New School choice program bringing hope to children, parents, pastors say

Audio By Carbonatix

(The Center Square) – Texas’ new school choice program is bringing hope to children and parents, pastors said at a Republican Party of Texas Convention held in Houston. 

Texas’ new school choice program “has brought hope to our parents who felt so hopeless,” Tyler, Texas-based pastor Joel Enge said to a crowd of several thousand. Enge founded Kingdom Life Academy, a private Christian school in northeast Texas. 

A longtime school choice advocate and former public-school teacher, Enge has known Gov. Greg Abbott for more than 10 years. He highlighted Abbott’s and the state legislature’s commitment to advancing the strongest prolife legislation in the country, the Heartbeat Act, banning boys in girls’ sports, banning sex change surgeries on minors, and securing Texas’ border while also cracking down on human smuggling and sex trafficking, including of children. 

“Gov. Abbott is fighting for the heart and soul of Texas,” Enge said. Quoting from Isaiah 61:8 in the Old Testament of the Bible, he said, “God loves justice. Gov. Abbott has stood for justice, especially justice for our children.”

“I'm standing for justice with school choice,” he continued, adding that school choice “is a battle” for parents who need educational options. “I have seen with my own eyes the need for educational options” in the Black and Hispanic communities where children “are stuck in an educational system that was not serving or meeting their needs,” he said. “I prayed to God for change. God has brought change” through the governor and state legislative leaders who enacted legislation to create Texas’ first school choice program, he said. 

Texas’ new school choice program, the Texas Education Freedom Accounts (TEFA) is rolling out in the 2026-2027 school year with more than 102,000 approved students, The Center Square reported. This past week, the latest batch of waitlisted students – more than 4,100 – received notification of their TEFA acceptance. 

Enge said he got a message from a parent the night before he spoke at the convention saying her son, Jorge, who was on the waiting list, was accepted. She’s a single Hispanic mother “battling to raise two boys by herself. She’s cleaning toilets and doing janitorial services to be able to provide for them,” he said. “She said, ‘I will fight. I will fight for my child.’” 

“I see the hope that Texas Education Freedom Accounts are bringing the parents in our community,” Enge said. “It is leveling the field because we now have opportunities for Black and Hispanic low-income families that have felt lost. Because of Republican leadership, we have school choice. We will fight for our children, and we will be improving their hope in the future.”

At a prayer breakfast meeting hosted by Texans for Lawsuit Reform, San Antonio-based Cornerstone Church Pastor John Hagee made similar comments. 

“The men and women in this room understand that bold action is necessary to preserve the Republic of the state of Texas,” he said to a crowd of several hundred. “Let me tell you an old proverb that's my own: God hates a coward.” When Texas was inundated with the greatest number of illegal border crossers and crime in U.S. history, Gov. Abbott, the Texas legislature and law enforcement “looked at the border and saw a sovereign responsibility. Texas understood that compassion and lawlessness are not the same thing. A nation without order is not a nation. The state that cannot protect its people has failed in its first duty of responsibility. Therefore, we will never apologize for the simple truth that order is the foundation of liberty.”

Hagee said the fight for educational freedom was not a fight against schools but a fight for children. “We said, ‘no one is wiser than a loving mother. No government official is more invested than a faithful father. No system has a higher claim on a child than a family that God has ordained.’”

Both pastors also talked about Texas’ commitment to protecting the unborn and that Texas was leading the U.S. because of its prolife policies. 

“Above all, Texas stands for life,” Hagee said. “Before there is liberty, before there is property, before there is education, before there is opportunity, there must first be life. The Declaration of Independence did not say that the government gives us rights. It said we are endowed by our creator with unalienable rights,” the first of which is the right to life, he said. “Not life after convenience, not life after politics, not life after permission, but life. The unborn child has no lobbyist. The unborn child has no campaign treasury. The unborn child cannot hold a press conference or pass a lawsuit or cast a vote. But the unborn child has a heartbeat and the unborn child has dignity and the unborn child has worth.”