Parents of students with disabilities fear losing Texas’ “life-changing” school vouchers

For about two months, Kelci Jagge tried to send her adopted son to a public school in San Antonio. But Ruslan, who has cerebral palsy and a seizure disorder, could never make it through a single full day of class in East Central ISD.

“He’s profoundly disabled,” Jagge said. “He’s nonverbal, non-ambulatory and G-tube fed, and he just could not tolerate it. He would be screaming and screaming, and they would call me to pick him up every day.”

Ruslan, who Jagge and her husband adopted from Ukraine in 2022, had a “really great” teacher, but they ultimately turned to year-round homeschooling years ago after determining it wasn’t feasible in traditional school for him to get the one-on-one attention that he needs to learn, she said.

Texas’ new $1 billion school voucher program was a “huge blessing” for her son.

The program provides families with up to $2,000 in public funds for homeschooling expenses, which she’s used to buy items like interactive buzzers, jumbo Crayola crayons, and a $119.95 early literacy program that includes a “Zigzag Zebra” and “Lizard Lou” book featuring poems for letters and letter sounds.

“I wouldn’t have normally went and bought (the buzzers) on my own because it’s like, ‘Do I want to spend that money on something I don’t know if he will use?’ Well, we really have used it quite a bit,” Jagge said. “I never would have been able to buy that (reading materials) out of pocket.”

Many Democrats — who won every open statewide office in Texas last week and a majority in the state House for the first time in more than two decades — have vowed to gut the education savings account program, which gives more than 110,000 families taxpayer funds for private schools and homeschooling. Gov.-elect Gina Hinojosa said in her victory speech last week that she would “work tirelessly to repair the damage of the Texas vouchers scam.”

Democrats argue that the state needs to invest additional funds into public schools — not in subsidizing private or unregulated options that are not held to the same educational standards. They say the broader program deprives struggling districts of hundreds of millions in state dollars, as students use vouchers to leave their neighborhood schools. Public schools generally receive state funding based on student attendance.

Hinojosa would have the power to veto any funding for the program included in the next state budget, although she hasn’t said if she’d do so, and lawmakers have already filed bills seeking to repeal the program entirely.

That has parents from Roanoke to Poteet worried about what potentially reversing policy will mean for their children diagnosed with disabilities such as autism, dyslexia, dysgraphia and auditory processing disorders. They told the Tribune that the voucher funding has been “life-changing” for their sons and daughters, stressing the program is not a “scam.”

While most of these families already sent their children to private school or were homeschooling before this year, they said the state funds freed up dollars for behavioral therapists and specialized tutoring or allowed them to buy approved sensory products, picture books such as “How to Catch a Bookworm” and yearlong memberships to specialized math lessons.

“It’s making all the difference right now. I wouldn’t have been able to afford the curriculum nor any of the manipulatives,” said Joy Smith, a Roanoke mom who received up to $2,000 for homeschooling expenses for her 7-year-old son with autism. “Every therapy known to man my child has been through, and it was life-changing to not have to worry about where (the funding) was going to come from.”

Other participating families said the voucher made it easier to send their children to private schools specializing in serving students with disabilities. Now they’re roiled with uncertainty about how they’ll adjust their budgets to absorb the costs next school year if funding doesn’t continue. They said it would be “devastating” if lawmakers don’t find a way to do so.

Under the program, which went into effect this school year, participating families with a child in private school qualify for about $10,500 annually. Home-schoolers can receive up to $2,000. Children with disabilities qualify for up to $30,000, although very few received the maximum amount.

More than 18,800 Texas students with disabilities are using school vouchers this year, according to the comptroller’s office, which manages the program. In total, at least 60% of all students participating are low-income, and about 17% have disabilities. All eligible Texas children could apply, regardless of disability or income status, but applicants with a qualifying disability and family incomes below 500% of the federal poverty level were given the highest priority.

Since she is in a one-income family, Jagge, a mother of six kids, including two other children participating in the voucher program, said the program’s end would really limit her options, specifically with educating Ruslan.

We “don’t have a whole lot of extra wiggle room to be trying out different things for him,” she said. “I would use what we have. It would just be really disappointing for sure. But I would not try public school again. It does not work for him.”

Devastation after Hinojosa’s win

Some families described sending their children to public schools that failed to follow federal special education laws that require accommodations, causing them to lose trust. Others told the Tribune that their children’s severe disabilities made it difficult for them to learn at traditional campuses despite the best efforts of teachers and staff.

Before this year, Elizamae Dowd, a parent of three autistic children, said her 11-year-old daughter was constantly coming home crying because of bullying at her public school. She said the elementary school in Copperas Cove would call her regularly to talk about Talia’s behavior, even though she’s “the sweetest little girl.”

“I really felt like a failure because no matter what I did or how many (Individualized Education Program meetings) we went to or discussed or changed things, she was never progressing,” Dowd said. “I’d have to see tears in her eyes at least once a week because she was being bullied, and now she’s happy. She gets to go to school and learn.”

Talia now attends Oak Creek Academy, a private school in Killeen that specializes in educating neurodivergent children, and is thriving thanks to a voucher, Dowd said. At her new school, her daughter — who also has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and dyslexia — says bullying is not allowed and “everybody is her friend.”

“I saw that (Hinojosa) won, and she won on the premise of taking this away from these children, and it’s devastating thinking that my daughter won’t have this opportunity,” Dowd said, before starting to cry.

Hinojosa and Lt. Gov-elect Vikki Goodwin, who oversees the Texas Senate, did not respond to a request for comment on the future of the voucher program, including how they’d plan to support low-income parents or families of students with disabilities who used vouchers this year if the program was repealed.

