TEXAS \u2014\u00a0Acting Texas Comptroller Kelly Hancock is attempting to keep some schools with alleged Islamic and Chinese ties from accessing the new Texas Education Freedom Accounts (TEFA) program.<\/p>\n
Through the program, private schools, homeschools and other \u201calternative education options\u201d can receive state funding for tuition, textbooks, computers, tutoring and more, according to the Austin American-Statesman<\/a>. These items and services must be from state-approved sources.<\/p>\n The private schools Hancock is eyeing have not been named, but in a letter<\/a> to Attorney General Ken Paxton, Hancock sought legal clarity regarding blocking institutions \u201cbased at an address that have hosted publicly advertised events organized by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)\u201d from participating in TEFA. Gov. Greg Abbott named CAIR as a \u201cforeign terrorist organization\u201d in mid-November and received a lawsuit<\/a> from the group days later.<\/p>\n Hancock also claimed in the letter that one school potentially applying for TEFA may have connections to \u201can adviser to the Chinese communist government.\u201d<\/p>\n All the schools in question are recognized by Cognia, a school accreditation nonprofit approved by the Texas Private School Accreditation Commission (TEPSAC), according to the letter.\u00a0<\/p>\n TEFA funds are set to take effect in the 2026-27 school year.<\/p>\n “The people of Texas deserve the highest assurance that no taxpayer dollars will be used, directly or indirectly, to support institutions with ties to a foreign terrorist organization, a transnational criminal network, or any adversarial foreign government,” Hancock wrote.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TEXAS \u2014\u00a0Acting Texas Comptroller Kelly Hancock is attempting to keep some schools with alleged Islamic and Chinese ties…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":98004,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133,102,163,138,116,30432,223,287,82,27],"class_list":{"0":"post-98003","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-austin","8":"tag-austin","9":"tag-austin-headlines","10":"tag-austin-news","11":"tag-dallas","12":"tag-education","13":"tag-el-paso","14":"tag-fort-worth","15":"tag-hannah-maguire","16":"tag-news","17":"tag-politics","18":"tag-san-antonio","19":"tag-texas"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98003","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=98003"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98003\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/98004"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98003"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98003"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}