After a decades-long battle with Democrats, teacher unions, and even a few Republicans, Texas conservatives are celebrating the successful launch of what is likely to become the largest school-choice program in the country.
The Lone Star State's school choice program, called the Texas Education Freedom Accounts, saw record-setting registrations in its first days. Within one hour of the program opening, it had already garnered 8,000 registrations. By the end of the day, it had notched 42,000 signups and three days in, it was sitting at around 62,000 signups. The program is expected to hit 100,000 by its March 17 deadline.
To Texas Acting Comptroller Kelly Hancock, chief administrator of the program, the program's early success represents a win for what he called "educational freedom."
"We figure in the State of Texas, we lead the nation in economic freedom, we might as well lead the nation in educational freedom," he said in an interview with Fox News Digital.
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School choice was a major legislative priority for Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, who signed the measure establishing the program into law last May. Under the program, families will receive $10,000 per year to help pay for their child's private school tuition or costs for home-schooling and virtual learning programs. Children with disabilities can qualify for as much as $30,000 per year.
Though showing early signs of success, getting a school choice program to pass in a state the size of Texas was not easy. As a parent himself, Hancock said he has been an advocate for school choice for the last three decades.
"We got close at times in the state of Texas, where we thought the votes were there, and then we wouldn't get there. And frankly, a couple of years ago, before Gov. Abbott got involved, I myself was like, 'OK, I don't know that we're ever going to get there,'" he admitted.
While proponents believe the measure gives parents more options by allowing them to take their children out of poor-performing public schools in favor of alternative public or private school choices, others argue it pulls financial resources from Texas' public school students and subsidizes the private education of wealthy families.
The program saw fierce opposition from the state's leading teachers unions, including the Texas American Federation of Teachers (Texas AFT) and the Texas State Teachers Association (TSTA).
Ahead of the program launching, Texas AFT issued a statement calling it a "growing billion-dollar boondoggle."
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TSTA argued that Texas could not adequately fund both its public schools and the school choice program, saying, "Our underfunded public schools need all the tax dollars that lawmakers spend on K-12 education."
In a statement shared with Fox News Digital, TSTA President Ovidia Molina vowed to "continue working to kill this expensive and discriminatory program."
She knocked the state for "most" of the religious schools approved to participate in the program being Christian, which she said, "restrict admission or give preference to children of their own faith." She also said that "some of these schools refuse admission to LGBTQ students."
"These schools will use public tax dollars to discriminate against children whose families pay these tax dollars. Public schools do not discriminate. They accept every student who lives in their district, regardless of race, ethnicity, gender identity, religion, family income or whatever, and only public schools should receive our tax revenue," said Molina.
Hancock, however, pushed back on the idea that the program pits public and private schools against each other. He said Texas, which operates on a constitutionally required balanced budget, was able to fund the school choice program "at the same time that we had record investment in public education and $4 billion in teacher pay, which was a record investment in going directly to paying for our teachers there within the public setting."
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"We want to be number one, not only in this program, but in education as a whole, both our public schools, our charter schools, and home schools, and private schools," he explained. "We're willing to give that investment, and we have our eyes set on it."
He framed the opposition to the program as attempts to maintain the status quo and eliminate competition in education.
"It's the standard pushback, and the reality is no change, no competition, we want the system as is, we don't want any changes to be involved in it," he said. "Look, I'm a businessman, and I would love it if in the business I'm in that I had limited or no competition, that I have government protections, that had government funding me, that lived within all those protections. I mean, let's face it, who wouldn't want those protections? But that's not good for… the students, the children."
"What's the best for children is competition," he went on.
Further, he believes the huge number of signups indicates how badly needed the program is.
"I think by opening this up and then the enormous turnout we had, the record turnout we hit, that what it shows is we're meeting the customers' needs and the customers are Texans."
