A student draws with chalk on an outdoor court at a New York City public school in 2022. If states don’t receive billions in congressionally approved funding for K-12 education that the Trump administration is withholding, officials say programs for migrants, English-language learners and kids in need of after-school care will be at risk. (Photo by Michael Loccisano/Getty Images)

The U.S. Department of Education’s decision last week to hold back $6.8 billion in federal K-12 funds next year has triggered alarm among state education officials, school leaders and advocacy groups nationwide over how the lack of funds will affect their after-school, enrichment and language-learning services.

The Trump administration’s decision to freeze the funding has put states in “triage mode” as they scramble to decide what programs may be cut without that funding, said Mary Kusler, senior director for the Center for Advocacy at the National Education Association. The money was approved by Congress to support education for English language learners, migrants, low-income children and adults learning to read, among others.

As of July 1, school systems are unable to draw down funding, jeopardizing summer programs, hiring and early-year planning for the 2025–26 school year.

The funding freeze affects several core programs: Title II-A (educator training and recruitment), Title III-A (English learner support), Title IV-A (student enrichment and after-school), as well as migrant education and adult education and literacy grants. Trump has proposed eliminating all those programs in his proposed budget for next fiscal year, but that proposal hasn’t gone through Congress.

State superintendents sent out missives to school districts early this week and now are scrambling to make choices.

“This is not about political philosophy, this is about reliability and consistency,” Alabama state Superintendent Eric Mackey said to Politico. “None of us were worrying about this.”

The administration says it is reviewing the programs.

“The Department remains committed to ensuring taxpayer resources are spent in accordance with the President’s priorities and the Department’s statutory responsibilities,” the U.S. Department of Education wrote to states in its announcement June 30.

Historically, the department releases allocations by July 1 to ensure schools can budget and plan effectively for the coming school year. Withholding the money could result in canceled programs, hiring freezes and the loss of essential support for English learners, migrant children and other high-need populations, education and state officials told Stateline.

“America’s public school leaders run district budgets that are dependent on a complex partnership between federal, state, and local funding,” said David R. Schuler, executive director of the School Superintendents Association in a statement. “For decades, school districts have relied on timely confirmation of their federal allocations ahead of the July 1 start of the fiscal year — ensuring stability, allowing for responsible planning, and supporting uninterrupted educational services for students.”

The states facing the largest withheld amounts include California ($810.7 million), Texas ($660.9 million), and New York ($411.7 million), according to data from the NEA and the Learning Policy Institute, an education think tank.

For 17 states and territories, the freeze affects over 15% of their total federal K-12 allocations, according to the Learning Policy Institute. For smaller jurisdictions such as the District of Columbia and Vermont, the disruption hits even harder: More than 20% of their federal K-12 budgets remain inaccessible.

Colorado Education Commissioner Susan Córdova urged school districts to begin contingency planning in case funds are not released before the federal fiscal year ends on Sept. 30. California State Superintendent Tony Thurmond hinted at possible legal action, which has become a trend as states fight the second Trump administration’s funding revocations or delays.

“California will continue to pursue all available legal remedies to the Trump Administration’s unlawful withholding of federal funds appropriated by Congress,” Thurmond said in a statement.

The NEA and the NAACP have filed for a preliminary injunction, calling the administration’s delay an illegal “impoundment” — a violation of the federal Impoundment Control Act, which bars the executive branch from withholding appropriated funds without congressional approval.

Education advocates warn the recent decision by the Trump administration to withhold funding reflects a broader pattern of federal disengagement from public education.

Community nonprofits said the withholding could devastate their programming too. The Boys and Girls Clubs of America could have to close more than 900 centers — bringing the loss of 5,900 jobs and affecting more than 220,000 children, said President and CEO Jim Clark in a statement.

The 1974 Impoundment Control Act lets the president propose canceling funds approved by Congress. Lawmakers have 45 days to approve the request; if they don’t, it’s denied. Meanwhile, agencies can be directed not to spend the funds during that time.

A White House statement shared with States Newsroom this week said “initial findings have shown that many of these grant programs have been grossly misused to subsidize a radical leftwing agenda.”

