Texas education savings accounts boost special needs kids’ funding, but schools can be hard to find

From San Antonio Report:

When the state notified Naomi Panaligan that her 5-year-old son Xeon qualified for $15,900 to pay for tuition and educations services, she quickly looked into private schools in her area.

Xeon is deaf and was recently diagnosed with autism after Panaligan noticed some developmental delays. He has cochlear implants, is currently learning the basics of American Sign Language and is enrolled in Northside Independent School District.

“I don’t have anything against Northside ISD. It’s a great school district. My son is getting all the services he needs,” Panaligan said. “It’s just that because we had this opportunity and we had this funding, I thought to myself that maybe if I put my son in a private school, he will have more attention.”

But Panaligan had to decline her award from the Texas Education Freedom Account program, a $1 billion state-funded program that launched this year.

She said none of the private schools she applied to accepted Xeon, and not all private programs she looked into accepted TEFA funds.

And while it’s unclear just how many families had to turn down their TEFA this year because they couldn’t find a program, Panaligan’s story probably isn’t unique.

TEFA prioritizes ‘documented disability’

When Texas Republican lawmakers were pushing for a school voucher program last year, one of their biggest selling points was a provision that allowed for students with learning disabilities to get up to $30,000 instead of the $10,000 they expected most students to get on average.

These accounts can pay for a myriad of education-related services: from private school tuition to textbooks, therapy and tutoring.

The TEFA system, overseen by the state comptroller’s office and a company called Odyssey, is also set up to prioritize low-income students with documented disabilities, meaning that group of students was funded first.

While special education and school choice advocates saw the larger TEFA awards and prioritization as a win, several also rang the alarm that there wouldn’t be enough supply of special education services in the private sector to match demand.

“The private schools can only adopt so quickly,” said Inga Cotton, founder and executive director of School Discovery Network, a San Antonio-based nonprofit that advocates for school choice and helps match families with schools.

Cotton says she knows several families in a similar situation to Panaligan.

“But I’m optimistic that over time, if the private schools see that TEFA appears to be a stable program, … then they will be — I think — more likely to invest in special ed-skilled people and welcoming more special ed students.”

A 2023 Texas Tribune analysis of private schools with comprehensive special education programs showed San Antonio only had five, one of which is now closed.

Private schools are not required to meet federal special education standards, which require public schools to take in and provide services for all students regardless of their level of need.

But a large chunk of the $1 billion pot of TEFA funds went to students with special needs.

Out of the roughly 85,000 TEFA recipients for the 2026-27 school year, state data showed nearly 25% of the students have a documented disability. Of the more than 248,000 eligible students who applied, only 12% had a documented disability.

On the public school side, more than 15% of the state’s 5.5 million students received special education services for the 2024-25 school year, according to the most recently available state data.

In the San Antonio region, which includes Bexar County and surrounding counties, nearly 17% of students in public schools are receiving special education services. It’s unclear how many local TEFA recipients have documented disabilities.

How to apply for a special ed TEFA

Panaligan described the application process as simple, since she’d gone through special ed evaluations before through the public school system.

But other families who had never gone through the process were surprised by how lengthy it can be. In order to qualify for the increased TEFA amounts given to students with “documented disabilities,” families needed individual education placement forms, or IEPs, provided by their local school district.

This means families who don’t already have IEPs have to contact their school district’s special education coordinator and request an evaluation.

This year, the TEFA application opened Feb. 4 and closed March 31. During that time, local school districts were flooded with requests for IEP evaluations, and several weren’t able to complete the process until after the application window closed.

Alamo Heights ISD got about 25 evaluation requests in five days. Before that, the district had only received one request during that school year.

“The schools in our area, or where students who live in our area primarily attend, gave notification to their students that they were going to accept vouchers, and they all kind of made that decision in the same week or maybe two weeks,” said Natalie Brown, director of special education and pupil services at AHISD.

Many families didn’t realize how long the process would actually take and some missed the TEFA application window, which had already been extended because of the lengthy IEP process.

