Texas Education Freedom Accounts: What Private Schools Should Do Before Year Two

The superintendent of the Fort Worth Catholic Diocese schools expected one or two new students per campus when Texas Education Freedom Accounts launched. He got between 400 and 600 students brand new to his schools, enough that the diocese started discussing whether it needs to build more of them.

Somewhere else in Texas, a private school with comparable tuition, a similar program, and the same state approval added eleven students. Both schools participate in TEFA. Both schools announced it. Only one of them marketed it.

Year one of the Texas school voucher program, the largest day-one school choice launch in American history, is finished, and it produced two kinds of results for private schools. This article is about the difference, and about the five months you have before the next application window decides year two.

Program figures in this article are current as of August 2026. TEFA is administered by the Texas Comptroller's office and the rules continue to evolve, so verify anything you publish on your own site against educationfreedom.texas.gov.

Quick Answers

What are Texas Education Freedom Accounts? TEFA is Texas's education savings account program, created by Senate Bill 2 in 2025 and funded at $1 billion for its first year. Eligible families receive $10,474 per student at a participating private school, up to $30,000 for students with a qualifying IEP, and $2,000 for homeschoolers. Funds flow through the Odyssey platform in installments rather than as a lump sum.

Did TEFA actually grow private school enrollment? Substantially, and unevenly. Roughly 100,000 students received funding, and more than 100,000 families are participating in the first year. But earlier state data showed 57% of families invited into the program already attended private school or homeschooled, which means the growth concentrated at schools that reached genuinely new families rather than at every participating school equally.

What Year One Actually Did

The numbers are worth sitting with, because they describe a market that will not look like this again.

The application window opened February 4 and was scheduled to close March 17, then extended to March 31 by court order. More than 8,000 applications arrived in the first hour. By the deadline, more than 274,000 students had applied against a first-year capacity of roughly 90,000 to 100,000. The Comptroller's office found about 25,500 applicants ineligible, most commonly because they misunderstood the narrow pre-kindergarten eligibility rules or could not verify household income or lawful presence.

Awards went out in tiers. Tier 1, students with disabilities from households at or below 500% of the federal poverty level, received 42,600 awards, followed by roughly 53,000 more, then nearly 15,000 additional Tier 3 awards later in the summer. Tier 4, the highest-income group, is capped at 20% of program funds and received nothing in year one. Funding reaches families in installments: 25% on July 1, another 25% on October 1, and the remaining 50% on February 1, 2027, contingent on continued enrollment.

More than 2,000 accredited private schools signed up to participate. That number matters for a reason most schools have not thought about: participation is now the baseline, not the differentiator. When 2,000 schools accept the same funding, announcing that you accept it distinguishes you from nobody.

Why Two Schools Got Two Different Years

The schools that gained meaningfully did three things, and the schools that gained a handful of students usually did the first one only.

They participated early and visibly. Approval takes time, and families searching in February needed to find your school already listed. Late approval meant invisibility during the only six weeks that mattered.

They had capacity, or built it. In the Archdiocese of San Antonio, all 35 Catholic campuses participated, principals reported rising inquiries, and some schools hit capacity in specific grades months ahead of the normal cycle. Growth is a good problem, but it is still a problem if you have not planned for it.

They marketed to families who had never considered them. This is the whole ballgame. Announcing TEFA participation is like promoting your open house with a flyer in your own front hallway. Everyone already inside sees it. That is precisely why so much of the money went to families who were already enrolled somewhere private, and why the schools that reached outside their existing community saw hundreds of new students instead of a dozen.

One structural note in your favor: for most K-8 students in the San Antonio archdiocese, the award was expected to cover full tuition. If that is true at your school, affordability is not a talking point. It is the headline, and it belongs at the top of your homepage rather than in a news post from last spring.

The Demand You Are Not Capturing

Here is the part that should reorganize your fall. Texas parents are searching for voucher-accepting schools in serious volume, the difficulty of ranking for those searches is low, and the results are dominated by news outlets and the state portal rather than by schools.

