The Trump administration is releasing billions of dollars in withheld grants for schools, the Education Department said Friday, ending weeks of uncertainty for educators around the country who rely on the money for English language instruction, adult literacy and other programs.
President Donald Trump’s administration had suspended more than $6 billion in funding on July 1, as part of a review to ensure spending aligned with the White House’s priorities.
While the majority of funding on hold was for K-12 education, federal dollars make up a greater share of the adult education budgets.
The withheld funding included $715 million nationwide for adult education and literacy programs, which help adults complete high school, learn English and improve their literacy skills, among other services. In Wisconsin, adult education providers and technical college leaders lamented the funding freeze earlier this month in interviews with Wisconsin Watch. In a state where 340,000 adults lack a high school diploma, they said the nearly $7 million in adult education funds promised to Wisconsin were crucial in efforts to bolster a thin workforce, and they warned canceled funding would prompt layoffs and program scale-backs.
The Wisconsin Technical College System applauded the Trump administration’s announcement on Friday.
“The system is glad the administration has decided to release the funds previously approved by Congress to fund adult education in Wisconsin,” Director of Strategic Advancement Katy Pettersen said in a statement. “The system and our colleges remain committed to providing education for all students, including those who are seeking adult education to help them find family supporting careers.”
The funding freeze had been challenged by several lawsuits as educators, Congress members from both parties and others called for the administration to release the money. Congress had appropriated the money in a bill signed this year by Trump.
Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul, a Democrat, was among leaders in 24 states suing the Trump administration over the frozen funds.
Last week, the Education Department said it would release $1.3 billion of the money for after-school and summer programming. Without the money, school districts and nonprofits such as the YMCA and Boys and Girls Club of America had said they would have to close or scale back educational offerings this fall.
The Office of Management and Budget had completed its review of the programs and will begin sending the money to states next week, the Education Department said.
A group of 10 Republican senators on July 16 sent a letter imploring the administration to allow the frozen education money to be sent to states, saying the withheld money supported programs and services that are critical to local communities.
“The programs are ones that enjoy long-standing, bipartisan support,” U.S. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., said Friday. She pointed to after-school and summer programs that allow parents to work while their children learn and classes that help adults gain new skills — contributing to local economies.
In withholding the funds, the Office of Management and Budget had said some of the programs supported a “radical leftwing agenda.”
“We share your concern,” the GOP senators had written. “However, we do not believe that is happening with these funds.”
School superintendents had warned they would have to eliminate academic services without the money. On Friday, AASA, an association of superintendents, thanked members of Congress for pressing to release the money.
The uncertainty around the funding was an unnecessary distraction for schools, said U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash.
“Instead of spending the last many weeks figuring out how to improve after-school options and get our kids’ reading and math scores up, because of President Trump, communities across the country have been forced to spend their time cutting back on tutoring options and sorting out how many teachers they will have to lay off,” Murray said.
The grants that were under review included $2 billion in grants for teachers’ professional development and efforts to reduce class size; $1.3 billion for after-school and summer learning programs; $1 billion for academic enrichment grants, often used for science and math education and accelerated learning; $890 million for students who are learning English; $376 million to educate the children of migrant workers; and $715 million to teach adults how to read.
Miranda Dunlap of Wisconsin Watch reports on pathways to success in northeast Wisconsin, working in partnership with Open Campus.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit and nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup.This story is published in partnership with The Associated Press.
Middle income Wisconsinites got a $180 tax cut and lost services worth much more than that. | 3D illustration rendering by Getty Images Creative
Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers and state legislators cut taxes by $1.3 billion in the new state budget, paying out a quarter of the state’s $4.6 billion surplus so that Wisconsinites who earn up to $200,000 can get a tax break worth an average of $180 per year.
That’s not a lot of money to trade for losing access to child care, reducing services that help veterans find jobs and housing, and cutting programs at schools. But somehow cutting taxes has become an agreed-upon, bipartisan top priority, even as the defunding of everything begins to take a major toll on our quality of life.
As Baylor Spears reports, more than 65% of Wisconsin school districts will face a reduction in funds under the new state budget. Many will go to local property taxpayers to ask for more – to the annoyance of citizens who are getting tired of the constant begging from schools that no longer receive adequate funding from the state. Local residents were willing to say yes to a record number of school funding referenda in 2024. But there are signs their patience is wearing thin.
