the state\u2019s data<\/a>. Meanwhile, 53% previously attended a public school.<\/p>\nHowever, the numbers do not yet reflect who will actually participate in the program. Students are not accepted into the ESA program until their enrollment in a private school is confirmed, which families must complete by July 15. Families can also use the funds for homeschooling.<\/p>\n
\nVoucher applications close <\/p>\n
Texans\u2019 first chance to apply for school vouchers closed March 31 after a federal judge denied a request from Islamic schools and Muslim families to extend the deadline for a second time.<\/p>\n
They sued Texas leaders for excluding the schools over unsubstantiated terrorism allegations while accepting hundreds of other non-Islamic schools.<\/p>\n
The lawsuit sought another deadline extension and relief for any Muslim family or Islamic school affected by the comptroller\u2019s decision to exclude them.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The next court hearing is set for April 24.<\/p>\n
\nComptroller\u2019s office: All eligible Islamic schools approved <\/p>\n
The Texas comptroller\u2019s office said March 31 that it has approved all eligible Islamic schools that applied to participate in the voucher program.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Travis Pillow, a spokesperson for the comptroller, said the office has sent registration links to all Islamic schools that applied and that meet the state\u2019s baseline requirements, which include being accredited and having operated for at least two years.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs we prepare to admit students into the program and begin funding their accounts on July 1, our office is committed to investigating any failure to comply with program requirements or other applicable law by any participating school or service provider,\u201d Pillow said in a statement.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe will closely examine any credible report alleging fraud or unlawful activity by a participating school, vendor or education service,\u201d he added. \u201cAt this time, no school has received funding through this program. We will ensure that no taxpayer funding flows to organizations affiliated with foreign adversaries or terrorist organizations.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nJudge denies request for another deadline extension <\/p>\n
Alfred Bennett, the federal judge overseeing the case, on March 31 denied Islamic schools\u2019 and Muslim families\u2019 request that he extend the voucher application deadline to April 14.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Bennett said the previous extension was based on \u201ca specific and limited showing\u201d that the Islamic schools had been excluded from the voucher registration process. The state, Bennett noted, has since approved those schools to participate in the program.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd despite the public attention this case has received, no additional schools have sought to intervene in this action,\u201d Bennett\u2019s ruling said. \u201cAccordingly, the Court will not extend emergency relief based on injuries to entities that are not parties before the Court.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bennett added that the ruling does not resolve claims from schools and families who alleged the state discriminated against them. The judge said he expects both sides to have arguments\u00a0prepared for the April 24 hearing.<\/p>\n
Eric Hudson, the lead attorney in the lawsuit, said he was disappointed by the ruling but that his team looks forward to presenting arguments about \u201cthe ongoing harm associated with the way that this program is being administered.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\nMuslim families, Islamic schools ask the judge to extend voucher deadline <\/p>\n
The families and schools requested that Bennett move the deadline from March 31 to April 14. They also asked that the court not allow the state to begin the process of determining who can receive voucher funds until the April 24 hearing.<\/p>\n
Even though Hancock, the comptroller, has approved some Islamic schools, the attorneys argue that the late approval has deterred Muslim families from applying and has skewed the makeup of the applicant pool. When schools receive approval to join the program, lawyers said, families need time to find out and react.<\/p>\n
The lawyers also called the state\u2019s acceptance of some Islamic schools \u201clate, partial, and unstable.\u201d They cited a recent letter from Hancock to Attorney General Ken Paxton that called on the state\u2019s top lawyer to sue Houston Quran Academy to block the school from operating in Texas. The comptroller\u2019s office recently accepted the school, attended by one of the suing families, into the voucher program. Hancock has accused the school of having ties to terrorism, though state leaders have provided no evidence to the court substantiating that claim.<\/p>\n
Hancock\u2019s letter to Paxton, the lawyers argue, shows that accepting schools now does not prevent the comptroller from excluding them later.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The suing families and schools, meanwhile, want the judge to approve a request that would apply any court orders to all Muslim parents and Islamic private schools seeking access to vouchers, now or in the future.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\nTexas has allowed some non-suing Islamic schools to participate <\/p>\n
