OLH principal breaks down ESA rollout, July 15 deadline looms for local families

Kerr County private schools are navigating a wave of new interest from families using the state’s Education Savings Account program, with a hard deadline approaching for anyone who’s been awarded funds but hasn’t yet claimed them.

Our Lady of the Hills Regional Catholic High School Principal Bridget Collins joined The Lead Live to explain how the program — commonly called TEA and administered by the Texas Comptroller’s Office rather than the Texas Education Agency — works, and why it differs from a traditional school voucher.

“A voucher can only be used for tuition, whereas these educational savings accounts can be used for any school-related expenses as long as it’s been approved,” Collins said. “So uniforms, textbooks, lunches, things like that.”

Collins said that flexibility matters most for low-income and special education families, who under a tuition-only voucher would still be on the hook for other costs.

“One of the things they would miss out on is lunches, textbooks, potentially anything, transportation, anything expenses associated with education,” she said. “They’re able to roll that into that.”

Families who applied and were selected have until July 15 to claim their funds through Odyssey, the third-party platform the state uses to manage applications, Collins said.

“That means anybody whose name has been drawn needs to claim it by July 15th,” she said. “If you received it and you have not signed off that you want it, you need to do that or you’re going to lose it on July 15th.”

After that date, administrators will begin pulling names from the waitlist to fill open slots, she said.

The Lead has previously reported that more than 350 families across Kerr County applied for ESA funding, though only a small percentage of those were first-time enrollees in private schools. Locally, 274 families in the Kerrville ISD area applied, Collins said. More than 30 students receiving funds are enrolled at Notre Dame Catholic School, a K-8 school, while nine are enrolled at Our Lady of the Hills, the area’s Catholic high school. Within KISD, preschool and kindergarten were the only grade levels to draw more than 30 applicants each, which Collins attributed largely to the lack of public preschool access outside of qualifying programs.

Collins said the ESA funds go further at schools with lower tuition. OLH charges $11,000 a year; Notre Dame’s tuition is about $6,000.

“It’ll cover your whole tuition,” Collins said of Notre Dame. “Our tuition’s $11,000, so it covers most of it, but our tuition is very low compared to other private high schools.”