Republican legislators are tapping into that annoyance with a bill to repeal the results of Evers’ partial veto of the last budget, which extended a temporary increase in the cap on revenue school districts could raise for the next 400 years. Evers’ maneuver outraged Republicans, who challenged the veto before the Wisconsin Supreme Court and lost. The new bill would undo the veto’s effect on school revenue caps (and the bill itself will also, presumably, be vetoed by Evers).
“The pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock 402 years before this veto,” the Republican sponsors of the bill write. “It is hard to justify locking in a funding increase for just as long into the future.”
But like the 180 bucks a year in “tax relief” Republican legislators are touting as a major victory for middle class Wisconsinites, Evers’ 400 year veto amounts to less than meets the eye. For one thing, it doesn’t lock in an increase — it just allows districts to raise an additional $325 per pupil through a combination of local property taxes and state aid. Individual school boards must still vote to pass any property tax increase. And the state could head off those property tax increases by putting more money into schools. Instead, Republican legislators insisted on no increase at all in general school aid in the budget. The same legislative Republicans who are howling about property tax increases created the problem, refusing to fund education and then blaming districts that turn to the only other source of funding they can tap.
Overall, the Wisconsin Policy Forum reports, Wisconsin has slipped from one of the top states for education spending into the bottom half over the last 25 years. Tax-cutting replaced education as the state’s top priority. While most other states increased spending on education after the pandemic, in Wisconsin spending on schools went down. And we spend far less as a share of personal income on education now than we did in the early 2000s, and less than the national average.
Behind all of this budget math is the sad reality that, if we don’t agree to shoulder some expenses as a society, a lot of the elements of a decent life are out of reach for most people. Not paying for things through taxes doesn’t make expenses go away. It just makes them more burdensome on the smaller group that has to pay. It takes a bigger bite out of local property tax payers to pick up the cost of their schools than if the cost is spread across the state in the form of income taxes, and it’s even more expensive for individual families to pay the full cost of educating their kids. In the early 2000s, Wisconsin had the best school system in the Midwest at a cost of about 5% of personal income for taxpayers, according to the Wisconsin Policy Forum. That’s about $2,500 of a $50,000 income. Try to find full-time private education for less than that.
Not just schools but a clean environment, public safety, good roads and reliable services and infrastructure that doesn’t fail are things we’ve long taken for granted. Those things are all threatened now.
When I was a high school exchange student in Quito, Ecuador, I learned that running water in the affluent suburb where I lived was not guaranteed. Sometimes the water would go out when you were taking a shower. Keeping a bucket of water in the bathroom just in case was normal. Then a well known government official moved into the neighborhood and the problem, temporarily, cleared up.
We are moving toward that sort of social setup now in the U.S.
The assumption that drives tax-cutting mania at the state and national level is that we shouldn’t have to spend money toward collective, public goods. We should all pay our own way. That’s fine if you can hire your own private security firm, send your kids to private academies, and avoid contact with an increasingly desperate populace. For most people, it’s a terrible bargain.
It’s both cheaper and better for all of us, as individuals, to support a decent society for all. It only becomes unaffordable when we start pulling apart the fabric of society, convincing people they’ll be better off going it alone, after liquidating our collective wealth.
Undermining confidence in public institutions and cutting taxes so those institutions are underfunded and strained are part of the same push to increase the wealth of the already wealthy, and help them shirk any responsibility to contribute to society
Why should poor people have health care? Why should the elderly and disabled be protected from being thrown out on the street? Why should little kids have nutritious meals? If you weren’t clever enough to be born rich, you deserve nothing. That’s not exactly how the Trump administration puts it, or the Republicans in the state Legislature who have been insisting for years on frittering away the state’s budget surplus on tax cuts worth very little to anyone who doesn’t already make a ton of money. But it’s the basic, underlying idea.
This argument is compelling only to people who don’t understand the math.
Elon Musk, whose $400 billion fortune is more than the wealth owned by one-half of all U.S. citizens combined, doesn’t want to pay what for him is a pittance to help maintain the health and wellbeing of our country.