After the recent court order required Hancock\u2019s office to review the plaintiffs\u2019 request to join the voucher program, the comptroller approved five Islamic schools cited in the lawsuit. But in recent days, the office has also quietly added some Islamic schools that did not sue.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The lawyers representing Muslim families counted at least a dozen non-suing Islamic schools approved by the comptroller since March 23, though not all of them appear in Texas\u2019 voucher school database.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The comptroller\u2019s office declined to comment on the additions, only noting that if a school appears in the database, it has been accepted.<\/p>\n
\nWhy Muslim families, Islamic schools sued <\/p>\n
Mehdi Cherkaoui, a Muslim father of two children and lawyer representing himself, filed the first lawsuit, arguing that state leaders \u201csystematically targeted Islamic schools for exclusion.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Islamic schools blocked from joining meet the voucher program\u2019s eligibility requirements and \u201chave no actual connection to terrorism or unlawful activity,\u201d the lawsuit states, including Houston Quran Academy Spring, a private school attended by Cherkaoui\u2019s two children.<\/p>\n
Cherkaoui pays almost $18,000 per year in tuition for his children and wants to apply for the nearly $10,500 per child in voucher funding to offset those costs, according to the lawsuit. But with Islamic schools blocked from the program, the suit says, Cherkaoui could not complete the application.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe exclusion is not based on individualized findings of unlawful conduct by any specific school, but rather on categorical presumptions that Islamic schools are suspect and potentially linked to terrorism by virtue of their religious identity and community associations,\u201d the lawsuit states.<\/p>\n
Before the voucher program\u2019s original March 17 deadline for family applications, the lawsuit asked that the court require the state to accept all Islamic schools that meet program requirements. It also asked the judge to prohibit the state from delaying or denying approval based on schools\u2019 religious identity, alleged \u201cIslamic ties,\u201d or \u201cgeneralized associations with Islamic civil-rights or community organizations absent individualized, adjudicated findings of unlawful conduct.\u201d<\/p>\n
A second lawsuit, filed March 11, made similar requests. The suit was filed by Bayaan Academy, the Islamic Services Foundation (Little Horizons Academy and Brighter Horizons Academy), and The Eagle Institute (Excellence Academy), which operate private schools in Galveston, Dallas and Collin counties, respectively. Three parents who joined the lawsuit \u2014 Layla Daoudi, Muna Hamadah and Farhana Querishi \u2014 have children enrolled in private schools that are part of the lawsuit.<\/p>\n
The court combined the two lawsuits into one case. The lawyers added Zubair Ulhaq, a parent seeking vouchers for his two children, to the lawsuit.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\nHow the state responded in court <\/p>\n
Paxton\u2019s office \u2014 which represented the comptroller \u2014 said the comptroller\u2019s office has not \u201cdenied\u201d any private schools and argued that because families who apply for vouchers do not have to select a school until July 15, they are not harmed by the exclusion of Islamic schools.<\/p>\n
The lawyers also told the judge they did not know of any Islamic schools that had engaged in terrorism or broken state laws.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Islamic schools suing the state are accredited by Cognia. Cognia-accredited schools require independent review, the state argued, due to the company \u201cerroneously\u201d listing schools as accredited without completing required steps.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Islamic schools cannot be harmed, Paxton said, until the comptroller denies their applications or does not determine their eligibility by July 15. The state also argued \u201cit would be fundamentally unfair\u201d to extend the application deadline and \u201cdisrupt\u201d the educational plans of hundreds of thousands of parents.<\/p>\n
Since those arguments, Paxton has\u00a0withdrawn<\/a> his office\u2019s lawyers from the case after Hancock publicly criticized their legal defense strategy and made terrorism allegations against an Islamic school without submitting evidence to the court.\u00a0<\/p>\n\u201cYour public letter made brand-new and incendiary claims without providing any confidence that diligent investigation supported them,\u201d Paxton said to Hancock. \u201cYour public letter reduces these newfound claims \u2014 that may have a material effect on your legal defenses in these cases \u2014 to a political charade that makes effective legal representation impossible.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Texas comptroller\u2019s office will conduct a lottery the week of April 27 to determine which additional families…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":261929,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[27,29,28],"class_list":["post-261928","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261928","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=261928"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261928\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/261929"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=261928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=261928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=261928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}