What parents search	Monthly searches	Why schools are not showing up
private schools voucher texas	3,600	Difficulty score of 29, which a single well-built school page can compete for. Results are directories and news coverage.
texas voucher schools	2,900	Higher difficulty, dominated by state and media pages, but the intent is unmistakably a parent shopping for a school.
texas voucher program schools	1,900	Commercial intent. These parents want a list of schools, and almost no individual school ranks.
texas school voucher program	1,300	Difficulty 26. Informational, but it is the search that precedes the shopping search.
texas education freedom account	1,300	Difficulty 21. Branded term with soft competition and a clear next step.
texas private school voucher program	390	Difficulty 21. Long-tail, high intent, essentially uncontested by schools.

Search volume and difficulty from Semrush, August 2026. Volumes fluctuate seasonally and spike during the application window.

Add those together and roughly 11,000 searches a month in Texas point at a school that accepts the voucher. The families running those searches have money attached to them and no idea which schools to look at. Most will end up on a state directory or a news article, and the schools they eventually find will be whichever ones happened to be listed.

Want to know what your school ranks for right now in your own market? Request a free mini digital marketing audit and we will show you.

Building Your TEFA Page

One dedicated page does most of the work here, and it needs to answer the questions a Texas family actually has rather than the questions your admissions office is used to hearing. Our national school choice guide covers the five moves that apply in any choice state; these are the Texas-specific additions.

State your participation status in the first sentence. Not in a PDF, not in a news item, not three scrolls down. A parent who cannot confirm in five seconds that you take TEFA will leave and check another school.

Publish the arithmetic. $10,474 against your tuition, minus whatever aid you offer, equals what the family actually pays. If the award covers everything, say so plainly. If there is a gap, name it. A family that discovers a shortfall in July, after the enrollment verification deadline has passed, has a very different opinion of your school than one who knew in February.

Explain that these are two separate applications. This is the single most common misunderstanding, and it costs families a year. Receiving a TEFA award is not the same as being admitted to your school, the way a college acceptance and a financial aid package arrive in two different envelopes. Families assume one implies the other, nobody corrects them, and then a July deadline arrives with the school selection unmade. Spell out both processes, in order, with your own admissions deadlines beside the state's.

Cover the tiers and the lottery honestly. Applying is not receiving. Explain the priority tiers, note that Tier 4 received nothing in year one, and tell families what your school can do if they are not funded. Schools that hide this look better for a month and worse for a year.

Name a human being. A phone number and an email for someone who can answer TEFA questions specifically. Our guidance on admissions page design applies to the rest of the page, and the underlying SEO fundamentals are unchanged. The advantage here is not sophistication. It is that your competitors have not built this page.

The Window Is Not in February

The 2027-28 application window has not been announced, though the Texas Private Schools Association expects late winter or spring, and year one ran February 4 through March 31. It is tempting to read that as a February problem.

It is not. Families who applied in February started thinking about private school months earlier, and the schools they applied to were the ones already familiar by then. Your search visibility, your TEFA page, and your open house schedule need to be working in October and November for a February window. Our enrollment cycle article covers the general principle; TEFA just adds a hard state deadline on top of an already-early decision.

What that means practically, working backward from a February window:

• October: TEFA page live, interest list collecting names, fall open house promoted to families outside your current community.

• November: email sequence running to your interest list, with what you can offer regardless of state funding.

• December: tuition and aid figures finalized so your published net-cost math is accurate before applications open.

• January: window announcement watch, plus a reminder campaign to last year's waitlisted families that they must reapply.

• February and March: application-window push, tours running at higher frequency, same-day response to every inquiry.

• April through July: shepherd awarded families through school selection and enrollment verification before the state deadlines.

There is also a real funding question sitting under all of this. The $1 billion appropriation covers 2026-27 and expires at the end of the state biennium on August 31, 2027. More on what that means for year two below. For now, the planning implication is simple: keep your own financial aid strong enough to hold families regardless of what the Legislature decides.