Wisconsin Republicans were unwilling to spend $4 million — .004% of the total state budget — to maintain veterans’ services to keep military vets from becoming homeless.
Efficiency, cost savings — these are the alleged goals of the federal and state austerity programs. But the real goal is to make you forget what it was like to live in a functional society, one where kids had enough to eat and people didn’t die of preventable diseases, the environment was clean and Wisconsin children could get a great, free education, afford to go to college and dream of owning a home.
What the anti-government tax-cutters want is a society riven by resentment and anger, where people are divided against each other and the dysfunction makes it easy to “divide and conquer” as our last Republican governor memorably put it.
Down with education, down with clean water, down with health care and nutrition for poor kids. Up with lurid crime stories and hateful, divisive rhetoric.
When society falls apart, it’s much easier for greedy charlatans to plunder and steal the wealth of the state. And after we’ve codified irresponsibility — spent down the treasury and starved society and made permanent the arrangement whereby the richest people in society are not obligated to contribute, well then it becomes much harder to make the rich pay their fair share.
Try to remember what it was like to have a decent, functional Wisconsin. Try not to give in to the politics of distraction and division. Because $180 is a pathetic bribe to give up stability, security and the opportunity for the kids of today to grow up with hope that they can still have a decent life.
The Lyndon Baines Johnson Department of Education Building pictured on Nov. 25, 2024. (Photo by Shauneen Miranda/States Newsroom)
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s administration confirmed Friday that it’s releasing funds that support before- and after-school programs as well as summer programs, a portion of the $6.8 billion in withheld funds for K-12 schools that were supposed to be sent out two weeks ago.
The administration has faced bipartisan backlash over its decision to freeze billions of dollars that also go toward migrant education, English-language learning, adult education and literacy programs, among other initiatives. Those other funds apparently remained stalled on Friday, and Democrats, a key Republican appropriator and school leaders called for them to be released as well.
The funds that will be released total $1.3 billion, according to Democrats on the Senate Appropriations Committee, and are intended for the 21st Century Community Learning Centers initiative.
The Education Department says the program “supports the creation of community learning centers that provide academic enrichment opportunities during non-school hours for children, particularly students who attend high-poverty and low-performing schools.”
A senior administration official said the programmatic review for 21st Century Community Learning Centers has concluded and funds “will be released to the states.”
“Guardrails have been put in place to ensure these funds are not used in violation of Executive Orders,” the official added.
Pressure from GOP senators
The announcement came after 10 Republican senators sent a letter to Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought on July 16 urging him to release the $6.8 billion in funds to states.
West Virginia GOP Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, who led the letter, said in a statement Friday that “21st Century Community Learning Centers offer important services that many West Virginians rely on.”
“This program supports states in providing quality after-school and summer learning programs for students while enabling their parents to work and contribute to local economies,” said Capito, who chairs the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies.
Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, who leads the broader Senate Appropriations panel, also signed the July 16 letter, along with: Sens. Katie Britt of Alabama, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, John Boozman of Arkansas, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Deb Fischer of Nebraska, John Hoeven of North Dakota, Mike Rounds of South Dakota and Jim Justice of West Virginia.
While Collins said in a Friday statement she is glad she and her colleagues were able to work together to “effectively urge the Administration to get these funds released,” she noted that “there is more funding that still needs to be disbursed.”
“I will continue to work to ensure it is delivered swiftly so educators can prepare for the upcoming academic year with certainty and Maine students and families have the resources they need to succeed,” she said.
July 1 notification
The Education Department notified states of the freeze just a day before July 1, when these funds are typically sent out as educators plan for the school year, saying the funds were under review.
A slew of congressional Democrats and one independent pushed back on the funding freeze.
Thirty-two senators and 150 House Democrats urged Vought and Education Secretary Linda McMahon in two letters dated July 10 to immediately release the funds they say are being withheld “illegally.”
A coalition of 24 states and the District of Columbia also sued the administration over the withheld funds.
The rest of the school money
Sen. Patty Murray of Washington state, the top Democrat on the Senate spending panel, called on the Trump administration to release the rest of the frozen funds.
“After we spoke up — and after weeks of needless chaos — the Trump administration is now releasing funding for after school programs while continuing to block billions more in funding for our students, teachers, and schools,” Murray said in a statement Friday.