Several Texas Democratic lawmakers told the Tribune they’re open to exploring ways that the state can continue to support these families. Rep. Diego Bernal, the vice chair of the House Public Education Committee, previously told the Tribune and ProPublica that the voucher program would be “probably unrecognizable, if not extinct” after the upcoming legislative session.

In a separate interview with the Tribune, Bernal said lawmakers’ primary job is to ensure that all students get high quality services at their traditional public schools, but that may not be possible or it may take time to accomplish. If the existing voucher program is killed, he said he wants to preserve additional support for families of students with disabilities in one form or another.

“I don’t think anybody in the Legislature would have any issue continuing to support them,” said Bernal, D-San Antonio. “Now, we still have a process to go through, right? But I don’t believe there’s any desire to take the rug out from under these students and their families.”

Democrats, voucher critics aim to prioritize public schools

Known as Texas Education Freedom Accounts, the voucher program is enshrined in state law passed last year. Democratic ambitions to completely eliminate vouchers from statute may not come easy because law changes need to get through the Republican-majority Senate, which championed establishing vouchers.

During the legislative session beginning in January, lawmakers must determine how much money, if any, to invest in the program over the next two-year budget cycle.

Hinojosa also has line-item veto power over the budget, which means she can strike funding for the education savings accounts. Any veto overrides would require a two-thirds vote in both the Texas House and Senate.

Outgoing Republican Comptroller Don Huffines had previously asked lawmakers to at least double the amount of money available for the state’s private school voucher program, resulting in a total of more than $2 billion. If the state also provided funding to tens of thousands of students on the waitlist, he estimated that would bring the total to roughly $4 billion over the next two years.

Now Democrat Sarah Eckhardt will be responsible for overseeing the program as the state’s incoming chief financial officer. In the days after the election, Eckhardt announced an audit to the program, signaling she will closely scrutinize vouchers.

Eckhardt has said she is not a supporter of the program but, as comptroller, she will implement the law. Officials from her campaign and the comptroller’s office did not respond to a request for comment about the future of the program.

At least nine Democratic lawmakers in the Senate have sponsored state Sen. Royce West’s bill to repeal the program as of Thursday, and several House Democrats have filed separate legislation to end vouchers. Others have proposed reforms, including requiring private schools to follow federal special education laws to participate in the program.

After years of funding shortfalls, some voucher critics say Texas needs to prioritize funding special education in public schools, which educate more than 910,000 students with disabilities.

“The next legislature will have the opportunity to fully fund special education so that all families can receive the services that their child needs, rather than diverting public funds to private entities where too many families have been turned away at the door,” Carrie Griffith, the executive director of Our Schools Our Democracy, said in a statement.

Rep. John Bucy, who filed legislation to repeal the “voucher scheme,” said the program was done in a way that was “very harmful” to public schools. Our Schools Our Democracy and Every Texan estimated that public schools will lose at least $227 million this school year from thousands of previously enrolled public school students leaving their campuses due to vouchers.

Bucy said he wants to hear from families about whether the vouchers are having an “anecdotal positive impact.” He said he’s willing to consider if the state needs to look at small avenues or grandfathered systems, especially for students with disabilities currently participating in the program. West, a Dallas Democrat, said he’s “open to a conversation to come up with some sort of solution.”

Bucy, D-Austin, said if families were struggling in public schools, it was because Republicans spent 30 years neglecting those campuses.

“I’m hoping that rapidly we’re going to give the support to our public schools, so no longer we will hear a story that ‘My kid wasn’t served well in my public school,’” he said.

Houston Republican Paul Bettencourt wrote on social media that the Legislature needs to review this school year to see “what’s working well and what’s not.” The state senator wants to look into cases where parents with children needing special education services returned vouchers.

Can Texas restore families’ trust in public schools?

Texas’ track record serving students with disabilities is rocky. In 2018, a U.S. Department of Education investigation found that the state illegally capped the percentage of students who could receive special education services and created a system that resulted in some districts denying services to eligible students.

State leaders must work to find opportunities to restore parents’ confidence in public schools and establish pathways for students who left for private options to come back and thrive, said Brenda Rangel, the assistant dean of the Center for Education at Rice University’s Susanne M. Glasscock School of Continuing Studies.

“Just taking (vouchers) away, taking that opportunity for families, especially low-income rural families that cannot afford their children to go to a private education, can be disheartening for anybody,” Rangel said. “We want to make sure we get it right for those that have already become part of the system.”

Jennifer Keese, a mom of two autistic children, said her oldest son has serious sensory sensitivities and became so stressed out that he went “catatonic” at times when he went to public school. While Nathan, now 13, has been attending private school for more than three years, she said the voucher freed up family funds for her to pay for dyslexia tutoring and other support for her younger son, Patrick.

Keese is also the head of school at Wind Rose Academy, a microschool in Plano that has specialized in educating students with autism for nine years. She said the school has about a dozen students attending this year who she believes couldn’t afford to attend without the funding from the Texas Education Freedom Accounts.

She said those children initially had anxiety and were “very aversive to anything that looked like academics.”

“And not even one semester in, everybody is doing markedly better,” Keese said. “Behaviors are way down. Kids are learning. I have children reading. I mean, their parents are over the moon.”

Keese said she remains a public school advocate, and challenges the state to prove to families that the public education system has been fixed for students with disabilities. But in the meantime, she has no plans to put her oldest child back in a school system that failed him.

“To ask us to turn around and trust public schools that have literally watched our kids fail and be so upset and hate going to school (or) for us to think miraculously next year it’ll just be so much better and we should send our kids there? No, no, no, no,” Keese said. “We have felt the agony of watching our children hurt, and if we can do anything to keep our kids from going back to that, we will.”

Staff writers Lexi Churchill and Jasmine Aguilera contributed to this story.