Schools nationwide have spent most of 2025 confronting a dizzying slew of disruptions to federal funding—not just canceled grants and terminated contracts, but also slow reimbursements, delayed allocation estimates, unexpected rule changes, and a shortage of clear communications from federal agencies.
The mounting layers of confusion and chaos have many district leaders on edge about what may be in store come July 1—the day when states and districts every year begin receiving federal funding in advance of the federal fiscal year that starts Oct. 1.
Rural school leaders waited on tenterhooks after a routine federal funding dispatch showed up two months late. Applications for competitive grants funding career and technical education, electric school buses, and more have been paused, canceled, and later republished with new rules, or outright axed. Some districts are still waiting for the U.S. Department of Education to share routine allocation figures for funding they’ve already budgeted for and expect to receive in a matter of weeks.
Some of the programs that appear behind schedule are also on the Trump administration’s wish list of programs to eliminate in future fiscal years—including Title I-C for migrant students, Title II for professional development, and Title III for English-learner instruction. The administration has moved aggressively in recent months to assert executive branch authority to withhold money Congress already approved, raising speculation that the delayed funds could be among those the Trump administration plans to hold back.
All of these complications have piled on top of the administration’s high-profile cuts to grants for teacher-preparation programs, mental health services, and pandemic-era construction projects and academic contracts; threats to withhold funding from states that don’t align with the Trump administration’s policy positions; and proposals to slash billions of dollars from federal spending on K-12 education in future years.
“Unless federal funding stabilizes or clear guidance is issued soon, many small rural districts will face major budget adjustments in staffing, academic programming, and student services,” said Steven Johnson, superintendent of the Fort Ransom Elementary School district in North Dakota and a board member for the National Rural Education Association. “We are approaching a moment where the compounded uncertainty could lead to lasting damage in communities that already operate on the margins.”
In response to detailed questions, a spokesperson for the Education Department shared the following statement with Education Week:
“Unlike the previous administration, the department is conducting a thorough review of all programs to ensure that funds are directed toward lawful activities that support student achievement. We are not operating on autopilot; rather, we are ensuring that taxpayer dollars are spent wisely. As funding decisions are finalized, we will continue to keep Congress informed, as we have been.”
Congress seeks more clarity from the Education Department
Congress approved a “continuing resolution” in March that delayed the deadline to finalize a full budget for the current fiscal year, which runs from Oct. 1, 2024 to Sept. 30, 2025.
That law essentially extended government-wide spending levels from the previous fiscal year, which ran from Oct. 1, 2023 to Sept. 30, 2024, to the current one, which ends Sept. 30.
That law also included a standard requirement: Each agency had to submit, by April 29, a “spending plan” that clearly laid out how the money from each broad category would be portioned out, line item by line item.
The Education Department submitted a plan to Congress on April 29—but according to lawmakers, it was incomplete, with almost $13 billion left “unallocated.” Nearly four weeks later, on May 23, the department sent Capitol Hill appropriators a follow-up document that still left $8 billion unallocated, according to a May 27 letter to Education Secretary Linda McMahon from Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., and Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn, who both serve on the appropriations committees in their respective chambers.
A public-facing department webpage links to a spreadsheet that lists fiscal 2025 funding levels for each federal funding stream for K-12 education. Six programs on that list, however, have no corresponding amount. Instead, an asterisk notes that “the department is currently finalizing funding decisions for FY 2025 and remains committed to meeting its statutory responsibilities and stewarding taxpayer resources responsibly.”
The programs marked with an asterisk are:
- Title I-C (for migrant students)
- Title II-A (for professional development and other efforts to “support effective instruction”)
- 21st Century Community Learning Centers (for enrichment programming before and after school)
- Title III (for English learner services)
- Literacy grants
- Civics grants
The result of all this ambiguity is that school districts, state budget officers, and others invested in the routine rollout of federal funding now lack key assurances that billions of dollars they’re collectively expecting will arrive on time, or at all.