The 145,000 Families Nobody Is Marketing To

Subtract the ineligible applications and the roughly 102,000 awards from the 274,183 who applied, and about 145,000 eligible Texas students wanted this and did not get it. They are sitting in public schools right now.

No school would throw away a waitlist that long. Texas built one for you, sorted by demonstrated intent, and nearly every school is treating it as a list of people who said no. They did not say no. The state ran out of money.

How Year Two Actually Works

Three mechanics decide who gets funded next year, and most schools do not know any of them.

Current recipients do not reapply. Participants who remain in good standing confirm they want to continue rather than submitting a new application, and their accounts stay active as long as they keep meeting program requirements. That means renewals are not in the lottery. They come off the top of whatever the Legislature appropriates.

New applicants are ranked in a specific order. For 2027-28 and beyond, Odyssey has published the priority sequence: siblings of participating children first, then new eligible applicants, then prior participants who left the program for a public or charter school. The four income and disability tiers then apply within each of those groups. A family with a sibling already enrolled is in a materially better position than a family starting fresh, which is worth saying out loud to your current families.

Whether waitlisted families carry forward is unresolved. The state has not answered whether families who spent 2026-27 on the waitlist will need to submit a brand new application or whether their existing one carries over. Tennessee, which runs a structurally similar program, treats prior unsuccessful applicants as new applicants who must reapply. Until Texas says otherwise, the safe advice to give a family is to plan on reapplying, because the cost of being wrong in that direction is an afternoon and the cost of being wrong in the other direction is a year.

The Arithmetic Nobody Is Doing

Here is the sentence that should shape your fall. Roughly 102,000 students were awarded in year one. If most of them renew at $10,474, renewals alone consume close to the entire original $1 billion appropriation. Homeschool awards at $2,000 and disability awards up to $30,000 move the exact figure, but the direction is not in doubt.

Which means: if the Legislature funds year two at the same level, there is almost no room for new families. Every additional student requires a larger appropriation than the first year received. The 145,000 families on the outside are not waiting in a line that advances on its own. They are waiting on a vote.

That vote happens between January and May 2027. The Texas Legislature convenes January 12 and adjourns at the end of May, and the budget it passes takes effect September 1, 2027. The waitlist itself is the central piece of evidence in that debate, since state law requires the Comptroller to report its size to lawmakers.

And here is the timing trap. The 2027-28 application window is expected in late winter or spring, and year one ran February 4 through March 31. Families will very likely apply, and your admissions season will very likely be decided, before anyone knows how much money exists. Plan your marketing for a window that opens while the funding question is still open, and do not let a family talk themselves out of applying because the Legislature has not voted yet.

What to Build This Fall

The schools that understand this are already collecting names. The Diocese of Austin runs a 2027-28 TEFA interest list. The Texas Private Schools Association runs one too, explicitly framed as evidence for the Legislature. Yours should exist by October, and the offer is simple: leave your email and we will tell you the moment the window opens, plus here is what we can do for your family in the meantime.

Three audiences belong on that list, and they need different messages. Waitlisted families need a reapplication reminder and a warning that carry-forward is not guaranteed. Families who never applied need the basics plus encouragement, since a quarter of year-one applications failed on eligibility technicalities that a five-minute conversation would have caught. And your current families need to know that siblings get priority in year two, which is both true and a genuine reason for them to talk to other parents about you.

What you can offer without state money is not nothing: your own financial aid, payment plans, parish or congregational support, and a tour. An email sequence that keeps those families warm from October through the application window is the highest-return marketing asset available to a Texas private school right now, and it costs almost nothing to build.

One more thing worth planning now rather than in February: the families the money brought you did not arrive through a tour or a relationship, and keeping them is a different job than winning them. We wrote about what to say and show to families already enrolled separately, because it is the half of this that almost nobody is working on yet.