After submitting a written IEP evaluation request to a school district, officials have 15 days to respond to the request, and it’s not always granted. After that, the district has 45 school days to evaluate a student and then 30 days for an “annual revision and dismissal” meeting.

“We have a 90-day window to get this process complete,” said Brown. “Those families were requesting those evaluations within a much shorter timeline of the TEFA window being open… and that’s just not the reality.”

As of early September, AHISD has received three evaluation requests during the current school year. Brown expects requests will come in more sporadically for the second round of TEFA applications, which will likely open early next year.

How private schools are adapting

Some private schools have started to slowly expand or invest in special ed services after seeing the demand.

“We’re excited to be launching a new pipeline intervention center to assist our students with special needs,” Marti West, superintendent and department head of Catholic schools for the Archdiocese of San Antonio, told the Report in August.

The pipeline launched last year in response TEFAs. West says it’s a way for the archdiocese to have a “more coordinated effort” to support schools taking students in the first TEFA priority group.

Some private schools have long offered special education services, but only for mild to moderate levels of need.

The Christian School at Castle Hills has a “SOAR” program, which stands for Students Overcoming Academic Restrictions. These classrooms are capped, and require students to have Full Individual Evaluations, which can be completed by private diagnosticians and school psychologists.

“We did have to turn away some families whose kiddos had higher learning needs than we could support with our SOAR program,” said Superintendent Brenda Cornell.

“We want to make sure that we’re not just taking people to take them…Our biggest concern is our kiddos and our families, and making sure their needs are met, and making sure that we can set students up for success in learning and in their spiritual growth. That’s our most important thing.”

The Christian school saw demand from TEFA recipients across the board, especially for kindergarten spots. Officials added kindergarten seats and launched an online K-12 program and a classical K-4 school, which focuses on Western literature and centers learning around grammar, logic and rhetoric.

“TEFA has funded many families for all our online, traditional, and classical schools,” Cornell said.

River City Christian School, located in the North Central neighborhood off Blanco Road, has served K-12 students across the spectrum since it was first established in 1995.

“Our specialty is kids that don’t fit the traditional paradigm — public or private,” said school President Ezzard Castillo.

Class sizes are inclusive and capped at 10 seats, and the curriculum includes project-based learning with an emphasis on physical education and skills-based learning to help develop students as a whole.

River City started the school year with roughly 70 students — more than usual— and Castillo expects enrollment to keep growing.

But challenges remain. The campus is capped at 165 students, and the building is not fully wheelchair accessible, meaning students with severe mobility disabilities would likely be turned away.

Castillo also said the school is also working on providing transportation, since it was a big detractor for families who were considering enrolling in River City. He wants the school to become a “one stop shop” for students and is currently considering more options to expand services.

Panaligan did not apply to any of the schools mentioned in this story.

Can families who opted out reapply?

Families who received TEFAs for documented disabilities could also have just opted for homeschooling.

Idaly Alarcon, whose 7-year-old daughter qualified for a larger TEFA amount because of a speech disability, opted to homeschool. Under the TEFA system, homeschoolers are capped at $2,000.

“Our schedules are very hectic,” said Alarcon, a teacher by trade and stay-at-home parent with a teenage son and a husband who works in the oilfield. “It’s not so much about the school, but if it works with our schedule and our family dynamic.”

So instead of paying for private school tuition, Alarcon uses her TEFA for curriculum and learning materials, and her daughter gets speech therapy through her local public school district.

If Alarcon wanted to go the private school route next year, she would have to reapply to the TEFA system. So would Panaligan, since she opted out of TEFA and stayed in her local public school.

Panaligan plans to reapply when her son is a little older, giving him some time to work on the development delays his doctors believe are related to being deaf. She said one school told her they are “willing to try” but prefer that Xeon know how to use the bathroom on his own first.

She also tried applying for a TEFA for her 2-year-old daughter, but was not eligible because the preschool criteria are much stricter.

Panaligan describes Xeon as a sweet kid who likes playing outside with his toy excavator. People just don’t understand him because he can’t communicate his needs yet, she said.

“It’s a great opportunity we had… but the sad story is not all private schools are willing to accept special kids.”