“Kids, educators, and working families are the ones losing,” said Kusler, of the NEA. “We need governors and communities to step up — now.”

Stateline reporter Robbie Sequeira can be reached at rsequeira@stateline.org.

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org.

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The Social Development Commission, or SDC, is asking the federal government to reverse a decision made by the state that could alter the anti-poverty agency’s funding options. 

Here’s what we know.

The community action decision 

The Wisconsin Department of Children and Families decided in May to remove the SDC’s community action agency status, effective July 3.

Although the department believes SDC has not been operating anti-poverty services since it shut down in April 2024, despite reopening in December, SDC’s leaders have said the state did not follow the proper process to make this decision.

Without this designation, SDC will not be eligible for a Community Services Block Grant, which is a small portion of its budget but significant to its efforts to pay back employees and rebuild its service programs.

How does a federal review work? 

When a state decides to rescind community action status or the related block grant funding from a local agency, the agency can request a review from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services within 30 days. 

SDC submitted a request for a review of the state’s community action decision to the department on June 9, citing concerns about due process. 

The Department of Health and Human Services, or HHS, will evaluate if the state’s determination process followed the guidance on the termination or reduction of funding for entities eligible for the Community Services Block Grant, according to a spokesperson from the department. 

The Division of Community Assistance, which is part of the Office of Community Services within the federal department, oversees block grant funding for community action agencies. 

“I think that HHS is concerned about the process that was used to de-designate SDC, and so my expectation is that they will be talking to the state about the process,” said William Sulton, SDC’s attorney.

The Department of Children and Families received notification on June 11 from the Office of Community Services that SDC requested a review, but did not receive the request itself, according to Gina Paige, communications director for the department.

The review will be completed within 90 days of receiving all required documentation from the state, according to federal law. If not completed in the 90-day time frame, the state’s decision will be upheld. 

As part of the request, SDC is asking the Department of Health and Human Services for direct financial assistance. 

According to the CSBG Act, if a state violates the de-designation process –  by terminating or reducing funding of an eligible entity before the state hearing and the secretary’s review – the Health and Human Services secretary is authorized to provide financial assistance to the entity affected until the violation is corrected.

SDC’s concerns 

SDC raised two main concerns with the state’s determination process in the request, based on state and federal laws.  

The first concern is that the public hearing on SDC’s community action status, held by the Department of Children and Families on April 4, did not meet the legal requirements of a “hearing on the record.”

“You’re supposed to be permitted to call witnesses and present evidence,” Sulton said. “… We were given seven minutes to make a speech, and that was it.” 

SDC also says that both the Department of Children and Families’ secretary and the legislative bodies of the city of Milwaukee and Milwaukee County would have to sign off on the decision, based on a state statute that requires the legislative body that initially granted the agency community action status to approve rescinding it. 

“They didn’t go out and get position statements from the city and the county’s legislative bodies,” Sulton said. 

The department did not comment on these claims. (Paige previously said it has worked closely with the Office of Community Services and Milwaukee County to determine the process needed to move forward with de-designating SDC.)

Although Milwaukee County’s Office of Corporation Counsel submitted a letter to say it found no records of the Board of Supervisors taking action on SDC’s status as a community action agency, Sulton said that doesn’t mean there are no records. 

He argues that this provision of the law, added in 1983, was put in place to protect SDC from arbitrary state action.

Funding deadline

In May, three state lawmakers asked SDC to consider voluntarily de-designating, which would allow the state and Milwaukee County to more quickly find an interim service provider to use SDC’s allocated funds in Milwaukee County. 

The $1.18 million in 2024 block grant funding could be recouped by the federal government if not spent by Sept. 30, 2025, according to the Department of Children and Families. 

However, Sulton said when he reached out to the Department of Health and Human Services before filing the review, an employee told him the 2024 funds had to be obligated by 2026.

“To the extent that anybody has the impression that this money has to be obligated by September or it’ll be lost, HHS says it’s not the case,” he said. 

States and subrecipients usually have two years to distribute funds, but it depends on state-specific policies, according to HHS.

The state’s Sept. 30 deadline marks two years after the beginning of the 2024 fiscal year in October 2023, according to Paige. 

