From Legislation to Launch: Mastering Procurement and Rulemaking for Texas ESAs

The Problem

In spring 2025, the legislature passed and Gov. Abbott signed SB 2, leading to the establishment of Texas’ Education Freedom Accounts and marking the dawn of a new era. However, the Comptroller faced an unprecedented challenge in part because universal ESAs are fairly new. Arizona launched the first such program in the 2022-23 school year, six more states launched since, and another six states were scheduled to launch when the Comptroller began SB 2 implementation. Texas will have the largest program launch in the nation, in which about 100,000 students could receive an ESA. Although Florida has over 500,000 ESA students, we expect Texas to eclipse this within five years, given the length of existing waitlists and popular support. On paper, the law intends to offer students access to broad education resources, but this can only come to life if potential participants—parents and providers—can efficiently opt-into and use ESAs. Success in this regard is not a foregone conclusion. As we highlighted during the 2025 session, a lack of parent support resulted in almost half (46%) of parents in Florida and Arizona not knowing ESAs exist, despite those states having the largest and longest-running programs. The lack of parent support contributed significant parent attrition. Moreover, poor payment system policy was resulting in long-delayed payments to education providers. Finally, critical policy decisions would determine whether all the education options that were listed in SB 2 were made fully available to participating parents.

Our Approach

We took seriously the warning from school choice experts that ESAs will “rise or fall on the details that do not make for interesting headlines or stirring political slogans.” For this reason, We facilitated a workgroup of implementation experts, and Colyandro Public Affairs published an ESA Implementation Guide in early June 2025 to identify key issues for Comptroller’s office and recommend solutions. When the EAO RFP was published in late June, we carefully reviewed the proposed scope to identify decisions that would constrain education options, raise unneeded barriers, or generally cause headaches for parents and providers. We gathered and submitted questions to flag these issues for the Comptroller’s staff and most of our recommendations were adopted. When draft rules were published, our firm sent formal guidance on a critical issue three days after rules were published, drafted and submitted comments for each client whose interests were affected, and helped workgroup organizations lobby for improvements that were most important to their mission. Most recommendations submitted by workgroup members were adopted in the final TEFA rules. Every recommendation our firm submitted on behalf of our clients was adopted.

Breakthrough Solutions

First, our firm hosted a project kick-off before legislative session ended to identify the implementation goals that were most important to each organization. This allowed us to define a shared overall goal, desired work products, expected milestones, and a meeting cadence. The organizations combed through details and shared information to mitigate risks and maximize opportunities. By working together, we quickly analyzed complex documents, identified serious problems, and successfully hit short deadlines. In this way, each organization achieved more than any one of us could have alone. Second, many people tap out when legislative session ends, exhausted by the lawmaking process. We don’t. Neither do our clients. Procurement and rulemaking are just more opportunities for driven market leaders to shape state policy. We leveraged these to maximize our clients’ ability to enter and win in an emerging market. Finally, we crafted winning policies to help the Comptroller efficiently launch a successful program on time.

Key Points

Scale & Scope
The project focused on launching the Texas universal ESA program (SB 2), set to be the nation’s largest with 100,000 expected students, projected to surpass Florida’s program within five years
Addressing Core Challenges
The firm targeted two critical implementation barriers: low parent awareness (nearly half in existing programs are unaware of ESAs) and poor payment policies causing delays for education providers.
Proactive Strategy
We facilitated an expert workgroup and published an ESA Implementation Guide to proactively identify issues and recommend solutions to the Comptroller’s office.
Policy Influence & Success
We successfully shaped policy during procurement and rulemaking, achieving the adoption of every single recommendation submitted on behalf of our clients in the final TEFA rules.
Pre-Legislative Kickoff
A project kick-off was held before the legislative session ended to align stakeholders on a shared goal, defining work products and an efficient collaborative process.