Plan for Both Outcomes, Because You Cannot Wait for the Vote

Every school builds its master schedule in the spring without knowing final enrollment. You plan for the likely case, you keep a version for the low case, and you never get the certainty you would prefer. Year two of TEFA is that exercise applied to your entire enrollment strategy, and the calendars make it unavoidable: your re-enrollment contracts go out in winter, the application window opens in late winter, and the Legislature does not finalize funding until the end of May. You will be recruiting and retaining for months before anyone knows how much money exists.

So build the parts that work either way first, then prepare two versions of the part that does not.

Do This Regardless of the Vote

Lock your renewals, actively. Continuing families do not reapply, but they do have to confirm their intent to continue and keep meeting program requirements. That is an administrative step, and administrative steps get missed. Do not assume a funded family is safe because they were funded once. Build a confirmation reminder into your winter communications the same way you chase a missing enrollment contract.

Build the sibling list now. Siblings of participating children sit at the top of the year-two priority order, ahead of every other new applicant. That is the single most winnable group in the state, and you already have their parents' phone numbers. Pull a list of every current TEFA family with a younger child not yet enrolled, and start those conversations in the fall rather than in February.

Understand that funded families are portable. This is the part almost nobody has thought through. The account belongs to the family, not to your school. More than 2,000 schools participate, and a family holding an award can take it somewhere else between school years. Before TEFA, a family leaving your school lost their tuition arrangement and their financial aid package. Now they leave with the money still attached. Retention just became a competitive event.

Confirm your own participation status early. Approval, directory listing, and enrollment verification all have deadlines, and a school that is not visible in the state's school finder during the application window is invisible to the families using it.

If the Legislature Expands Funding

Speed becomes the whole advantage. The window in year one ran about eight weeks, and a school that starts building its outreach when the news breaks has already lost half of it. If you have an interest list, you are sending an email the same day. If you do not, you are starting from zero while your competitor sends theirs.

Three audiences, in priority order. Waitlisted families first, because they applied once and need to hear that the money moved and that they very likely need to reapply. Then referral prospects from your current TEFA families, who know other families in exactly the same situation and whose recommendation carries more weight than anything you can publish. Then the broader unfunded pool, reached through search, local channels, and your fall events.

The message shifts too. In an expansion year, urgency is real and honest: more seats exist, the window is short, and applying is free. That is the rare moment when a school can use a deadline without manufacturing one.

If Funding Stays Flat or Shrinks

Then the market becomes close to zero-sum, and the roughly 102,000 funded students are the entire addressable pool. Almost no new families enter. Every school competes for students who already have accounts, which means two things happen at once: your funded families become a target, and other schools' funded families become available.

Retention is the whole game in this scenario, and the tactics are unglamorous. Communicate with TEFA families more, not less, particularly in the first year when the arrangement is new and any billing confusion feels like a warning sign. Get ahead of the February installment, since a family who does not understand the payment schedule may assume something has gone wrong. Ask them, out loud, whether the school is delivering what they hoped, and fix what you hear.

The offensive side of a flat year is subtler and it is where branding stops being a soft word. When every participating school accepts the same award, affordability is neutralized. A family choosing between two schools that both cost them the same net amount is choosing on everything else: outcomes, community, faith formation, teacher stability, whether their child seems happy. That is a story problem, not a pricing problem, and stories are the one asset a small school can build without a budget. Parent testimonials, student voices, alumni outcomes, and honest classroom footage do more in a flat year than any ad.

The uncomfortable implication is worth naming: in a flat-funding year, the schools that grow will grow by being chosen over another participating school. Be the one families move toward.

Make It Annual, Not Episodic

Whatever happens in May, this repeats. There will be an application window every year, a renewal confirmation every year, a sibling cohort aging into eligibility every year, and a legislative session every other year deciding whether the pool grows. Schools that treat TEFA as a one-time event will rebuild the same scramble annually.

Fold it into your enrollment calendar as a permanent track: interest list collection in the fall, renewal confirmations and sibling outreach in winter, application-window push in late winter, award and enrollment shepherding in spring and summer, and a retention check with every TEFA family before the year ends. That is not a campaign. It is a season, and it now runs alongside your existing one.