In some cases, this may be by design. Russell Vought, who leads the federal Office of Management and Budget and wrote large portions of Project 2025, in recent months has echoed President Donald Trump’s call for the Supreme Court to overturn the federal law that restricts the president from “impounding,” or declining to spend money appropriated by Congress.
The Government Accountability Office, an independent federal watchdog, is investigating close to 40 instances of alleged impoundment already carried out by the second Trump administration, including by the Education Department. The office in the last month has found that two instances—the cancellation of a $5 billion electric vehicle program and the withholding of grants by an agency that supplies funding to libraries and museums—violated the law. The White House disputes the findings and has said it will avoid cooperating with future investigations.
A normally reliable grant program for rural schools runs into delays
The Rural Education Achievement Program is a set of two formula grants: one for small schools in sparsely populated areas, and another for rural schools in high-poverty communities.
Each year, more than 4,000 rural districts across all 50 states receive a spreadsheet from the Department of Education detailing their expected allocations for the next school year. Then the department sends them a short application to fill out and submit. That form paves the way for the money to arrive in time for the new school year.
In 2024, the department published those spreadsheets in February, followed by the application on March 19 with a due date of May 19.
This year, the spreadsheet arrived in early March, with some glaring issues. The law caps REAP funding at $60,000 per district, but more than 50 districts had listed allocations higher than that.
Education Department staffers had invited rural district leaders to attend webinars on March 13 and April 6 to walk through this year’s application process. Three days before the first event, the department announced the webinars would be rescheduled for a later date. Then district leaders heard nothing for two months.
“I’m not shy. If I don’t get something and I don’t understand it, I call, or I email. They’ve always been helpful,” said Johnson, the North Dakota superintendent. “This time it is completely crickets.”
The application landed with no prior warning in district leaders’ inboxes on May 14, with a due date of June 13. The department didn’t offer any explanation for the delay or the shorter turnaround time.
“Many districts are still unsure whether their data were correct or whether they’ll actually receive funds,” Johnson said.
Delays have applied to other grant programs, too
REAP wasn’t the only program affected by similar issues. States began receiving preliminary allocations for Title I-A—the core federal funding stream to support low-income students—on May 13. The same notice last year came on April 8.
Preliminary allocations for special education funding and the McKinney-Vento program for services for homeless students arrived even later in May. Some districts have already begun transferring staff to different schools or even contemplating layoffs as the urgency to finalize budgets for next school year ramps up.
Districts that didn’t put out job postings for teachers funded by those grants in March and April due to the delays and uncertainty might struggle to make hires in time for the new school year, Johnson said.
Johnson said he would be more understanding if the department simply said clearly that a particularly funding stream won’t be coming. “But don’t let me hang there and say it’s coming soon,” he said. “Soon? When’s soon?”
Grant priorities are changing without warning
Funding delays and complicated renewals aren’t only emanating from the Education Department.
Head Start providers in many states have reported that their expected annual funding renewal notices from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services have been arriving only days before their current federal authorization to continue operating expires. In some cases, the authorization or funding arrived after the deadline, which meant providers had to temporarily close and even lay off staff.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, meanwhile, temporarily blocked districts that received electric school bus grants from accessing their funds in the early weeks of the Trump administration. Some of those funds remained frozen, with no communication from EPA staff, until April, according to Katherine Roboff, deputy director of external affairs for the World Resource Institute’s Electric School Bus Initiative.
Most of that money, from the second and third rounds of the Clean School Bus program, appears to have been restored. But districts that applied late last year for the fourth round of funds from the program are still waiting to see if the agency announces awards at all.
The EPA website still says districts should expect award announcements in May. On June 16, a spokesperson for the EPA said the agency is “evaluating the 2024 program and will have an update to applicants and other interested stakeholders in the near future.”
The department still has more than $2 billion of the original $5 billion allocation left to spend in future rounds of grant and rebate offerings. But it hasn’t specified whether it plans to hold those additional competitive rounds.
Schools “obviously need to make sure that they have student transportation in place and that they are managing to a responsible budget,” Roboff said. “Having uncertainty when trying to do those things is not helpful for them.”
