Tuesday evening, a federal judge ordered Texas to extend the application deadline for private school vouchers until March 31 due to a lawsuit the state is facing over excluding Islamic schools from the program.
US District Judge Alfred Bennett ordered the state to extend the deadline after four Muslim parents and three Islamic private schools sued the comptroller’s office earlier this month, claiming the state was discriminating against their religion by excluding them from the program.
Prior to the judge’s ruling, applications for the program were set to close at 11:59 p.m. Tuesday.
The extension also comes amid numerous reports of students with disabilities facing hurdles in the application process.
Families of children with disabilities can qualify for up to $30,000 per school year. But even if a child is already diagnosed with a disability by their physician, they’re still required to get a special education evaluation from a local public school to qualify.
Under the program rules, a school has 45 school days to complete the evaluation.
The application window for a voucher, notably, is only 41 days long, and completing one special education evaluation can take up to 30 hours across several days, according to the Texas Tribune. It requires input from school psychologists, educational diagnosticians, and speech-language pathologists.
Because schools are seeing such an influx in evaluation requests, some would-be qualifying families have missed out on the additional funds.
