Granbury, Weatherford, Decatur, Cleburne: if that is your address, the TEFA account works differently than it does for a family in Keller. The money is identical. The list of people who can take it is not.
Our directory of approved providers in the five-county Fort Worth area holds 169 tutors, therapists and vendors registered at a local street address, as the state finder listed them on October 12, 2026. Tarrant County accounts for 141 of them. Johnson has 11, Parker 7, Wise 6, Hood 4. Twenty-eight approved providers for four counties, and five of those 28 deliver online.
What the shortage actually costs you
A TEFA account cannot be spent wherever you like. Every payment runs inside the state's portal, and the Comptroller's office was explicit when the marketplace opened on July 1: there is no reimbursement for anything a family buys away from it. The tutor in Granbury who is not registered is not a cheaper option — she is simply not a payable one. Your account sits intact while you write a personal check.
That is why a thin county list bites harder than a thin school list. A family in Weatherford can drive to a participating school in Fort Worth. They cannot drive to a speech therapist who does not exist in the system.
The counties are not uniformly thin
Therapy is the one category that reached outside Tarrant. Of the 28 approved providers in Johnson, Parker, Wise and Hood counties, 13 offer educational therapies — pediatric speech and occupational clinics in Aledo, Weatherford and Granbury, autism and ABA services in Burleson and Venus, speech practices in Cleburne, Alvarado and Bridgeport, and equine-assisted therapy in Cleburne. Enrichment follows with 11. Tutoring has 7 across all four counties, curriculum 6, and supplies exactly one.
So a Hood County family seeking occupational therapy has local options. A Wise County family seeking an approved math tutor has essentially one path, and it runs through a screen.
Online providers count, and there are more than the local list shows
The 169 figure counts providers with a street address in the five counties. It understates what a family west of Tarrant can reach, because the statewide marketplace launched on July 1 with a catalog past 54,000 cleared products and services supplied by roughly 2,400 vendors, and online tutoring, curriculum and course providers serve any Texas ZIP code. Thirty-nine of the 169 local names also work online.
Practically, that means searching the portal by category rather than by city. A search on Decatur returns almost nothing; a search for approved online writing instruction returns a list. The complaint that reached local news this month came from an Abilene parent who said she got few results searching her own city on the portal, and the fix is the same one: stop searching by town.
Ask your provider to register — the barrier is lower than they think
Most small providers assume state registration means paperwork, fees and a contract cycle. It does not. Providers and vendors can apply at any time, on a rolling basis. Each applicant, and each item it proposes to sell, is reviewed by the Comptroller's office before it goes live. And there are no fees charged to schools, parents or vendors to list, buy or sell in the marketplace.
There is also a shortcut worth naming when you ask. A provider holding PDSES approval from the Texas Education Agency comes into TEFA on that basis, provided it stays in good standing there and is registered to transact business with the Texas Secretary of State. Fifty-two of the 169 Fort Worth-area providers came in that way. If your child's tutoring center or therapy clinic took PDSES funds, the conversation is short.
How to make the ask
Be concrete. Tell them what you would book and how often, say that payment arrives through the state portal rather than as a family invoice they have to chase, and mention the no-fee rule. A practice in Granbury with six TEFA families on its waiting list has a clear reason to spend an afternoon on the application; a vague "you should look into this" does not give them one.
It is also worth asking your child's current provider even if you have paid out of pocket all year. Registration is not retroactive — it will not recover what you have already spent — but it changes next semester.
Where the February installment fits
There is a timing reason to start the conversation now rather than in January. Private school awards land on three dates — a quarter in July, a quarter in October, and the other half on February 1, 2027, conditional on the student still being enrolled at a participating campus. Families on the homeschool tier took their whole $2,000 in July.
Half the money for private school students, in other words, lands in February. A provider who applies in November is listed and bookable when the larger deposit arrives, which is also when families who moved schools mid-year are re-sorting their spending. Balances carry into the next year for a child who stays in the program, so nothing is lost by holding a category until the vendor exists — see our note on how the February installment behaves when a student changes schools.
The short version
West and south of Tarrant County, treat the marketplace as two lists: a short local one, strongest in therapy, and a long statewide one you reach by category. Run both against the full list of approved expenses before you decide that something is not covered. Often it is covered, and simply not sold nearby yet.
Sources
- Texas Education Freedom Accounts — Providers and Vendors (rolling applications, PDSES carryover)
- Texas Comptroller: Nearly 73,000 Texas Education Freedom Accounts to Receive Initial Funding July 1 (marketplace rules, installment schedule)
- Texas Education Freedom Accounts — Families (approved expenses and amounts)
- KTXS: Parents seek more vendors for Texas Education Freedom Accounts