“Every penny of this funding must flow immediately,” she said. “Whether or not parents know the afterschool program they depend on will exist should not depend on whether Republicans will push back against Trump’s lawlessness — he should simply get the funding out, just as the law requires him to do. I am going to keep pushing until every dollar goes.”
David Schuler, executive director of AASA, The School Superintendents Association, expressed similar concerns in a statement Friday.
“While we’re pleased to see crucial dollars going to afterschool programs which are vital for students across the nation, the bottom line is this: Districts should not be in this impossible position where the Administration is denying funds that had already been appropriated to our public schools, by Congress,” said Schuler, whose organization helps to ensure every child has access to a high quality public education.
“The remaining funds must be released immediately — America’s children are counting on it.”
Keri Rodrigues, president of the National Parents Union, speaks at a rally on Friday, March 14, 2025, in Washington, D.C, protesting the U.S. Education Department’s mass layoffs and President Donald Trump’s plans to dismantle the agency. (Photo by Shauneen Miranda/States Newsroom)
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Education has emerged as central in the struggle over control of the power of the purse in the nation’s capital.
Democrats in Congress are pushing back hard on the Trump administration’s freeze of $6.8 billion in funds for after-school programs and more at public schools, some of which open their doors a few weeks from now. California alone lost access to $939 million and every state is seeing millions of dollars frozen.
At the same time, the Supreme Court on Monday slammed the door on judicial orders that blocked the dismantling of the 45-year-old agency that Congress created and funds.
The nation’s highest court cleared the way for the administration to proceed, for now, with mass layoffs and a plan to dramatically downsize the Department of Education that President Donald Trump ordered earlier this year.
In her scathing dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that “the majority is either willfully blind to the implications of its ruling or naive, but either way the threat to our Constitution’s separation of powers is grave.”
Sotomayor, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, wrote that the president “must take care that the laws are faithfully executed, not set out to dismantle them.”
“That basic rule undergirds our Constitution’s separation of powers,” she wrote. “Yet today, the majority rewards clear defiance of that core principle with emergency relief.”
Just a day after the Supreme Court’s decision, House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters at a Tuesday press conference that while he hasn’t had a chance to digest the Supreme Court’s order, he also knows that “since its creation, the Department of Education has been wielded by the executive branch.”
“I think that was the intent of Congress, as I understood it back then. We have a large say in that, but we’re going to coordinate that with the White House,” the Louisiana Republican said.
“If we see that the separation of powers is being breached in some way, we’ll act, but I haven’t seen that yet,” he added.
Letters from Democrats on frozen funds
Two letters from Senate and House Democrats demanding the administration release the $6.8 billion in federal funds for various education initiatives also depict the Education Department as a key part of the tussle between the executive branch and Congress.
Just a day ahead of the July 1 date when these funds are typically sent out as educators plan for the coming school year, the department informed states that it would be withholding funding for programs, including before- and after-school programs, migrant education, English-language learning and adult education and literacy, among other initiatives.
Thirty-two senators and 150 House Democrats wrote to Education Secretary Linda McMahon and Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought last week asking to immediately unfreeze those dollars they say are being withheld “illegally.”
“It is unacceptable that the administration is picking and choosing what parts of the appropriations law to follow, and you must immediately implement the entire law as Congress intended and as the oaths you swore require you to do,” the senators wrote in their letter.
The respective top Democrats on the Senate Appropriations Committee and its subcommittee overseeing Education Department funding, Sens. Patty Murray of Washington state and Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, led the letter, alongside Vermont independent Sen. Bernie Sanders, the ranking member of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.
In the lower chamber, House Democrats wrote that “without these funds, schools are facing difficult and unnecessary decisions on programs for students and teachers.”
“No more excuses — follow the law and release the funding meant for our schools, teachers, and families,” they added.
Georgia’s Rep. Lucy McBath led the letter, along with the respective top Democrats on the House Committee on Education and Workforce, its subcommittee on early childhood, elementary and secondary education and its panel on higher education and workforce development: Reps. Bobby Scott of Virginia, Suzanne Bonamici of Oregon and Alma Adams of North Carolina.
