{"id":412110,"date":"2026-08-20T18:40:16","date_gmt":"2026-08-20T18:40:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/412110\/"},"modified":"2026-08-20T18:40:16","modified_gmt":"2026-08-20T18:40:16","slug":"huge-news-for-the-fao-schwarz-heads","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/412110\/","title":{"rendered":"Huge news for the FAO Schwarz heads"},"content":{"rendered":"

Getting a Texas school voucher is one thing. Making it work is another. <\/a><\/p>\n

As we\u2019ve mentioned before<\/a>, this is the first year that Texas families can use vouchers to help subsidize private school tuition. The program offers families $10,474 per student towards private education expenses, and students with special needs can receive up to $30,000. Advocates warned throughout the debate<\/a> around vouchers that finding a school that has space and will take a voucher would be difficult, and if you have a child requiring more specialized instruction, it can be doubly so.<\/p>\n

Today the Dallas Morning News published a story that explores the latter through the experience of the Howk family, who live in Hurst but now drive 26 miles to take their children, Hua and Haruki, to the Notre Dame School of Dallas, a Catholic school for students with special needs. The Howk family is making sacrifices\u2014Colleen, the mother, has taken on a part-time job to help pay for a new car that can make the commute. The Howks did receive vouchers that will cover their tuition. However, another parent, Taylor Sbordone, received $15,720 in voucher funding for her daughter, who has been diagnosed with autism, ADHD, and dysgraphia, to attend Vanguard Prep School. Annual tuition is $33,375, and the enrollment fee is $4,850, and Vanguard doesn\u2019t offer financial aid for first-year students. Sbordone is scrambling to make up the difference.<\/p>\n

All of this is part of the reason why 20,700 students<\/a>\u2014including 7,300 with special needs\u2014returned their vouchers this year. Not only is it difficult to find a school<\/a> that will take the voucher, the voucher may not cover the entire tuition. Public schools offer transportation and are often closer to home\u2014private schools do not generally offer transportation, and families may not be able to swing twice daily commute.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI just hope we\u2019re still saying it\u2019s worth it, 150 days into this,\u201d Steven Howk told the News. \u201cIt will wear on us I know at some point.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read the Dallas Morning News story here<\/a>, and then our take on why vouchers aren\u2019t the cure-all below. Interested in learning more about the private school placement? Next month, we\u2019re having a Happy Hour with an Agenda featuring Dr. Matthew Housson from the Housson Center, who will talk with D Magazine Executive Editor Holland Murphy. You can get tickets for that here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"A <\/a> Education<\/a> School Vouchers Are Not a Silver Bullet <\/a><\/p>\n

The first wave of Texas school vouchers is here, but many applicants didn\u2019t receive funding, several elite Dallas private schools opted out, and public school districts are already preparing for the financial impact.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Getting a Texas school voucher is one thing. Making it work is another. As we\u2019ve mentioned before, this…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":334826,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[102,104,103],"class_list":["post-412110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-dallas","tag-dallas","tag-dallas-headlines","tag-dallas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412110","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=412110"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412110\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/334826"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=412110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=412110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=412110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}