Though Paige said that SDC’s request for review is perpetuating the lack of services in Milwaukee County, she added that the department plans to seek a six-month liquidation extension from the federal government.

“It’s quite possible that we’re gonna be on a really tight timeline to get that money out the door, so that’s why we’re hoping that we can work with the federal government and see if they can allow us an extension to expend it a little bit longer,” Paige said. 

Board member changes

The SDC board added two commissioners in May – Milwaukee Public Schools appointed Michael Harris, and the Interfaith Conference of Greater Milwaukee appointed Peter Fetzer, an attorney at Foley & Lardner LLP. 

In the last seven months, the SDC board has expanded from three to 10 commissioners, thanks to several appointments to vacant seats. The board is designed to have 18 members at full capacity. 

Commissioner Lucero Ayala’s term has ended, according to Sulton. Ayala was nominated and selected last year to fill the remainder of Serina Chavez’s term as an elected commissioner.

Milwaukee Social Development Commission wants feds to reverse state funding decision   is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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Since January, Milwaukee has been dealing with dangerous levels of lead dust in some public schools, resulting in nine school closures.

On Tuesday, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told a Senate committee there was a federal “team” in the city from the CDC’s Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Program — though the positions were cut in April.

“We are continuing to fund the program in Milwaukee, we have a team in Milwaukee, we’re giving laboratory support to the analytics in Milwaukee, and we’re working with the health department in Milwaukee,” Kennedy said when questioned by Sen. Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat, during a hearing before the Senate Committee on Appropriations.

The Milwaukee Health Department disputed Kennedy’s statement.

“There is no team from HHS or CDC in Milwaukee assisting with the MPS lead hazard response,” department spokesperson Caroline Reinwald wrote in an email.

Kennedy has previously suggested the childhood lead program would be reinstated and told U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin last week that lead poisoning in children is an “extremely significant” concern. Reed had asked Kennedy about the program’s fate in light of those comments.

“If the secretary had information that hasn’t been proffered to myself or my team yet, I would welcome, again, continued support from the CDC,” said Milwaukee Health Commissioner Mike Totoraitis on Wednesday.

“Admittedly, I was wondering if they potentially got stuck in traffic in Chicago and didn’t make it to Milwaukee,” he said of Kennedy’s statements about a “team.”

Federal experts were part of Milwaukee’s lead crisis response

Childhood lead poisoning experts from the CDC communicated with the Milwaukee Health Department at the start of the city’s school lead crisis, Totoraitis told WPR.

“They validated our concerns about the testing results that we were finding in the schools,” he said.

He said federal experts recommended school closures as a response, which the city’s health department had originally avoided, not wanting to disrupt learning.

“But given the significant threat of permanent brain damage from lead poisoning, we had to rely on our federal partners to make that decision,” Totoraitis said.

In March, the city requested that a CDC Epi-Aid team come to Milwaukee, hoping to beef up the city’s school lead crisis response.

But in early April, Totoraitis learned that the experts who would’ve managed that team had been laid off. His request was denied.

The team would’ve expanded the city’s testing capacity, he said, and could’ve used its lead specialization to detect trends city officials wouldn’t catch.

But even without a special team, losing the ability to remotely consult CDC experts had an impact. Totoraitis said they had helped his department make investigation plans for lead-contaminated schools and do “epidemiological, long-term digging” into where kids are getting poisoned.

“Those are the parts that are really lacking now,” Totoraitis said.

After the layoffs, one CDC expert offered to help the city as a volunteer, he said.

Totoraitis said the city might contract with some of the laid-off staff members directly. “We’re really hopeful that I can secure the funding, through one of our grants, to bring some of these former CDC staff on in June,” he said.

But he stressed that his department already has a “really robust” lead poisoning program, handling about 1,000 cases a year.

“We’re continuing our work with or without federal resources,” the Milwaukee Health Department’s Reinwald said.

One CDC laboratory specialist visited Milwaukee

One of Kennedy’s claims was that “we’re giving laboratory support to the analytics in Milwaukee.”

In response to a question from WPR about Kennedy’s contention that a team is working on the issue in the city, a spokesperson from the Department of Health and Human Services said the CDC was assisting on laboratory testing.

