Texas Border Business
IDEA Public Schools will host its student lottery for the 2025-26 school year on Saturday, February 15. During the lottery, IDEA will announce the names of the students randomly selected for seats at one of the 51 schools in the Rio Grande Valley for the 2025-26 school year.
“We want to invite new families to be part of the transformational change we are making at IDEA Public Schools in the Rio Grande Valley,” said Jill Dominguez, Regional Superintendent of IDEA Public Schools in the Rio Grande Valley. “Our goal is that every student regardless of the zip code they come from receives the right tools and support to be successful in college and beyond.”
IDEA Rio Grande Valley currently has 51 schools, serving over 36,000 students across the region. In the 2025-26 school year, IDEA Robindale College Preparatory and IDEA Los Encinos College Preparatory will be welcoming their first senior class. IDEA schools in the RGV will continue to offer kindergarten programs in the upcoming school year designed to provide young students with a strong academic foundation in literacy, numeracy, and critical thinking skills to ensure they are prepared for success in future grades. For the past 17 years, IDEA has achieved nearly 100% college acceptance among seniors and enrolls 95% of graduates in college, more than twice the national rate for low-income students.
During the lottery process, names are selected at random by grade, with spots offered in the order of selection. When the capacity is reached for each grade level, the remaining applications will be assigned a position on a waiting list in a randomized order. Once the lottery is complete, parents or guardians will receive a notification according to their preferred method of contact (email and/or text message).
Only applications completed before the deadline of February 14 at 11:59 p.m. will be eligible for the lottery. Applications submitted after the lottery deadline are only granted seats if space is available or applicants will be added to the wait list in order of the date and time of their application.
Families can apply now at www.ideapublicschools.org/apply.
