The Texas Comptroller\u2019s Office is distributing\u00a0Texas Education Freedom Account\u00a0money to more than 50,000\u00a0additional\u00a0families this week, officials announced Monday.<\/p>\n
The agency\u00a0distributed money last month to\u00a0more than 42,000\u00a0applicants<\/a>\u00a0in\u00a0the\u00a0first priority\u00a0tier of the new school voucher-like program. Award letters will go out this week to students selected from the second priority category \u2014 students whose families fall at or below twice the federal poverty level.<\/p>\n The comptroller\u2019s office announced last month the program has enough funding in its first year<\/a> to cover all\u00a0applicants\u00a0in the first tier,\u00a0which includes\u00a0low- to middle-income\u00a0students\u00a0with disabilities and their siblings. After those students were covered, the agency planned to hold a lottery to\u00a0determine\u00a0which applicants in the second tier\u00a0would\u00a0receive\u00a0money.<\/p>\n More than\u00a0two-thirds of the\u00a0Tier Two\u00a0students receiving funding through the program are already enrolled in\u00a0private school<\/a>\u00a0or\u00a0home school<\/a>,\u00a0according to figures released Monday.\u00a0A total of 1,548 of those recipients live in\u00a0Dallas\u00a0ISD\u2019s geographic boundaries.<\/p>\n In a statement,\u00a0acting Comptroller Kelly Hancock called the program \u201cgroundbreaking for\u00a0Texas.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cMore students will now have access to an education path that fits their needs, and the Comptroller\u2019s office is working carefully to launch this program the right way and serve families well,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Critics of the program worry that it will balloon in size in the coming years, eventually draining money from public schools.<\/p>\n Texas lawmakers created the program during last year’s legislative session. They\u00a0allocated\u00a0$1 billion\u00a0for the program\u2019s inaugural year, enough to serve about 90,000 to\u00a0100,000 students. But demand quickly outstripped the money available.\u00a0By the time the program\u2019s application window closed,\u00a0nearly a\u00a0quarter\u00a0of a\u00a0million students had applied.<\/p>\n The DMN Education Lab deepens the coverage and conversation about urgent education issues critical to the future of North Texas.<\/p>\n The DMN Education Lab is a community-funded journalism initiative, with support from Bobby and Lottye Lyle, Communities Foundation of Texas, The Dallas Foundation, Dallas Regional Chamber, Deedie Rose, Garrett and Cecilia Boone, Judy and Jim Gibbs, The Meadows Foundation, The Murrell Foundation, Ron and Phyllis Steinhart, Solutions Journalism Network, Southern Methodist University, Sydney Smith Hicks, and the University of Texas at Dallas. The Dallas Morning News\u00a0retains\u00a0full editorial control of the Education Lab’s journalism.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Texas Comptroller\u2019s Office is distributing\u00a0Texas Education Freedom Account\u00a0money to more than 50,000\u00a0additional\u00a0families this week, officials announced Monday.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":278399,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[732,95012,27,29,28,88032,89512,89205,92931,89204,90401],"class_list":["post-278398","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-article","tag-news-texas","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news","tag-tp-dallas-fortworth","tag-tp-texas","tag-tp-dallas-isd","tag-tp-ed-lab-legislature","tag-tp-education-lab","tag-tp-school-choice"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278398","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=278398"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278398\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/278399"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=278398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=278398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=278398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}