“At the request of the Milwaukee Health Department Laboratory (MHDL), CDC is assisting with validating new lab instrumentation used for environmental lead testing. Staff from MHDL are focused on the lead response and other routine testing while CDC will assist with testing validation, laboratory quality management, and regulatory requirement documentation to onboard the new laboratory instrument,” the spokesperson said in an email.

According to Reinwald, a CDC laboratory specialist visited the city for two weeks in May to help the health department set up a new machine.

The machine processes lead samples from across the city — including those related to the school lead crisis.

But that visit was planned before the school lead crisis started, Totoraitis said. He said the city had already been expanding its lead-testing capacity before the crisis.

The lab specialist was “requested independently of the MPS situation,” Reinwald said, and served a “narrow technical role specific to onboarding the equipment.”

“It’s a single person,” Totoraitis said. “I know the secretary had said a team was in Milwaukee helping us, but I don’t know who he’s referring to.”

This story was originally published by WPR.

RFK Jr. claims federal ‘team’ is in Milwaukee for school lead crisis; city says there isn’t is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

As the Legislature begins working on the Wisconsin State Budget, a dangerous idea to give school vouchers their own separate line item could become a huge drain on resources. | Getty Images Creative

The top issue Wisconsinites brought to legislators’ attention at budget hearings around the state last month was the need to adequately fund public schools.

But now, as the Legislature’s powerful budget committee is beginning to work on the budget in earnest, a low-profile plan that never came up in those public hearings aims to turn school vouchers into a statewide entitlement, sucking up all the resources that might otherwise go to public schools and putting Wisconsin on a path to a full–blown budget crisis. 

The plan, contained in two bills that failed in the last legislative session, would stop funding school vouchers through the same mix of state and local funding that supports regular public schools, and instead pay for school vouchers just out of the state’s general fund. 

“It’s certainly something that I personally support. … I’m sure it will be part of the discussion,” Rep. Mark Born (R-Beaver Dam), co-chair of the powerful Joint Finance Committee, told Lisa Pugh on Wisconsin Eye when she asked about “decoupling” Wisconsin voucher school funding from the rest of the school finance system.

“Decoupling” would pave the way for a big expansion in taxpayer subsidies for private school tuition. While jettisoning the caps on available funds and enrollment in the current school formula, voucher payments would become an entitlement. The state would be obligated to pay for every eligible student to attend private school. It’s worth noting that most participants in Wisconsin’s voucher programs never attended public school, so what we are talking about is setting up a massive private school system with separate funding alongside the public K-12 school system. That’s more than Wisconsin can afford.

Anne Chapman, research director for the Wisconsin Association of School Business Officials (WASBO), has followed the issue closely. “It could come up last-minute, on very short notice,” she warns. 

She worries that Wisconsin is following the same path as other states that have steadily expanded public funding for private schools without accurately assessing what the expansion would cost. In a recent WASBO paper, “The price of parallel systems,” Chapman writes that Wisconsin already ranks third among states with the highest proportion of state education dollars used in private schooling options (9%). The top two states, Florida (22%) and Arizona (12%), she writes, are “cautionary examples.” 

Florida’s universal voucher program will cost the state $3.9 billion this year. The state, which until now has been running budget surpluses, is projecting a $6.9 billion deficit by 2027-28, fueled by the voucher expansion along with tax cuts. Arizona is also facing much bigger than expected costs for its universal voucher program. After projecting it would cost $64 million in 2023-24, the state found that it underestimated the cost of vouchers by more than 650%. The real cost of universal vouchers in Arizona in 2023-24 was  $738 million. The result: a huge budget deficit and significant cuts to public schools.

Wisconsin, which launched the first school voucher program in the nation in Milwaukee 35 ago, has steadily increased both the size and per-pupil expenditures of its system of voucher schools. That’s despite a research consensus that school vouchers have not improved academic outcomes for students and, in fact, have done significant harm.

Testifying recently against a school voucher bill in Texas, University of Michigan professor and school voucher expert Josh Cowen described the “catastrophic” results of vouchers on educational outcomes across the country over the last decade.