Democratic attorneys general, governors file suit
Meanwhile, a coalition of 24 states and the District of Columbia sued the Trump administration on Monday over those withheld funds, again arguing that Congress has the power to direct funding.
The states suing include: Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington state and Wisconsin.
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, both Democrats, also signed onto the suit filed in a Rhode Island federal court.
“Not only does Congress require that Defendants make funds available for obligation to the States, Congress, in conjunction with (Education Department) regulations, also directs the timing of when those funds should be made available,” the coalition wrote.
An analysis earlier in July by New America, a left-leaning think tank, found that the top five school districts with the greatest total funding risk per pupil include those in at least two red states: Montana’s Cleveland Elementary School District, Kester Elementary School District and Grant Elementary School District, along with Oregon’s Yoncalla School District 32 and Texas’ Boles Independent School District.
The think tank notes that program finance data was not available for Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York and Wisconsin.
As federal aid ran out, advocates called on lawmakers to fund the Child Care Counts program using state dollars, as Evers proposed. (Baylor Spears | Wisconsin Examiner)
This summer Democratic and Republican legislators along with the Gov. Tony Evers participated in closed-door negotiations to come up with the 2025-27 state budget. All of the parties involved are touting the budget as a historic advance for children and patting themselves on the back for compromising with each other and the work they accomplished. In other words, they played well in the sandbox together. While yes, the state budget has never included funding for child care in its history, as we were one of only six states that didn’t, crowing about it now is kind of like touting the fact that you’ve just changed a diaper for the first time when your child is 2 years old. It’s not something to brag about, and the new state budget is nothing to brag about either.
On the surface, as you read the claims about historic investments in child care and K-12 schools, you might think the budget really solved some big problems. Take Evers’ statement celebrating “Over $330 million to support Wisconsin’s child care industry and help lower child care costs for working families, a third of which is in direct payments to providers.” That means only $110 million is to continue the direct investment to all 4,700 eligible regulated child care programs. The original amount for this program was $480 million. Child care is receiving less than 25% of the requested amount. You might have surmised from Evers’ victorious statement that parents will see a decrease in tuition costs with the new budget. However, the opposite is going to be occurring, and tuition increases will start in August. The $110 million will cause child care rates to increase next month because the new state investment is less than a third of what Child Care Counts, funded through the American Rescue Plan Act, originally provided.
The purpose of that money was to stabilize a field that had been declining for decades. It increased teachers’ wages while holding down tuition costs for parents. It worked. The data showed a decline in closures and it raised the average child care educator’s wage from $11 an hour to $13 an hour in Wisconsin. (In our state, over 50% of early child care teachers have some college education or degree, with an average of 10 years experience.)
This month the ARPA funds run out, and for the past few years, knowing the federal funding would be ending, families, child care providers, and businesses have been advocating for the state to fill the gap and to subsidize child care. We know that for every $1 a state invests in early childhood education, the rate of return is between $10-$16. Not only does quality early child care give children an opportunity for greater success as adults, it also supports our workforce, families and the economy.
Regardless of the research and well-being of children, the gatekeepers of our tax dollars on the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee deleted Evers’ $480 million direct state investment budget request for child care. Instead, child care funding was determined behind closed doors with Senate Minority Leader Diane Hesselbein and Evers in one corner and Rep. Vos and Senate Majority Leader Devin Lemahieu in the other. It should be noted that no one in that space is considered an expert in child care policy. What came out of this room was a compromise for the sake of compromise.
The $110 million for child care won’t come from state dollars. It’s the interest that has accrued on the federal ARPA funds. It will be allocated directly to child care providers over the next 11 months, until June of 2026. It comes to about 70% less than the original amount paid through CCC. This is why, starting in August, there will be significant closures of child care centers and home daycares in rural areas of the state — already considered a child care desert. Tuition will increase at the child care operations that try to stay open. So no, working families will not “see a decrease in childcare costs” as stated by Evers.
And when the $110 million ends next year, there is nothing to replace it. The Wisconsin Legislature will gavel out in March and not gavel in until January of 2027, as legislators will be campaigning the rest of 2026. There won’t be an opportunity to pass emergency legislation funding child care. Rates will increase again and closures will continue.
