{"id":1478840,"date":"2026-02-07T07:09:50","date_gmt":"2026-02-07T13:09:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/?p=1478840"},"modified":"2026-02-07T07:10:50","modified_gmt":"2026-02-07T13:10:50","slug":"educators-react-to-record-school-voucher-applications","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/?p=1478840","title":{"rendered":"Educators react to record school voucher applications"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"SMITH COUNTY — The State of Texas\u2019 new school voucher program has broken a national record for first day applicants. According to the Texas Comptroller\u2019s office, at least 46,000 families have applied since the portal opened on Wednesday. According to our news partner KETK, the Texas Education Freedom Accounts program was approved during the 89th Texas Legislative session. The school choice program gives selected students $10,000 per year towards private school enrollment and children with learning disabilities can get $30,000.<\/p>\n

Dr. Jay Ferguson, Head of School at Grace Community, has been advocating for this policy since the beginning and hopes it expands their special education services.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s great that so many families around Texas are wanting to participate in the program. For years Grace has been trying to make private Christian education as accessible to as many people as possible. We also have had the opportunity over the past several years to serve kids with learning differences and special needs and hopefully this will expand our ability to serve that group of kids,\u201d Dr. Ferguson said.<\/p>\n

While many are excited for the new faces that could be joining their campus, some worry about a potential decline in enrollment at public schools. There are also concerns voucher money could be going to families who don\u2019t need it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think probably the record number is a lot of those students from private schools. This is for wealthy families, we\u2019re giving them basically giving them money to help pay their tuition at a private school,\u201d Lindale Superintendent Stan Surratt said. \u201cThe legislators estimated that 70% of the vouchers would go to students already in private school.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to the Texas Comptroller\u2019s office, about a third of applicants come from households making less than $66,000 a year and eight out of every ten overall said they intend to go to a private school next year.<\/p>\n

Many are worried the money still won\u2019t cover extensive tuition cost but most private schools offer help.<\/p>\n

\u201cSchools like us, offer an additional funding over and above what TFA would fund. And so it provides additional accessibility for families in need that that maybe isn\u2019t provided by, by, by TFA funding.\u201d<\/p>\n

Data on how many students have applied for each school will not be available until selection is over. Families can apply for the school voucher system through march 17 at education-freedom dot gov.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SMITH COUNTY — The State of Texas\u2019 new school voucher program has broken a national record for first day applicants. According to the Texas Comptroller\u2019s office, at least 46,000 families have applied since the portal opened on Wednesday. According to our news partner KETK, the Texas Education Freedom Accounts program was approved during the 89th … Continue reading Educators react to record school voucher applications<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":61,"featured_media":1478841,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[177],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1478840","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news-archive-archives"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-06 12:18:02","action":"change-status","newStatus":"trash","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1478840","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/61"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1478840"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1478840\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1478842,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1478840\/revisions\/1478842"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1478841"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1478840"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1478840"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1478840"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}