‘Horrific’ voucher results

Cowen has been evaluating school vouchers since the 1990s, when the first pilot program in Milwaukee had a measurable, positive impact on the 400 low-income kids who used vouchers to attend traditional private schools. As school vouchers expanded to serve tens of thousands of students and “subprime” operators moved in to take advantage of taxpayer dollars, however, the results took a dramatic downturn. Cowen described the “horrific learning loss” he and other researchers have recorded over the last decade among kids who started in public school and then moved to private school using vouchers. He was used to seeing trends in education that simply didn’t work to improve outcomes, he told the Texas legislators, but “it’s very rare to see something that harmed kids academically.” The worst drops in test scores, he said, came in 2014-15 — the same year that states began taking the programs statewide. He concluded that the smaller programs that had paid close attention to students and offered them a lot of support became something entirely different when vouchers were scaled up. Yet despite the abysmal results, more and more states are moving toward universal voucher systems.

Imagine, Cowen told the Texas legislators, if “30 years ago a vaccine showed some positive effects in clinical trials for a few hundred kids.” Then, when the vaccine was approved and used on thousands of children, “the health effects became negative, even atrocious.”

“No one would say, ‘let’s just hang our hat on the pilot and focus on results from 30 years ago,” Cowen said. But that’s exactly what’s happening with school vouchers. The kids vouchers were originally supposed to help — low-income children in underresourced schools — have suffered the most. 

Studies from research teams in Louisiana, Indiana, Ohio and Washington, D.C., show learning losses for kids who left public school to attend voucher programs that surpassed the learning loss experienced by students in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina or by children across the country from the COVID-19 pandemic, Cowen said.

Instead of helping those struggling students, who often attend the “subprime” schools Cowen discussed, the voucher programs in Wisconsin and other states mostly provide a taxpayer-financed benefit to private school families — 70% of whom have never put their kids in public school.

Anti-government ideologues and school choice lobbyists are selling a faulty product with the rapid expansion of school vouchers.

Part of the scam is the effort to hide the true costs from taxpayers. That’s the part Chapman, the school business expert, is worried about. As school districts struggle with lean budgets, under the current system, at least local taxpayers can see how much they are paying to support the voucher schools in their districts. If the Legislature succeeds in moving the cost of school vouchers into the general statewide budget, that transparency will be lost. And, at the same time, the state will open the door to unlimited spending on vouchers, no matter how expensive the program becomes. 

School choice advocates in Wisconsin have long pushed for “a voucher in every backpack” — or universal eligibility for the private school voucher program.

“Eligibility” doesn’t mean the same thing as “access,” however: In Wisconsin voucher schools have a track record of kicking out students who are disabled, challenging to educate, LGBTQ or for any other reason they deem them a bad fit.

Those students go back to the public schools, whose mission is to serve all students. In contrast, private schools in the voucher system can and do discriminate. Yet, Chapman reports, we are now spending about $629 million for Wisconsin’s four voucher programs, which serve 58,623 students. That’s $54 million more than the $574.8 million we are spending on all 126,830 students with disabilities in Wisconsin, as school districts struggle with the cost of special education. 

Federal tax deduction windfall for voucher schools

As if that weren’t enough, at the federal level, the Educational Choice for Children Act of 2025 (ECCA), currently being considered by Congress, would give a 100% tax deduction on donations to nonprofits known as Scholarship Granting Organizations, which give out private K-12 school vouchers.

Normally, donors to nonprofits can expect a tax deduction of 37 cents on the dollar at most. The 100% tax deduction means financial advisers across the country will push clients, whether they are school choice advocates or not, to give money to voucher schools. Under the bill, contributors would also be allowed to give corporate stock and avoid capital gains tax. “This would allow wealthy ‘donors’ to turn a profit, at taxpayer expense, by acting as middlemen in steering federal funding into private K-12 schools,” the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy reports. ITEP estimates that the ECCA would cost the federal government $134 billion in foregone revenue over the next 10 years and would cost states an additional $2.3 billion.

The very least we can do as citizens is to demand accountability and transparency in the state budget process, before we blow all of our money on tax breaks and tuition vouchers for people who don’t need them. 

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