After Suing Texas Officials, Islamic Schools Win Admission to State Voucher Program
It came after a federal judge ordered the state to invite previously-excluded schools to apply and extend the application deadline for families.
The state's list of approved schools now includes at least four Islamic institutions: Bayaan Academy, a virtual school from Maryland with Texas headquarters in Galveston County; Brighter Horizons Academy, a college preparatory K-12 school in Garland; Excellence Academy, a Montessori school north of Dallas; and the Houston Quran Academy, a K-12 top-rated private school in Katy and the first Houston-area Islamic school approved to receive vouchers.
The state agency overseeing the program, led by acting Comptroller Kelly Hancock, confirmed that three schools were admitted to the program this week, but declined to comment, citing the ongoing lawsuit. The Houston Quran Academy's school administration confirmed to the Chronicle they had been admitted.
"We received an invitation to register yesterday from Odyssey. We were able to register and we got approval immediately upon finishing the registration form," the academy's principal, Hamed Ghazali, said. "In addition, our school appeared on the parents' portal and some of our parents were able to register, choosing our school."
The office invited only the schools named in the lawsuit to comply with the judge’s order. The change does not appear to extend to two dozen other Islamic schools in Texas.
While the four schools are approved, other Islamic schools have not yet been added to the state’s private school finder map.
The move comes after the schools sued the state for blocking them from the new $1 billion private school voucher program, known as the Texas Education Freedom Accounts.
The group of Muslim school leaders and parents with children attending Islamic schools in Texas said that it was religious discrimination for the comptroller’s office to not allow a single Islamic private school in Texas to apply or be accepted into the program, despite meeting the law's accreditation requirements.
Bayaan Academy — which had been initially approved for the program and then removed by the state after Houston Chronicle reported it as the only Islamic school in Texas accepting vouchers — was one of the first schools to be re-admitted this week.
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Maria Kari, an attorney for the plaintiffs, called the state's new approvals "telling".
"When schools received the link and registered they received near instantaneous approvals," Kari said. "It confirms what our position has been from the start — that there was never an issue with these Islamic schools' accreditation or issues with Cognia's accreditation. This was simply the state excluding Islamic schools from a government-funded program, which is unconstitutional."
During the course of the two lawsuits, which have been consolidated, the federal US District Judge Alfred Bennett hinted that the exclusion could be discriminatory.
In a court hearing Tuesday, Bennett ordered that the state extend the application window for families by two weeks, until March 31, and that Excellence Academy and Houston Quran Academy in Katy be permitted to apply for the voucher program.
NAML Academy, which was previously approved for the program but later removed, told Hearst Newspapers that it had not heard from the Comptroller’s office this week.
"We do not have transparency at this time as to what will happen with the many other eligible Islamic schools in the state," Kari said. "The situation remains fluid, and I anticipate we will be learning a lot in the coming days."
The voucher program will send $10,400 for tuition reimbursement and other fees to parents who send their children to private school next year, up to $30,000 for parents of children with disabilities and $2,000 for homeschool education.
Source: houstonchronicle.com
