Thousands of Texas families participating in the state\u2019s new school choice program will receive their first round of funding Tuesday as the Texas Education Freedom Account program officially launches.<\/p>\n
Acting Texas Comptroller Kelly Hancock announced that nearly 73,000 Texas Education Freedom Accounts, known as TEFA, will receive initial funding on July 1.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs we launch the nation\u2019s largest year-one school choice program, our office is committed to helping families find the education that best fits their child while delivering a first-class experience and protecting taxpayer dollars,\u201d Hancock said in a statement.<\/p>\n
Who gets paid first?<\/p>\n
The first round of funding includes:<\/p>\n
Private school families who opted into the program and whose selected school confirmed the student\u2019s enrollment.<\/p>\n
Homeschool and other eligible nonpublic school families who opted in before the deadline.<\/p>\n
Homeschool and other eligible nonpublic students will receive their full $2,000 annual award on July 1.<\/p>\n
Private school students will receive funding in three installments:<\/p>\n
25% on July 1.<\/p>\n
25% on Oct. 1.<\/p>\n
50% on Feb. 1, 2027, provided the student remains enrolled in a participating private school.<\/p>\n
Deadlines families should know<\/p>\n
Families awarded funding before June 22 have until July 15 to select a participating school.<\/p>\n
Schools then have until July 31 to confirm the student\u2019s enrollment through the TEFA portal.<\/p>\n
Families selected from the waitlist at a later date will have four weeks from receiving their award to complete the enrollment process. The state said additional funding batches will continue before the school year begins in August.<\/p>\n
TEFA Marketplace also opens July 1<\/p>\n
The state is also launching the TEFA Marketplace on July 1, allowing participating families to use their Education Freedom Account funds to purchase approved educational products and services.<\/p>\n
Eligible expenses include:<\/p>\n
Private school tuition<\/p>\n
Textbooks<\/p>\n
Instructional materials<\/p>\n
Tutoring<\/p>\n
Other approved education-related expenses<\/p>\n
At launch, the marketplace will include more than 54,000 approved educational products and services from nearly 2,400 vendors, including textbooks, technology products and assistive devices for students with disabilities.<\/p>\n
State officials said additional products and services will continue to be added.<\/p>\n
Safeguards built into the program<\/p>\n
The comptroller\u2019s office said several measures are in place to help ensure taxpayer dollars are spent appropriately.<\/p>\n
Those include:<\/p>\n
Families must purchase approved products and services through the secure TEFA Marketplace. Purchases made outside the marketplace will not be reimbursed.<\/p>\n
Schools, vendors and families will not pay fees to participate in the marketplace.<\/p>\n
The program will undergo audits by the Texas Comptroller\u2019s Office, an independent auditing firm and the State Auditor\u2019s Office to monitor spending and compliance.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 by KPRC Click2Houston – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Thousands of Texas families participating in the state\u2019s new school choice program will receive their first round of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":357558,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[54681,127077,88151,27,75153,127078,124983,29,28],"class_list":["post-357557","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-education-funding-texas","tag-school-choice-program-texas","tag-school-voucher-program-texas","tag-texas","tag-texas-comptroller-kelly-hancock","tag-texas-comptroller-school-choice","tag-texas-education-policy","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357557","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=357557"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357557\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/357558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=357557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=357557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=357557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}