From School Vouchers to Flood Warning Systems, Texas Developments to Watch in 2026

By The Texas Tribune staff

    On top of dozens of laws taking effect on January 1 and the incoming midterm elections, the new year also comes with developments on numerous policy issues affecting the state. They range from criminal justice to education to international trade, setting up a year that could bring about sweeping changes for Texans.

  Here are some important issues to watch in 2026.

School Vouchers

  Applications for families interested in joining Texas’ school voucher program will open on Feb. 4. The program officially launches during the 2026-27 school year, allowing families to use public taxpayer dollars to fund their children’s private or home-school education.

  The application window will remain open until March 17. The comptroller’s office — overseen by Texas’ chief financial officer, who lawmakers chose to manage the voucher program — has said it expects to begin providing award notifications in early April.

  Funding for the students — $10,474 for most private schoolers and $2,000 for those in home school — will become available on July 1 through education savings accounts, a digital platform allowing families to pay school tuition and make educational purchases from approved vendors.

  Applications for private schools and vendors that want to participate in the program opened in early December. The state will accept those applications on a rolling basis.

Hemp

  The laws and regulations surrounding the use of consumable hemp in Texas will continue to shift in 2026. Rule makers with the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission and the Department of State Health Services both plan to finalize permanent rules governing the sale of the products in the first couple months of 2026.

  Hemp products, which include smokeable flowers, edible products, and drinks sold in smoke shops and corner stores around the state, have been sold under a regulatory gray area in Texas for more than five years. In that time, the industry exploded in the state, and lawmakers spent much of 2025 trying to add new restrictions around its use. After he vetoed a ban passed by the Legislature, Gov. Greg Abbott ordered both state agencies to write rules that restrict the sale of the products to people 21 or older, among other restrictions. TABC plans to finalize its rules on Jan. 20 and is currently accepting public comment. DSHS intends to finalize its emergency rules within the first several months of 2026.

  Meanwhile, a provision included in the Congressional bill that reopened the government in November will ban the sale of consumable hemp nationally when it takes effect November 2026. A bipartisan group of lawmakers have already said they intend to revisit the issue, and advocates supporting the hemp industry said they intend to lobby for the provision’s removal. 

  The laws and regulations surrounding the use of consumable hemp in Texas will continue to shift in 2026. Rulemakers with the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission and the Department of State Health Services both plan to finalize permanent rules governing the sale of the products in the first couple months of 2026.

Ten Commandments in schools

  The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Jan. 20 will hear oral arguments in a case challenging a state law requiring public schools to display posters of the Ten Commandments in every classroom. The court, one of the most conservative in the nation, will hear the Texas case along with Louisiana’s — the first state to pass the Ten Commandments law.

  The hearing will come as legal challenges against the law continue to mount in Texas. Two federal judges have blocked, in total, 25 school districts from complying with the law and declared the requirement unconstitutional. A coalition of civil rights organizations — representing families of various religious and nonreligious backgrounds — recently filed a class action lawsuit against another 16 districts, urging a federal judge to block every Texas school district from displaying the Ten Commandments.

  Meanwhile, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has sued the Round Rock, Leander, and Galveston districts for allegedly not complying with the requirement as arguments over its constitutionality proceed in federal court.

  Attorneys representing the families and the attorney general’s office have argued in court over the role Founding Fathers like Thomas Jefferson and James Madison played in developing the Bill of Rights and the First Amendment, which protects Americans’ freedom of religion. Both parties have debated the Ten Commandments’ influence on the country’s legal and educational systems and whether the version of the directives required to go up in schools belongs to a particular religious group. They have also sparred over whether the law reflects an attempt by Texas officials to force students into adhering to conservative Christian principles.

School accountability

  Texas is taking over a record four school districts. Fort Worth, Beaumont, Connally and Lake Worth school districts will all see its locally elected board of trustees ousted, replaced with a state-appointed board of managers.

  Districts risk the most severe form of state intervention after chronic academic underperformance. In Texas, five years of failing grades at one campus can open the entire district up to a takeover. A fifth district, Wichita Falls, has also reached that threshold, but the Texas Education Agency has not yet announced plans to intervene.

  A Texas appeals court sided with the Texas Education Agency in 2025 in lawsuits over the school accountability system. That prompted the release of three years of grades, opening the door to penalties for underperformance.

  The state Legislature also in 2025 replaced STAAR, the end-of-the year standardized test that the accountability system largely hinges on. The Texas Education Agency is developing three shorter tests, to be administered at the beginning, middle and end of the year, with plans to launch them in the 2026-27 school year. 

Flood warning systems

  Texas is taking swift steps toward helping communities fund flood warning systems in the Hill Country, one of the most flood-prone areas in the nation. But whether these systems will be fully in place by the next major rainy season remains uncertain.

  Spurred by the deadly July 4 weekend floods in Kerr County that killed more than 100 people, state lawmakers approved $50 million this year to help speed flood preparedness projects. Kerr County plans to build an estimated $5 million flood warning system that would include sirens, rain gauges, flashing warning signs and a public website to track flood conditions. The website is already in the works, but officials say they need help to fund the rest. They expect the state to be “a large funding mechanism” for the project.

  To accelerate the process, the Texas Water Development Board has fast-tracked grants of up to $1 million, with counties eligible to request an additional $250,000. The 30 counties included in the governor’s disaster declaration can bypass some approval steps and get that money, though larger funding requests, above the amount OK’d by the board, will still face a slower review process.

  While speedy funding is a win for communities, experts in funding programs have said that allocating funding does not equate fixing a problem. In other state flood funding programs, the grants have paid for so little of the total project costs that communities simply could not move forward and many projects have remained unbuilt.

  The key question in 2026 is timing and sufficiency: it’s unclear whether state funding and approvals will move quickly enough to get systems installed before the spring, when Texas typically sees its heaviest rains. Emergency experts caution there is no single solution to prevent future flood disasters, but researchers say sirens could be especially effective in rural Hill Country areas with limited cell service, if paired with clear public guidance on how residents should respond when warnings sound.