The onslaught of federal grant cancellations that hit K-12 education last year has slowed—but schools and students affected by the cuts are still feeling the direct effects of lost funding.
Schools across Illinois are preparing to lay off staffers this week after a federal judge last Friday narrowed the path to reinstatement of canceled grants for community schools programming. The Trump administration recently redoubled its efforts to disrupt funding for school-based mental health supports.
And on Tuesday, K-12 advocates filed a new lawsuit arguing that the White House has illegally withheld congressionally appropriated funds for education research and data collection.
These developments represent a continuation of the whiplash that became a fixture of the education landscape in 2025.
Education Week has identified more than 760 previously awarded Department of Education grants across more than 30 programs that the Trump administration abruptly revoked during its first year in office.
In most cases, grantees received letters saying their project “no longer effectuates” the Trump administration’s policy priorities; many of those letters also cited materials from the original grant applications that included terms like “diversity” and “equity.”
Lawsuits aiming to reverse the Trump administration’s grant cancellations across the federal government have seen mixed success thus far.
Virtually every week, courts and judges nationwide are weighing in on whether the federal executive branch has the authority to revoke previously awarded grant funding. The Trump administration has outright prevailed in only a handful of those cases, a New York Times analysis published last week shows.
Some education grantees—including technical assistance centers that help states and schools improve classroom instruction and uphold students’ civil rights—have succeeded in regaining access to their funds.
But other plaintiffs have seen less clear-cut outcomes so far. Teacher-preparation grants were temporarily revived last spring, then canceled again after higher courts overturned prior rulings.
Meanwhile, hundreds more Department of Education grant recipients that abruptly lost expected funding last year haven’t even begun pursuing legal challenges—and may never.
Education Week continues to track lawsuits challenging the Trump administration’s funding changes. Here’s a look at what’s happening with some key grant programs the Trump administration has disrupted since taking office in January 2025.
Community schools
Two distinct lawsuits have challenged the cancellation of two Full-Service Community Schools grants serving Illinois schools. The grants help schools become local social-service hubs.
Schools across Illinois—many in rural areas—have already laid off 230 employees as a result of the grant cancellations, said Susan Stanton, executive director of ACT NOW Illinois, the nonprofit that administered the state’s community schools grant.
In one case, Judge Martha M. Pacold, a Trump appointee, rejected plaintiffs’ request for a preliminary injunction that would have fully restored the canceled funding, and dismissed most of the plaintiffs’ claims, while leaving open the possibility that the plaintiffs might be able to pursue the same case in a different court later.
The other case, overseen by Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan, a Biden appointee, is still ongoing. It also includes plaintiffs in Kentucky, New Jersey, and New York.
That means, as of July 1, many more Illinois school employees across 32 school buildings will lose their jobs, including schoolwide coordinators who help connect families and students to resources.
“It was everything small from getting their first family picture for a Christmas card that you’ve never had before, to things that were life-changing, like having access to housing and support for basic needs,” Stanton said. “It was truly everything to the communities.”
A third ongoing lawsuit is challenging the cancellation of community schools grants in the District of Columbia, Maryland, and North Carolina.
Affected grantees in California, Connecticut, Texas, and Wisconsin aren’t covered by a lawsuit.
Education research
A slew of education advocacy groups, including the Massachusetts Teachers Association and the National Center for Learning Disabilities, filed a lawsuit June 30 alleging that the White House Office of Management and Budget and the U.S. Department of Education have illegally blocked hundreds of millions of dollars in congressionally mandated spending for the Institute of Education Sciences, as well as two other competitive grant programs: Education Innovation and Research, and Comprehensive Centers.
As of June 30, according to an Education Week analysis of publicly available data, IES has close to $320 million in fiscal 2025 funds left to spend before it expires in the next three months.
OMB, under the direction of Trump appointee Russell Vought, also has yet to make available more than $584 million of the fiscal 2026 allocation for IES.
Similarly, OMB has made available only $65,000 of the $235 million Congress appropriated in February for Education Innovation and Research grants, and only $500,000 of the $50 million budgeted for Comprehensive Centers grants.
That means the Education Department likely can’t finalize grant competitions or use those funds for legally mandated data collection obligations.
Mental health
The court case challenging these cuts announced in April 2025 has had numerous twists and turns since then. Most recently, in a court filing on June 10, the Trump administration said it hopes to cancel the grants in the coming weeks using a different regulation than it had used during the first round of cancellations.
In Maine, that could mean 6,000 students lose access to mental health counselors in schools, a state education official told Maine Public this week.
Special education workforce
Attorneys general for California, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin filed a lawsuit on June 9 aiming to restore these grants, which were among close to three dozen grants for disability services the Education Department discontinued last August.
The State Personnel Development grant program—mandated under Part D of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act—supplies funding to state education agencies for improving training for educators to support students with disabilities.
States affected by the cuts last summer, according to the complaint, had to lay off staff and scale back instructional programming for educators, including efforts to enhance evidence-based literacy instruction for students and help families engage with it as well.
States are also “concerned about the treatment of their future SPDG applications” in light of the sudden cancellations, the complaint says.
Connecticut also lost a grant from the same program at the same time as the three plaintiff states—but Connecticut’s attorney general isn’t participating in this lawsuit.
English-learner teacher support
Two advocacy nonprofits, a national teachers’ union, and two grantees filed a lawsuit on June 3 challenging the cancellation of grants that were fueling efforts to train teachers to support English-learner students.
Several affected programs had to cut staff or curtail programming as a result of the abrupt cancellations, Education Week reported.
Canceled grants that aren’t covered by lawsuits
Some affected grantees haven’t been included in lawsuits brought by plaintiffs with affected grants from the same program—like the community schools programs in California.
Others haven’t had a lawsuit challenge cuts to their program at all. That includes recipients of competitive grants for improving arts, civics, and literacy instruction; expanding school desegregation efforts; helping middle and high schoolers prepare for college and careers; and providing resources to parents of children with disabilities.
Check out the full list of terminated federal education grants.
2026-07-01 06:00:00
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