Trump Administration Cuts Funding For Public Schools Right Before Classes Begin

For many school districts, the first day of classes is only weeks away. Thanks to the Trump administration, educators across the country suddenly don’t know if they’ll have the funds to support students and provide critical services.

On June 30, the Department of Education announced it was withholding nearly $7 billion from public schools. In a three-sentence email sent to the states, the agency said it was “reviewing” five different funding grants. Some of the affected programs deal with support for English learners, after-school programs, teacher professional development, and adult education. 

“The Department remains committed to ensuring taxpayer resources are spent in accordance with the President’s priorities and the Department’s statutory responsibilities,” the email said.

This week, 24 states and Washington, D.C., responded to the freeze by filing a lawsuit against the Trump administration, alleging that the withholding of funds is illegal and would come at a great cost to students across the country. In particular, one group has found, red states would be among the hardest hit. 

“Defendants’ actions now jeopardize these critical programs—the loss of which has irreparably harmed and will irreparably harm the Plaintiff States, their schools, and the students and families they serve,” the suit said.

Congress has already appropriated the funds, and the Impoundment Control Act of 1974 makes it illegal for a president to unilaterally hold back money that Congress has set aside.

“They are entitled to [this funding] by law, they budget for it, and they hire people for it,” Zahava Stadler, the project director of the education funding equity initiative at New America, told HuffPost. 

The complaint detailed how states could be forced to conduct layoffs of teachers and cut services that are critical to immigrant and low-income families across the country. 

Michigan, according to the complaint, has 100,000 students considered English language learners. The state previously used funding to support 273 staff members — but without funding from the federal government, it risks having to cut these programs.

In Delaware, the loss of millions of dollars means that many rural families will not have a safe place for their children to go after school. The organizations that partner with schools to provide programming will also face layoffs.

New Jersey teachers are at risk of losing funding for professional development and programs that support and ensure teacher quality. In the suit, the state says that the freeze could impact teacher quality, which would harm student achievement in the long run.

New America, an organization focused on public policy issues, compiled a data set showing how much money school districts were set to lose if the Trump administration doesn’t reverse course. Not all of the federal funding school districts receive is public, so the amounts are likely an underestimate.

“[School districts] were just waiting for that prepaid debit card to come in so they could pay their bills,” Stadler said. “Instead, they got a letter saying, ‘Sorry, that’s not happening.’”

Whether or not school districts will be able to shoulder the costs of the freeze depends on their financial health overall. Wealthier districts might be able to find money elsewhere, but those that are typically strapped for cash may be facing an uphill battle.

“It’s not optional to provide these services and support these students,” Stadler said. “But now school districts will have to decide which students’ rights they will support.”

The greatest need will come from school districts that are in conservative-leaning areas.

According to the New America report, of the 10 school districts that stand to lose the most in per-pupil funding, nine of them are in congressional districts represented by Republicans. In fact, despite the renewed conservative fervor to dismantle the Department of Education, Republican-leaning states often heavily rely on the federal government to support their public school systems.

The Trump administration is likely targeting teacher development and enrichment programs because of the popularized conservative belief that teachers are indoctrinating children with left-wing ideas. And since Trump returned to power largely on the promise to curb immigration, undocumented children have come under fire from the GOP as they seek to conduct massive deportations of immigrants both with and without legal status in the country. 

Though Trump has made it a priority to target Democratic-leaning states, the ones controlled by the Republican Party won’t be spared from the freeze. But that hasn’t meant a revolt among the GOP education officials. 

Ryan Walters, Oklahoma’s superintendent for public instruction, was quick to support the move. “We appreciate the fact that the Trump administration is working diligently to ensure our taxpayer dollars are being stewarded with care,” Walters said in a statement. “[The Oklahoma State Department of Education is working in lockstep with the Trump administration to assist with our mutually-aligned education priorities.”

Walters has been embroiled in various controversies, including pushing for bringing Christianity into public schools, forcing educators to teach their students that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Trump, and repeatedly smearing teachers as child abusers.

But even though he’s supporting the agenda, Oklahoma is facing a big hit. According to the Learning Policy Institute, if Trump doesn’t unfreeze funding, Oklahoma’s public schools will lose $70 million, which makes up 11% of their budget.

There is no clear timeline for when the review would end.

The Department of Education did not respond to HuffPost’s request for comment. 

“The administration could simply decide to undo it,” Stadler said. “Districts should not sit back and wait.”

But there’s likely no incentive to reverse course now.

Dismantling public education has long been a goal of the right, and with Trump taking a machete to the federal public school support system, that goal seems closer than ever.

Trump campaigned on shutting down the Department of Education, signed executive orders that aimed to quash diversity efforts and has threatened blue states that dare defy his administration’s policy objectives.

The right’s culture war zeroed in on education in the wake of the protests that swept the nation after George Floyd was murdered in Minneapolis and the coronavirus shuttered schools nationwide as public officials attempted to keep the virus at bay. 

As schools worked to focus on racial justice and COVID mitigation, conservative pundits perceived it as a threat to their worldview and worked to convince Republican voters that racial equality and public health experts were trying to indoctrinate their children. This manifested in sweeping book bans, school board takeovers and policies targeting LGBTQ+ children. 

The movement to decimate public schools reached a crescendo this week. Trump signed an executive order that called for abolishing the Department of Education and initiated mass layoffs at the agency. After months of legal battles, the U.S. Supreme Court gave Trump the green light to lay off approximately 1,400 employees at the agency, or nearly half the staff.

Not only are schools facing an academic year millions of dollars short — the agency they rely on to distribute those funds and oversee resources will be a shadow of its former self.