The Trump administration has begun canceling dozens of competitive federal education grants years before they were set to expire—and the educators behind hundreds more in-progress projects are worried that funding delays mean their grants could be next.
More than $1 billion for current recipients of grants under at least seven distinct U.S. Department of Education programs—including for school desegregration, disability services, higher-education preparation, teacher training, and academic research—has yet to materialize just weeks before the new fiscal year begins, according to interviews with grant recipients, state education agencies, and advocacy organizations.
In previous years, the grant recipients said, they would have received notice weeks or months ago that their next year of funding was on the way.
Grants that haven’t shown up yet or have already been canceled fuel a wide range of education priorities, including strengthening ties between schools and parents; improving instruction for disadvantaged students; boosting postsecondary education opportunities for low-income families; and preparing schools for physical and virtual safety threats.
The precise reasons for the delays and cancellations aren’t immediately clear. Some grant recipients have been told their projects clash with President Donald Trump’s executive orders aiming to curtail diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts.
Staffing at the Education Department is also greatly diminished as the Trump administration advances its stated goal of dismantling the agency and shifting its functions elsewhere.
But most recipients of the affected competitive grants have heard nothing at all about the funds they’ve been expecting for months to have received by now.
All or even some of the money at issue could still flow as normal, but the Department of Education hasn’t confirmed it will. A spokesperson for the agency didn’t respond to requests for comment in time for publication. Last week, the agency confirmed that hundreds of discretionary grants related to special education are under “ongoing” review.
For previous grant cancellations this year, the Trump administration has said the affected funds were being spent in violation of the president’s policy priorities, including a crackdown on initiatives that promote “radical indoctrination” and diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI.
“Every tax dollar the Government spends should improve American lives or advance American interests. This often does not happen,” the White House wrote in an executive order President Donald Trump signed on Aug. 7.
Grant cancellations are already going out
At least three of 15 school districts that were expecting in April to receive their annual round of funding from an Education Department program that supports magnet schools received notice in July that the agency canceled their grants for violating Trump’s anti-DEI executive orders, according to Ramin Taheri, executive director of Magnet Schools for America.
The remaining districts with Magnet Schools Assistance Program grant years that start in April got their money in July, roughly three months behind schedule, Taheri said. Nearly 50 more districts are still awaiting their Oct. 1 continuation awards for the Magnet Schools Assistance Program, which helps schools advance desegregation and integration efforts.
Meanwhile, more than two dozen colleges that were previously awarded multiyear TRIO grants to help disadvantaged students enroll in and complete college have received cancellation notices from the Department of Education in recent weeks, said Kimberly Jones, president of the Council for Opportunity in Education, a nonprofit advocacy group that has been in close touch with TRIO grantees. The administration has canceled more than $13 million worth of TRIO grants this year, Jones said.
And in an email last Friday, the Readiness and Emergency Management for Schools technical assistance center told its affiliates it will shut down on Sept. 18—even after securing federal approval earlier this year to continue work through at least 2030 with $3 million in annual funding. The center offers resources to schools to prepare for active shooter incidents, cyberattacks, and other emergency disruptions.
The email, from the center’s executive director, Amanda Everett, offered no explanation for the cancellation. Everett didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Unlike with the federally mandated timeline for sending out Title I funding and other formula grants to states and school districts each year, the Education Department has more legal latitude to cancel continuation awards for existing grant recipients, said Julia Martin, director of policy and government affairs for the Bruman Group, an education law firm that represents states and school districts. The Trump administration is exercising that latitude more than previous presidential administrations, Martin said.
Still, going months without hearing about funding renewals and receiving only vague communications inevitably put grant recipients in a bind, she said.
“Because there’s no advance notice that they’re not planning to do as they’ve done for many years, that in itself is disruptive,” Martin said. “We don’t know when that’s going to happen, we don’t know what the parameters are going to be.”
States are waiting on millions of dollars they typically get months earlier
At any given time, hundreds of Department of Education grants are in progress—each with their own application requirements and award timelines.
While many of the awards are intended to last multiple years, the Department of Education typically issues funding for multi-year grants one year at a time. The award for the upcoming fiscal year usually arrives weeks or even months before the current year ends.
But now, with the Sept. 30 end of the federal fiscal year just weeks away, routine processes for disbursing billions of federal dollars appear to be behind schedule without explanation.
More than 70 separate organizations in 30 states and the District of Columbia annually receive funding through the Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs (GEAR UP). The six- or seven-year grants pay for staff and programming that help students from low-income families start preparing during middle school to attend a public four-year university.
Education agencies in the District of Columbia, Ohio, Virginia, Washington state, and West Virginia told Education Week they still haven’t received confirmation that their GEAR UP awards will flow in time for the Oct. 1 start of the next grant year.
Spokespeople for all five agencies—who are expecting a combined $20 million—each said the comparable grant notice in recent years arrived between April and July.
