Texas students with disabilities struggle to qualify for extra school voucher funds

From The Texas Tribune:

Henry Herzog struggles with ADHD, anxiety and hypersensitivity to crowds and noise. The 7-year-old has a physician’s note to prove it.

The medical diagnosis will give Henry priority when Texas decides which students may receive private school vouchers for the 2026-27 school year. Most students will qualify for roughly $10,500 in public funds to pay for private school during Texas’ inaugural rollout of a voucher program. Henry is among the children with disabilities who could also qualify for nearly $20,000 more.

But Henry — and an unknown number of others — have already missed out on that additional money because voucher applications, which close Tuesday, require public schools to perform disability evaluations of students seeking the extra money. Districts have 15 school days to give parents an opportunity to provide written consent for the evaluation. Upon receiving consent, districts have 45 school days to complete the evaluation. They then have 30 calendar days for parents and educators to meet and develop a plan.

Many parents did not realize they needed the evaluation until they started the voucher application. And the window to apply for vouchers was only 41 calendar days.

“It’s frustrating. I wish that it would have been communicated better,” said Tony Herzog, Henry’s dad. “The information wasn’t out there.”

The situation has inundated public school districts with requests from private schools and prospective voucher parents trying to secure special education evaluations and documentation. That influx has forced public schools to redirect limited resources to kids whose parents want vouchers.

“It’s really nice to have school choice,” said Linda Litzinger, advocacy director for Texas Parent to Parent, a disability rights organization. “But this piece wasn’t really, completely worked out with an available time frame for people with disabilities to actually have equal access to it.”

Completing one special education evaluation can take 10 to 30 hours across several days, requiring input from school psychologists, educational diagnosticians and speech-language pathologists. Ranging from academic performance to health, they assess children in every area of a suspected disability.

And for families who do not complete the evaluation — used to develop what’s known as an Individualized Education Program, or IEP — the financial implications are significant. The new state law creating the voucher program does not allow students with disabilities to receive the funding boost in subsequent school years, even if they receive an evaluation from a public school at a later date. That means if they miss out on the additional funds this year, they likely will not receive them in future years. And that funding boost helps offset additional charges private schools may impose for special education services.

[Editor’s note: After this story originally published, the Texas comptroller’s office provided a new interpretation of the school voucher law and how it applies to students who could not get assessed before the application deadline. The updated interpretation could provide a way to qualify for up to $30,000 in vouchers in the future. Read about it here.]

“The problem is that the implementation period for the program is so fast,” said Laura Colangelo, executive director of the Texas Private Schools Association. “Most of it has been going beautifully, but this IEP issue is the one that is the sticking point.”

State leaders have celebrated the program as a benefit to low-income families and students with disabilities, saying they designed it to prioritize underserved Texans fed up with inadequate public schools. So far, families of more than 174,000 students have applied for the program, many of whom are already enrolled in private school or home-school. Roughly one-third are students from low-income families. About 13% are students with a documented disability.

“To have that big gap where they can’t get the funding they need is contrary to the spirit and intent of the bill,” Colangelo said.

Republicans Rep. Brad Buckley and former Sen. Brandon Creighton, the two primary authors of the voucher legislation, did not respond to requests for comment.

The Legislature left it to the comptroller — Texas’ chief financial officer — to design the application process. The agency, currently headed by Acting Comptroller Kelly Hancock, decided families needed only a medical diagnosis to receive priority acceptance for a voucher but would need a public school evaluation for additional funds as required by state law.

Travis Pillow, a spokesperson for the comptroller’s office, said state leaders knew families and schools would likely find difficulty navigating special education requirements in the voucher program’s inaugural year. That’s why, Pillow said, the office created multiple pathways for families to prove their child has a disability, such as a doctor’s note or a public school evaluation.

State leaders opted against a longer application window because they felt schools needed to know as early as possible where students would attend school next year. It is also in the state’s best interest, Pillow said, to verify that additional funding aligns with children’s educational needs.

“We understand how hard it is to navigate the system and get an IEP evaluation done for your child,” Pillow said. “We want to do as well as we can at partnering with those families, giving them the resources they need to be successful. And, certainly, one thing that we have learned in the first few months of launching this new program is that supporting families to successfully navigate the special education system and the IEP evaluation process needs to be a priority for all of us moving forward.”

Pillow said the comptroller’s office is reviewing what flexibility it has in future years to ensure families do not “miss out on funding through no fault of their own or through administrative issues that are beyond their control.”

Because demand has already outpaced the $1 billion available for vouchers, the comptroller will prioritize families based on their household income and whether their child has a disability. Families must still find private schools — which are generally not required to make special education accommodations — to accept their children.

