssey will partner with three companies, according to the subcontracting plan it submitted: Steel Digital Studios Inc, an Austin-based digital advertiser; Vianovo, a political and strategic communications firm; and Outschool.org, a non-profit that has participated in outreach for voucher programs in Virginia, Arkansas and South Carolina. The three subcontractors will receive around $1.2 million of Odyssey’s total contract.
Steel Digital Studios and Outschool.org were selected based on their “specialized expertise and proven success in reaching Texas families, schools and vendors, particularly in underserved and rural communities”, Odyssey stated in the documents.