Grant priorities are changing without warning
Under Trump, the Education Department has pulled back several grant opportunities that were published in the waning days of the Biden administration—in some cases without indicating whether the administration plans to write new rules for grant applicants, or just cancel the programs altogether.
The federal government on Jan. 7 began soliciting applications for the Native American Career and Technical Education Program. A day later, it opened applications for the Native Hawaiian Career and Technical Education Program.
Four months later, on May 7, the department canceled both solicitations, saying it would instead use the remaining funding to support current grant recipients.
The department on March 6 also canceled the application process for the Supporting Effective Educator Development program, a few weeks after it terminated contracts for grantees from previous rounds of the program. It did the same on April 4 for a grant opportunity to provide technical assistance for special education services.
Not all the withdrawn grant applications have disappeared for good. The Education Department yanked the application for the Charter School Program grants on Feb. 4, less than two weeks after its Jan. 21 publication date. More than three months later, on May 9, the Education Department re-published the application, saying the new notice would “unleash innovation, minimize excessive and unnecessary oversight, and lessen the reporting burden for both applicants and grant recipients.” The department also re-published a corrected version of the same application on June 9.
Meanwhile, the annual notice soliciting applications for grants to support and train special education personnel encourages applications from district and state leaders in special education. But the application notice doesn’t mention training special education faculty members at colleges and universities as a grant priority, as comparable notices in previous years have.
Larry Wexler, who oversaw many special education grants as a director in the Education Department’s office of special education programs from 2010 to 2024, called the changes “shortsighted.”
“You have to wonder, with no faculty to prepare special education and early intervention providers or faculty serving as principal investigators to research and develop new interventions—what will these highly qualified administrators be administering?” Wexler said.
Federal funding is always iffy, but this year has been worse than usual
Schools are accustomed to volatility with federal funding, particularly when the new president is from a different party than the previous one.
“Even though it is the responsibility of the federal government to pay us, it’s not a guarantee,” said Michael McElduff, superintendent of the 1,000-student Highland Falls-Fort Montgomery district near West Point Military Academy in upstate New York.
Still, even the specter of federal funding changes causes jitters for district leaders.
Because West Point is a federal facility, more than 90 percent of the Highland Falls-Fort Montgomery district lies on land that can’t be taxed. The district draws 30 percent of its annual operating budget from the federal Impact Aid program.
Impact Aid hasn’t been disrupted so far this year, and the Trump administration is proposing for now to maintain the program. But Project 2025, which Trump’s policies have closely mirrored, mentions shrinking the funding for the Impact Aid program. Impact Aid funding in recent years has also lagged behind inflation.
Anticipating turbulence to come, McElduff has helped spearhead a letter-writing campaign, even commissioning elementary students to petition the Department of Education for continued resources.
“We’re a great district, our students are great, and they deserve the same opportunities as a district that doesn’t rely on federal funding,” McElduff said.
Clarity about federal funding isn’t just a matter of convenience. Delayed timelines like these put grant recipients at greater risk of making mistakes that end up being flagged by auditors, said Rachel Werner, a grants consultant with extensive experience supporting recipients of federal funding.
“You’re just trying to do something that was really meant to support different initiatives, especially in communities that don’t have access to those funds normally,” Werner said. “Doing it in a shorter period of time, it creates panic, it creates uneasiness.”
The issue has even come up in court. While ruling in May that the Trump administration must reverse the layoffs of nearly 1,400 federal employees at the Education Department, a federal judge wrote that a plaintiff district needed timely dispatches from the department in order to avoid “detrimental changes to programming,” including cuts to arts, music, extracurricular activities, athletics, professional development for staff, preschool programming, and high school busing.
The Supreme Court is weighing a request from the administration to block that judge’s order to reinstate employees. In the meantime, staffing at the department remains greatly diminished compared with the same point a year ago—yet another obstacle to federal funding flowing as it usually does.
“I have been talking about it kind of like a tsunami,” Werner said. “We’ve seen the first wave, that’s hit certain populations more than others. There’s going to be other waves. We haven’t yet seen the full impact.”
2025-06-17 21:07:08
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