School districts across the country — including in Texas — receive a mix of federal and state funding to operate. The federal piece of that pie is usually dispersed to states on July 1 each year, ahead of the school year.
This year, a number of grants are on hold. The day before, on June 30, the Trump administration notified states that it was withholding over $6 billion in previously approved federal education grants to schools.
The official word is the administration is “reviewing” the spending from these grants — which pay for after school programs, bilingual education and professional development for teachers.
And of course all this is happening in the shadow of a lawsuit that was brought against the administration after Trump signed an executive order abolishing the department of education entirely.
Becky Fogel, who covers education for KUT News in Austin, said the pause on bilingual education funding is particularly concerning in Texas.
“Nearly one in four Texas students is emergent bilingual, which means they’re fluent in one language and are currently learning English,” she said.
“If you think about Austin ISD, the largest school district in Central Texas, about 22,000 of their students – or about 30% of the district’s entire student population – is considered emergent bilingual. During the last school year, Texas received more than $132 million from the federal government to support students learning English.”
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Fogel said 90% of the federal funds the state received went directly to school districts. And some of the programs affected will put parents in a tough spot. After school programming, for example, runs over the summer and into this fall, and throughout the next school year.
“Currently about $1.4 billion for after school and summer learning programs is on hold. Jodi Grant is the executive director of the Afterschool Alliance. Her group estimates this delay in federal funding affects 10,000 after school programs nationwide serving more than a million kids,” Fogel said.
“Grant says without these funds that Congress appropriated, it’s gonna leave programs scrambling and many will have to close.”
A nonpartisan group called the Learning Policy Institute estimated by state how much funding is at stake, and they found overall that the Trump administration’s decision to withhold funds for school programs is keeping more than $660 million from getting to Texas. The Department of Education is currently directing questions to the Office of Budget Management, Fogel said.
“An OMB spokesperson said in an email statement the funds are undergoing a programmatic review, which is why they’re saying not to call it a ‘freeze,’ because the funds were just being reviewed and no decisions have been made yet on whether those funds won’t end up being released,” Fogel said.
“The spokesperson in that same statement said, ‘Initial findings have shown that many of these grant programs have been grossly misused to subsidize a radical left-wing agenda.’”
However, Fogel talked to experts who stressed that because the funding delay impacts ongoing and upcoming programs, this will have an effect even if the funds are ultimately released.
“Advocates this week have said any delay in funding is gonna make it a lot harder for these learning programs to stay open, for school districts to plan ahead,” she said. “These are millions of dollars that school districts are relying on to educate students learning English, to fund after-school programs, so it just remains to be seen what the impact of this delay is going to be.”