Common Mistakes

The mistake: treating TEFA as a billing change.

The fix: it is an enrollment event. The finance office needs to handle the payments; the admissions office needs a campaign.

The mistake: assuming the state's marketing is your marketing.

The fix: the state told families the program exists. Nobody told them about your school. Those are different jobs and only one of them is done.

The mistake: letting families discover the tuition gap after enrollment verification.

The fix: publish the real net cost early. The families you lose to honesty were going to leave anyway, and later.

The mistake: assuming a funded family is a retained family.

The fix: the account belongs to the parent and travels with them. Communicate with TEFA families more than you did before, not less, because for the first time a departing family keeps their funding.

The mistake: writing off waitlisted and unfunded families.

The fix: build the interest list now. They already told the state they want what you offer, and they have to reapply from scratch.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the TEFA award amount?

For 2026-27, $10,474 per student at a participating private school, set at 85% of the statewide average state and local funding per public school student. Students with a qualifying IEP on file with the Texas Education Agency may receive up to $30,000, and homeschooled students receive $2,000.

Who is eligible for Texas Education Freedom Accounts?

Any child who is a US citizen or lawfully present, is a Texas resident, and is eligible to attend a Texas public school or public pre-K program. Income does not determine eligibility, but it determines priority when demand exceeds funding, which it did substantially in year one. Pre-K applicants face narrower criteria, which caused a large share of year-one ineligibility findings.

Does TEFA cover full private school tuition?

It depends on your tuition. At many parish elementary schools the award covers the full amount, and in the San Antonio archdiocese it was expected to cover full tuition for most K-8 students. At independent secondary schools with higher tuition, families face a gap that your own financial aid may or may not close.

How does a private school participate in the Texas school voucher program?

Schools must be accredited, register through the Comptroller's process, and appear in the program's participating school directory. More than 2,000 schools completed this for year one. Participation is voluntary, and schools set their own admissions policies and may charge families the difference between the award and actual tuition.

What happens to families on the TEFA waitlist?

They remain eligible but unfunded, and their status stays listed as eligible while the Comptroller issues additional awards as money is returned by families who opt out. Whether a waitlisted application carries forward into 2027-28 has not been answered by the state, so families should plan on reapplying. The Comptroller reports waitlist size to the Legislature, and that number is expected to influence future funding decisions.

Can a TEFA family switch schools?

The account belongs to the family rather than the school, and families select their participating school through the Odyssey portal. Between school years a funded family can choose a different participating school and take the award with them, which is a meaningful change from how private school financial aid has traditionally worked. Students who enroll in a public or charter school are removed from the program.

When does the 2027-28 application window open?

It has not been formally announced as of publication. Year one ran February 4 through March 31, 2026, and the Texas Private Schools Association anticipates a late winter or spring window. Families and schools can join interest lists now to be notified.

Will TEFA continue after 2026-27?

The current $1 billion appropriation expires August 31, 2027, and the Legislature convening in January 2027 will decide on renewal and expansion. Demand data from year one, including the waitlist, is expected to be central to that conversation. Plan for continuation, but do not build your enrollment model on a single funding source.

Year One Was the Diagnostic

Texas just handed every private school in the state an enormous amount of information: which families want this, how many of them there are, where they live, and what happens when a school is easy to find versus merely eligible. Year one was the diagnostic test. The schools that treat those results as a scoreboard will get the same result next year. The ones that treat them as a study guide will not.

Five months is enough time to build the page, start the interest list, and be visible before the window opens. It is not enough time if you start in January.

That work is what YPM Studio does for private, Catholic, Christian, and charter schools: the search visibility, the pages, the enrollment marketing system behind the announcement. We are based in Baltimore and work with schools nationally. When The School of the Cathedral put a real system behind their story, the results were 97% parent participation, doubled unique donors, a 95% increase in total gifts, and 400+ communications a year without adding staff.

If your TEFA year was quieter than you hoped, book a free 20-minute consultation. Bring your application numbers. We will show you which families you missed and what to build before February.