In 2025, the Texas Lege passed a school voucher bill after years of trying. More than 700 North Texas schools have agreed to take those vouchers, but many of them are not the schools along North Dallas’ private school corridor that runs along Midway: Hockaday, St. Mark’s, Greenhill, Parish, and ESD said they’re sitting out this year, at least. (That still leaves schools such as Jesuit, Ursuline, and Dallas International School, which will take the funds.)
But many kids won’t get that funding for a variety of reasons. (All told, less than a third of North Texas students who applied for a voucher received one, the Dallas Morning News reports.) The Texas Education Freedom Accounts give families $10,474 per student each year to spend on education costs. Students with disabilities can get up to $30,000, provided they are enrolled in approved private schools, pre-K, or kindergarten programs. There are income limits to qualify for the first rounds of funding, which is dispersed in tiers until it runs out. Families of students with disabilities come first, and families earning more than 500 percent of the federal poverty level are last.
Out of the 274,000 students who applied this year, almost 100,000 students statewide received funding. More than 50,000 low-income students through a lottery system, and nearly 43,000 students with disabilities, along with their siblings. More than three-quarters of the earliest applications submitted were for students who were already in private school or homeschooled, or hadn’t started school yet, according to the Texas Center for Voucher Transparency…