KIPP Texas Public Schools are located in Austin, Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, and San Antonio with 59 pre-K-12 schools and more than 31,000 students. KIPP Texas creates educational opportunities for kids in underserved areas. In fact, their schools are so academically excellent, students from KIPP Texas graduate college at a rate three times greater than their peers.

Families who want their students to attend public charter schools, like KIPP Texas, must apply to participate in a lottery. As a result, parents have become savvy, applying to more than one public charter school in an effort to get their child an opportunity for a seat in a high-quality school. That results in a serious scramble by public charter schools as they not only have to compete for applications, but work to build an emotional connection with a family so if the child is offered a seat, that family actually enrolls the child and attends the school.

Public schools in Texas are funded by average daily attendance of the students in school, meaning if schools do not fill their classrooms, the school and district lose funding. The competition is fierce and millions of educational dollars are on the line.

When the pandemic hit, hundreds of school districts were placed in attendance and financial limbo as they didn’t have full classrooms for the upcoming 2020-2021 school year. At a time when the world was thrown in uncertainty, many families were not thinking about changing their child’s school, they were wondering if school would take place in the fall at all.

KIPP Texas Public Schools had thousands of seats left to fill before the start of school and time was running out.