school voucher program<\/a>, you’ll want to check your email.<\/p>\nThe state reportedly sent notices to “Tier One” families earlier this week and notifications are expected to be sent to families in the other tiers in the coming weeks.<\/p>\n
Once families accept, funds will be released by July to be used during the 2026-27 school year.<\/p>\n
\nHow the program works <\/p>\n
Families applied online through the state\u2019s Education Freedom website.<\/p>\n
The program is not first-come, first-served. Anyone who applied before the deadline was considered equally.<\/p>\n
If approved, families can receive funding to help cover education costs, including:<\/p>\n
Private school tuitionHomeschool curriculumTutoring and other approved expenses <\/p>\n
About $10,000 per student on averageUp to $30,000 for students with disabilitiesAround $2,000 for homeschool students <\/p>\n
\nWhy a lottery was used <\/p>\n
Because of high demand, the state used a lottery system to determine who receives funding. The program is funded at about $1 billion, which is not enough to cover all applicants.<\/p>\n
When applications first opened, KHOU 11 spoke with a spokesperson for the Texas Comptroller\u2019s Office, who explained how that priority system works.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe first group that\u2019s prioritized in that lottery is going to be students with disabilities \u2014 if you\u2019re a family earning less than about $165,000 per year. So, students with disabilities in that income bracket receive the highest priority,\u201d said Travis Pillow.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter that, students in low-income households receive the second priority. Then families under that same income threshold without a disability fall into the third group \u2014 and finally, all other students are last.\u201d<\/p>\n
Officials say the goal is to ensure students with the greatest needs are prioritized first.<\/p>\n
Got a news tip or story idea? Email us at\u00a0newstips@khou.com<\/a>\u00a0or call 713-521-4310 and include your name and the best way to reach you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Once families accept, funds will be released by July to be used during the 2026-27 school year. HOUSTON…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":262742,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[27,29,28],"class_list":["post-262741","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\/262741","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=262741"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262741\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/262742"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=262741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=262741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=262741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}