In previous years, the Washington Student Achievement Council received its GEAR UP continuation awards between one and two months before the new fiscal year, said Cara Patrick, GEAR UP director at the council.
Thirty or more staff members at the council and its partner school districts could lose their jobs if the new batch of funds doesn’t come through, Patrick said.
Other programs currently experiencing similar uncertainty over whether their continuation awards will show up on time include projects aiming to help schools more effectively develop relationships with parents; bolster teachers’ credentials for offering English-learner instruction; inform parents of children with disabilities of their rights and available resources; and train educators on supporting children with both visual and hearing impairments.
There’s no guarantee grant recipients will ever hear a definitive answer about their funding status. Metropolitan State University of Denver earlier this month shut down its federally funded College Migrant Assistance Program after the $425,000 annual continuation grant expected from the Education Department in June never arrived.
The Education Department changed grant timelines at the last minute—but hasn’t promised awards
The White House released a budget proposal in May that called for eliminating all of the education grant programs currently grappling with acute uncertainty, or consolidating separate funding streams into a block grant for states to spend how they wish.
A Senate committee recently advanced its own education budget for the upcoming fiscal year that preserved programs Trump put on the chopping block.
But since then, the Department of Education has made unusual moves to prolong current grant recipients’ uncertainty over their future prospects.
Several GEAR UP recipients were expecting their annual grant funding by the end of August. But instead, those grantees—including the Minnesota Office of Higher Education and Utah Valley University—learned last Friday that their projects’ current fiscal year has been extended by a month, to Sept. 30, with no additional funding for the additional month.
Chris McCaghren, acting assistant secretary for postsecondary education, wrote on Aug. 22 that the department made the schedule change on account of “delayed processing” of continuation awards.
“This will allow your project to remain open and continue operations with available program funds through this date while the Department of Education finalizes the issuances” of continuation awards, McCaghren wrote in an email to grantees obtained by Education Week.
That change mirrors a notice sent earlier this month to Community Parent Resource Centers—26 organizations that receive annual awards through Part D of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act to support efforts to improve services and expand access to special education.
Those grantees received an email from a different Department of Education official that said the one-month delay of the end of their grant year with no additional funds “does not guarantee a continuation award.”
In canceling federal grants for mental health services and teacher-training programs earlier this year, letters from the department told grantees their efforts are “inconsistent with, and no longer effectuate, department priorities”—sometimes without elaborating on the alleged infractions.
Layoffs and program cuts could follow if grant cuts proceed
If Minnesota’s GEAR UP grant disappears, 14 state agency staffers would lose their jobs, and school districts would likely have to cut counselors and other staff whose salaries are covered by GEAR UP funds, said Keith Hovins, director of communications for the Minnesota Office of Higher Education.
The agency is expecting $4.45 million for the upcoming year—and another $22.25 million for the remaining five years of the grant. GEAR UP Minnesota will have served more than 5,700 students over the life of its grant.
Axing GEAR UP nationwide would amount to yanking more than $200 million in annual funding for the upcoming fiscal year, and another $700 million in awards set to roll out in future years, according to an Education Week analysis of federal grant recipients. The 76 active programs are set to serve more than 250,000 students combined over their seven-year lifespans.
Community colleges in states like Arizona and Indiana are preparing to shut down federally funded child care programs for students on campus who are parents, citing delays in Education Department grants expected by Sept. 30, USA Today reported last week.
Elsewhere, as the Readiness for Emergency Management technical assistance center shuts down, schools will lose “one of the only sources for guidance from the Department of Education” on pressing cybersecurity threats that are wreaking havoc on a growing number of districts nationwide, said Doug Levin, a school cybersecurity expert and the national director of the K12 Security Information Exchange.
“Losing that capacity is concerning,” particularly as the Trump administration advances other efforts to diminish federal efforts to respond to emergencies, Levin said.
In some cases, educators and their advocates are frustrated that the Trump administration appears to be slashing grants that fuel efforts it claims to support.
Jacqueline Rodriguez, CEO of the National Center for Learning Disabilities, met in March with Education Secretary Linda McMahon as well as civil rights and special education staffers.
“They assured me that they would be supportive of people with disabilities, that that would be something the administration protected,” Rodriguez said. “But their words and actions are contradictory. We have not seen that level of protection with regard to the budget.”
Cuts to IDEA Part D grant funding would make it more difficult for families of students with disabilities to have a seat at the table in their child’s education, said Joseph La Belle, a steering committee member for an ad hoc IDEA preservation coalition that’s currently advocating to preserve at-risk grant awards.
If the regional organizations that support parent-led disability resource centers in each state close, La Belle said, some of the state-level centers that help parents navigate the special education system “may not be able to make it,” he said.
School districts that have already budgeted for federal grants will also be in a tight spot if funding like the Magnet Schools grants doesn’t flow in time or at all, Taheri said.
“It’s going to require some serious juggling to figure out how they’re going to make do,” he said.
2025-08-27 21:14:25
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