Houston Parents of IEP Students - TEFA Private School Access

Teir 1 Notification in Houston Anyone in Houston willing to speak to a reporter about their exerpeience trying to find a private school for their child with an IEP that accepts TEFA. I'm working on a story here in Dallas on my family's experience, more details below: Here is what no one is reporting: The disability priority only applies to Tier 1, families with a child who has a disability AND a household income at or below 500% of the federal poverty level. Special education families who earn above that threshold receive no disability priority whatsoever. They are lumped into Tiers 2, 3, and 4 alongside families with no disability considerations at all, competing in the same lottery with no acknowledgment of their child's additional needs. Since TEFA is so quick to share statistics, I can’t wait to see how many families with disabled children actually complete enrollment at a participating school by the July 15 deadline. Of the 2,300+ private schools currently participating in TEFA, there is no publicly available data on how many have any special education staff or capacity to serve students with dyslexia, autism, etc. I am a Texas parent of a child with a disability and have been closely following how this program is actually playing out for families like mine. Their press release say 42,000 Tier 1 families were notified. Someone needs to find out how many of those families, and the thousands more with disabled children in other tiers, actually have somewhere to go.