How Schools Are Coping With Chaos

Confusion and panic over the prospect of an imminent halt to federal funding continued to dominate the mood in school districts Wednesday, even as the Trump administration appeared to walk back its plan for a far-reaching funding freeze less than 48 hours after announcing it.

Whether a temporary funding freeze takes effect in the near future or doesn’t, school officials and their advocates and advisers are absorbing this week’s events as a sign to brace for continued disruptions to federal funding as the second Trump administration settles in.

The chaos kicked off Monday evening when the federal Office of Management and Budget told every federal agency that “all activities related to obligation or disbursement” of federal money “must temporarily pause” beginning 5 p.m. on Jan. 28. The order also said that agencies must begin reviewing all their grant programs to determine whether they comply with Trump’s recent executive orders, including restrictions on initiatives that promote diversity, equity, and inclusion and “gender ideology.”

That memo kicked off a dizzying 48-hour period in which school district leaders and their advisers struggled to understand scant and shifting guidance about which programs would be affected, when the effects would appear, and how schools would cope with unexpectedly losing federal funds for school meals, preschool programs, and more.

Just minutes before the funding freeze was set to formally take effect late Tuesday afternoon, a federal judge halted portions of the planned freeze until further consideration during a Feb. 3 hearing in response to a lawsuit from nonprofit groups.

Then, in the early afternoon on Wednesday, the Office of Management and Budget sent another memo to all federal agencies rescinding the original memo that ordered the spending pause.

But that didn’t resolve the confusion.

As many interpreted the OMB’s notice to mean the spending freeze had been called off, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt posted on X that “this is not a rescission of the federal funding freeze” and that “the President’s [executive orders] on federal funding remain in full force and effect.”

During an unrelated public event on Wednesday afternoon, after the OMB rescinded the original order, President Trump said his administration’s goal is to “quickly look at the scams, dishonesty, waste, and abuse that’s taken place in our government for too long.”

As of late Wednesday afternoon, state attorneys general were arguing in federal court—in a separate lawsuit—that the original OMB order for a funding freeze was still in effect, based on their understanding of the latest communications from OMB and the White House. Trump administration lawyers, meanwhile, argued the OMB’s rescission made the lawsuit from the attorneys general attempting to stop the spending freeze a moot point.

Districts are tentatively relieved that the funding freeze may not happen

News that the OMB had rescinded the funding freeze order came as a tentative relief to Aimee Copas, executive director of the North Dakota Council of Educational Leaders, a membership organization that includes superintendents and school finance administrators. She had spent much of the prior 48 hours taking stock of funding that appeared likely to be affected by the freeze, including for after-school programs, school districts near military bases, Native American student supports, and initiatives to improve literacy and career and technical instruction.

But that relief only lasted part of the afternoon, until an Education Week reporter showed her the White House press secretary’s tweet. Copas read it as an indication that the freeze, or the review that was set to accompany the freeze, might still come at a later date.

“The last hour-and-a-half, I was breathing a sigh of relief and feeling like the Trump administration was going to be taking a more measured approach,” Copas said. “Now I’m back to being nervous about all the things I was worrying about earlier today.”

Regardless of when and how the current confusion gets resolved, school administrators are likely to be on alert going forward when it comes to expecting money from the federal government, Copas said. She’s advising district leaders to be cautious when counting on federal grants moving forward.

“A lot of people are nervous, if this is the first move the new administration takes, and how it impacts public schools, what are the future moves going to look like?” Copas said.

District leaders are scrambling to get concrete information about coming events

Even as the Trump administration offered clarification on Tuesday that programs like Head Start and Medicaid wouldn’t be affected by the spending freeze, technical issues arose for both programs. A small number of Head Start providers even moved to lay off staff and shut down operations, according to media reports.

Keeping track of the latest developments has been virtually impossible for even the most plugged-in district leaders.

Lisa Della Vecchia, superintendent of the 2,900-student Delran school district in New Jersey, heard early Tuesday that federal funding for her district may soon come to a halt. But as of Wednesday afternoon, she hadn’t heard that the U.S. Department of Education had clarified a day earlier that some key funding streams, like Title I and IDEA, wouldn’t be affected whenever the freeze did take effect. She also hadn’t heard that the OMB had rescinded the funding freeze order.

Della Vecchia has been distracted. Even before this week’s developments, the district had already been preparing a budget for next school year that reflects possible state and federal cuts. Since President Trump took office on Jan. 20, the district has also been inundated with inquiries about rapidly evolving federal immigration policies, including Trump’s policy change that permits federal agents to make arrests on school grounds.

Roughly 25 percent of the district’s students are English learners, including a large number of students who are immigrants from Brazil. “We’re just trying to reassure our immigrant students that they’re safe and get that information out to families,” Della Vecchia said. “Things are back and forth and changing so rapidly, it’s hard to keep up.”

Navigating the policy whiplash has been particularly challenging for school business administrators who are newer to the profession or their current district, said Sharie Lewis, director of business services and operations for the Parkrose school district in Oregon.

“The OMB letter was extremely broad. It leads to a lot of guessing what exactly you need to do,” Lewis said. “That’s very dangerous in school districts when you don’t have a skilled person to understand it. You’re just relying on somebody else to give you the information.”

As of Wednesday afternoon, Lewis was cautiously confident her district wouldn’t be immediately affected by losing access to the funding programs the OMB said it planned to freeze. But looking ahead, she’s skeptical that the Environmental Protection Agency will approve her district’s application for a $20 million grant to pay for energy-efficient geothermal HVAC systems in four elementary schools that currently lack air conditioning. Several of the Trump administration’s first executive orders so far have called for pulling back federal investments in clean-energy projects.

“Everybody’s flying by the seat of their pants,” Lewis said.

This early episode in the second Trump administration seems to foreshadow further disruption to public schools in the coming years, Copas said.

“You can look back at the previous administration of Trump and make some assumptions. It already feels vastly different than the first four years,” Copas said. “We need to be on our toes and aware and ready to respond.”