Henry attended public school in Manvel until first grade, when he grew anxious about returning, and his parents thought he could benefit from a more controlled learning environment. They enrolled him in MindSprout Montessori last year, a microschool north of Houston offering smaller class sizes, personalized instruction and a flexible schedule. His dad worked overtime as a paramedic to afford the $7,100 tuition while his mom, Carly, nursed a serious knee injury at home.

The Herzogs hope Henry can soon attend four days on campus, where he would receive all core academic instruction, albeit at a higher tuition. His parents think it would serve Henry better than his current learning arrangement, which includes two days on campus and two days at home. They want their daughter to go to the same school for kindergarten.

But whether both kids do so will depend on whether they receive school vouchers.

Tony Herzog found the voucher application mostly straightforward — until it wasn’t. Roughly a week in, he realized Henry needed a special education evaluation, which the family never sought in previous years after hearing others’ negative experiences and because their son no longer attended a public school.

“It’s just unfortunate because now there’s not even enough time left in the school year for us to even get it done in time,” Tony Herzog said. “Even if we started the ball now, it doesn’t matter. We won’t qualify for the extra funding because his IEP is not completed.”

While the Herzogs waited, others proceeded.

As of Tuesday, public school districts have submitted to the state nearly 2,100 special education evaluations for voucher applicants.

Victoria Independent School District received 111 private school evaluation requests and counting this school year — up from an average of 31 a year over the previous five years. Brazosport Independent School District so far has experienced a 35% increase in requests and inquiries from families not enrolled in the district. Northside Independent School District has picked up about 60 voucher-related requests and inquiries. Lubbock Independent School District has received 41 evaluation requests for the voucher program, most of which will not be completed before the application deadline.

“As far as private school evaluations, this is the first time we’ve seen a drastic increase like this,” said Kelli Cotton, executive director of special services for the Victoria school district in south Central Texas.

Cotton said families are calling the district with uncertainty about the evaluation timeline. They are asking about the status of their voucher applications even though public schools do not manage that process. Others are reaching out even though they do not suspect their child has a disability. To accommodate the influx of requests, the district’s special education assessment staff recently began working Saturdays.

“We’re doing everything we can to help families with this process and help ensure that everything is complete,” Cotton said. “But there are some barriers innately in the process from the state level that creates confusion.”

There’s also a chance families who completed the voucher application will not realize until later they needed the public school evaluation for additional funding, said Steven Aleman, a senior policy specialist for Disability Rights Texas.

Texas public schools serve about 857,000 students with disabilities, a number that has climbed over the years after a federal investigation confirmed reports that the state education agency had illegally denied special education services to thousands of children. Many districts still struggle to meet federal requirements, while funding cuts and staffing shortages have not made their jobs easier.

In a push to narrow Texas’ $1.7 billion special education funding gap, lawmakers authorized $700 million for special education for 2026-27, including a $1,000 reimbursement for each evaluation conducted by a public school. But evaluations can range from $1,000 to more than $5,000, including those for private school children entering the voucher program.

Molly Lubbock, who leads a special education coalition of districts in rural South Texas, said voucher inquiries have not increased in her area, which does not have many private schools. Still, Lubbock believes the influx of evaluations in larger districts will exacerbate Texas’ special education struggles that predated the voucher program.

“I really feel sorry for them because they’re doing the best they can,” Lubbock said.

The Legislature could lessen the load on public schools by keeping students with disabilities at the same funding levels, as lawmakers once proposed, or by funding district partnerships with third-party organizations to help manage evaluations, said Andrea Chevalier, director of governmental relations for the Texas Council of Administrators of Special Education.

But significant changes would not take effect until lawmakers convene for the 2027 legislative session. Pillow, the comptroller spokesperson, sees an opportunity for the office to work closely with public school representatives. Chevalier thinks the damage is already done.

“If this is the path that the Legislature wants to take — where they want this funding to be based on what a child would have received in a public school — then they need to figure out how to make that process more efficient,” Chevalier said. “Because right now, it’s taking resources away from public schools at the same time that those schools are being underfunded for special education.”

Tony Herzog plans to request an evaluation for Henry at another time, though he does not anticipate an easy process. He’s grateful for the opportunity to participate in the voucher program but also wishes the comptroller had better communicated the special education requirements. The uncertainty, he said, was “nerve-wracking.”

“If I miss something or we didn’t fill something out right or we don’t have the right paperwork submitted and my kids miss opportunities now because of that, that’s what I care about,” Tony Herzog said. “Because ultimately, it just comes down to them being in the best environment to learn.”

Disclosure: Texas Private Schools Association has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.