What TEFA funds can pay for in 2026-27 (and what they cannot)

TEFA’s final rules tightened what families can spend their award on, and several spending paths that exist in other state ESA programs do not exist in Texas. If you operate a school, you will get these questions from families weekly, so it is worth knowing the rules cold, both to answer correctly and to price your own offering inside them.

The award amounts, for context

• $10,474 per K-12 private school student for 2026-27.
• Up to $30,000 per year for students with disabilities with qualifying documentation (IEP, MET, or 504).
• Up to $2,000 per homeschool student per year, funded fully upfront on July 1.

What TEFA funds can pay for

The core eligible use is tuition and fees at a participating private school: one that is TEPSAC- or TEA-accredited, has operated for at least two years, and has a Texas location. Instructional materials and certain other education expenses are purchasable, with an important catch that every purchase routes through Odyssey-approved channels. The platform is the marketplace and the payment rail at once.

What TEFA funds cannot pay for

• No reimbursements.Families cannot pay out of pocket and claim the money back from their TEFA account. If a purchase did not go through the approved channel, the award does not cover it. This is the single most common point of confusion for families arriving from other states’ programs.
• Standalone tutors, therapies, and freelance teaching services are excluded under the final adopted rules. Spending concentrates on accredited schools and approved vendors rather than individual service providers.
• Technology is capped at 10 percent of the allocation. A family with the standard award cannot direct more than roughly $1,047 of it to technology purchases in the year.

What this means for your school

1. Accreditation is the gate. The excluded categories push families toward accredited schools, which is exactly what a TEPSAC- or TEA-accredited microschool is. If you are accredited and approved in Odyssey, the rules concentrate demand toward you. If you are not yet, that is the project: becoming a TEFA-eligible school.
2. Price in tuition terms. Because the clean eligible category is tuition and fees, schools that bundle their offering as clear annual tuition have the simplest path through the platform. Unbundled add-ons that look like standalone services invite eligibility questions you do not need.
3. Answer the reimbursement question before it is asked. Put one line in your family-facing materials: tuition is paid from the TEFA account through Odyssey, the school does not take TEFA payments outside the platform, and families should not pay cash expecting reimbursement.
4. Leftover balances stay in the program.When the award exceeds tuition (at $9,600 tuition, the standard award leaves $874 a year), the remainder stays in the family’s account for other eligible spending under program rules. It is their balance, not the school’s, and saying so clearly builds trust.

Rules evolve, and the program publishes updates through the Comptroller and Odyssey. Treat this article as the operator’s orientation, verified on the date below, and check the primary sources before making a pricing decision that depends on a detail.