‘None of us were worrying about this’: Trump’s latest school money move has state authorities scrambling

The Trump administration’s decision to withhold federal funds earmarked for key school programs tallies about $7 billion, a top appropriator estimated Tuesday as state officials rushed to assess the financial fallout.

Word that the Education Department had halted plans to distribute grants for after-school programs, teacher training initiatives, migrant student education and other initiatives on time has sent local authorities rushing to figure out how their classrooms will be hit.

Superintendents, teachers and budget wonks will now spend the summer measuring how much of a financial hole they might have to fill as they wait for updates from Washington. Some are considering lawsuits as teachers unions struck a combative stance and officials in some Republican-led states suggested the federal government should reverse course.

“This is not about political philosophy, this is about reliability and consistency,” Alabama state Superintendent Eric Mackey said. “None of us were worrying about this.”

The Trump administration has told lawmakers and state officials that it is reviewing congressionally appropriated education grant funding Trump signed into law earlier this year — and will not send the money to states until that review is complete, POLITICO reported Monday. It's a delay that's sowing a sense of anxiety and confusion across school systems that rely on federal money to keep programs running and staffed.

”Local school districts can’t afford to wait out lengthy court proceedings to get the federal funding they’re owed — nor can they make up the shortfall, especially not at the drop of a pin,” Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), the Senate’s top Democratic appropriator whose office tallied the nearly $7 billion total in held-up funds, said in a statement.

“Every day that this funding is held up is a day that school districts are forced to worry about whether they’ll have to cut back on after-school programs or lay off teachers instead of worrying about how to make sure our kids can succeed,” she said.

Education Department officials have encouraged congressional lawmakers and state officials to direct all questions about the withheld funds to the administration’s Office of Management and Budget, according to messages shared with Capitol Hill and people familiar with the matter.

A Trump administration official on Tuesday said the funding was part of a programmatic review, and that it was incorrect to describe the administration’s move as a “freeze.”

“Those are semantics, the funds are not available to be budgeted,” Mackey, Alabama’s state superintendent, said. “I’m even a little more distressed at the implication that, ‘Well, the funds are not technically frozen because they still could technically be allocated to you,’ meaning months from now. Well, that doesn’t help us plan.”

OMB did not respond to an additional request for comment Tuesday. But on Wednesday, after this report published, OMB confirmed the education funds are under review as part of Trump’s broader agenda of scrutinizing immigration and the LGBTQ+ community.

“Initial findings have shown that many of these grant programs have been grossly misused to subsidize a radical leftwing agenda,” an OMB spokesperson said in a statement to POLITICO that marked the administration’s most substantive public comments on the matter to date. Public schools in New York used money for students who are immigrants or speak limited English “to promote illegal immigrant advocacy organizations,” the spokesperson said, without providing specifics.

The official said Washington state used funds “to direct illegal immigrants towards scholarships intended for American students.” Elsewhere, school improvement funds were used “to conduct a seminar on ‘queer resistance in the arts,'" they added.

“[T]his is an ongoing programmatic review and no decisions have been made yet,” the official said.

OMB director Russ Vought suggested to Senate appropriators last week that the funding could be the target of a future rescissions package — a legislative mechanism for clawing back funds already approved by Congress. President Donald Trump and Education Secretary Linda McMahon have also proposed cutting some of the affected programs in their budget pitch for the coming year.

In California, a state that receives a total of around $8 billion a year in federal education funding and has repeatedly sued the Trump administration over its policies, state Superintendent Tony Thurmond hinted at a potential lawsuit to challenge the funding pause.

“The courts have already taken action in our favor in these cases, and California will continue to pursue all available legal remedies to the Trump administration's unlawful withholding of federal funds appropriated by Congress,” Thurmond told reporters while flanked by both teachers union leaders and school administrators in Sacramento on Tuesday.

Murray’s office estimated nearly $928 million of California's federal education funding was in limbo. Some of the state's summer school programs are being paused immediately and seeing providers institute layoffs.

Brad Lupien, president of ARC, an after-school provider that serves 12 school districts in the state, including San Diego and Los Angeles, said he will likely need to lay off 335 staff members as a result of the funding pause. Trump’s move coincided with the state’s new fiscal year that began Tuesday, which maintained zero funding for after-school programs for high schoolers.

“Put it from the perspective of a parent,” Lupien said. “We're going to have to call them in the middle of their summer plan and tell them, ‘Sorry, funding changed for the new fiscal year.’ They don't know what a fiscal year is.”

David Schapira, the state’s chief deputy superintendent of public instruction, said the administration’s move shows “this is a president of the United States that is willing to punish students in states that refuse to conform with the president's political ideology.”

The pain, however, was being felt across the political spectrum. In Florida, state officials acknowledged roughly $400 million in federal funds have been put on hold. That includes approximately $56 million the state was expecting to receive to educate students who are learning English as a second language.

This funding typically helps Florida schools train teachers to reach some 368,000 English language learners that make up nearly 13 percent of the state’s public-school population. Advocates such as the National Association for Bilingual Education fear that professional development now will be scaled back.

“These are not abstract numbers — these are programs, staff positions and lifelines for millions of students who deserve equitable access to education,” said Margarita Machado-Casas, a NABE board member and professor with San Diego State University’s dual language and English learner education program.

Florida education officials said Tuesday the state is working to “minimize” any fallout from the move and would be meeting with local schools to help ensure they are prepared to weather the federal funding pause.

“We are confident that the US Department of Education will do what is in the best interests of students as they make final decisions regarding these funds,” Sydney Booker, spokesperson for the Florida Department of Education, said in a statement to POLITICO.

Alabama school districts, like others around the country, face a variety of scenarios as state officials try to navigate what Mackey estimated would be a $60 million to $90 million federal funding shortfall.

School systems with ample reserves and solid local tax bases will be better positioned to manage the cuts through the school year, Mackey said. But high-poverty districts that are more reliant on federal funds are less likely to be able to keep some teachers on the books for more than a few weeks.

Superintendents might be able to hold off making decisions about summer school programs for a few days and soon will face decisions on whether to cancel programs for the coming year.

“The problem is, we don’t even know what this review means,” Mackey said.

“We don’t know if it’s something new,” he said. “We don’t have any timeline for the review. We don’t have any parameters of what the review is about. This is not business as usual, and we don’t have any good direction as to what it means. Hopefully that will come in a few days.”