The remainder of the $330 million in child care funding in the new state budget is for several new programs. A $66 million state investment for 4-year-olds to access “school readiness” in their child care program. This will help parents as the state will pay for their “preschool” time, but it replaces tuition for part of the school day. Child care programs that have school districts with all-day, free 4K will likely find it almost impossible to compete with public schools when they still need to charge for the remainder of the day plus wrap-around care.
In addition, there is a $28 million pilot project to deregulate the child care field, which ends in July 2027. This move comes directly from the Republicans’ playbook. The pilot project will incentivize providers to increase their ratios, meaning more children per teacher, lower quality and safety for children and more stress on teachers.
Another harmful policy in the new budget is that 16-year-olds are now allowed to be assistant teachers and count as adults in the ratio. Coupled with the pilot project mentioned above, this means a classroom of 14 toddlers can be supervised by one 18-year-old and one 16-year-old. This reduces the quality, safety, care and education for the children in our programs. Recall that while these decisions were being made behind closed doors, there were no experts in child care policy in the room. This policy was made without consideration of our state accreditation program, YoungStar, and our national accreditations. Any program that participates in the pilot project will no longer qualify to be accredited. And in Wisconsin, accreditation is not just a certificate to state you are following high safety standards, but our YoungStar program is tethered to our Wisconsin Shares (subsidy for child care). Programs with a five or four-star rating receive a bonus subsidy rate. It can mean a considerable loss of funding for providers to participate in the new pilot project.
The politicians who wrote the budget deal behind closed doors neglected to consider the increased cost or loss of insurance for providers when we increase the teacher-to-child ratio and when we allow 16-year-olds to count as adults.
The same group of non-experts also decided to allow policies that, in 2023, were already proposed and had failed to become law due to the overwhelming outcry from families, providers and the medical field against a policy that reduces quality and safety for our children. The state is throwing millions of dollars in the garbage for these policies, which won’t benefit child care programs and will cause actual harm to Wisconsin children.
Enacting policies like these without holding hearings raises the question: Who is representing us? The public already overwhelmingly said no to these policies two years ago. Furthermore, funding for child care is one of the top priorities that the JFC heard from voters throughout the state at budget listening sessions. Surveys show that the majority of both Republican and Democratic constituents support funding early child care. The only real compromise made in this budget was the compromise of safety and quality of our youngest children in the state.
Wisconsin’s K-12 budget
So how did school-age children fare in the state budget? Again, we are reading about record-setting investments in schools, along with the biggest investment our state has ever made for children with disabilities. Evers proclaimed that the new budget “secures the largest increase to special education reimbursement rate in state history.” You might think, great, finally children with disabilities will receive the support and resources they need. But you would be wrong. Evers’ budget request was for a 60% reimbursement for children with disabilities. After all, 90% reimbursement is the amount that Wisconsin voucher and charter schools have already been receiving for children with special needs. Unfortunately, the new budget allows public schools a maximum of 42% in 2026 and 45% in 2027 reimbursement, which is a far cry from the 60% request — the rate of the 1980s. Yes, the increase in this budget is technically the largest increase in recent years, but it is still miles away from the finish line.
To make matters worse, the budget also provided a $0 per-pupil increase in general aid funding to public schools; however, a provision was placed in the budget paperwork that guaranteed voucher and charter schools would receive additional funding for their general aid in the budget. I can’t recall a year when no new general funding was provided in a budget to public schools in Wisconsin. Last year Wisconsin saw a record number of public schools go to referendum to squeeze additional funding from their communities to compensate for the lack of state and federal funding. Under the new budget, we will see another record number of schools going to referendum next year. We will also likely see more schools close, specifically in rural, poorer areas where the communities cannot be squeezed any more than they already have been. As you can imagine, this budget will only continue to widen the education gap in quality between the wealthy and the poor.
Not to be all doom and gloom, there was one category of children that fared quite well with the new budget: our juvenile offenders. The budget will invest $1 million per juvenile offender. Yes, $1 million per kid. Remember when it was mentioned that investing in our youth early on saves us tenfold later on? The children in our juvenile justice systems are children who were not given the opportunity for quality early child care, children who were raised in poverty, children who have been abused, children who experience trauma, children with mental health issues.
The children in our juvenile systems are those who have been failed by our state. Their families could not afford child care, so they were shuffled from one person to another. They lived with violence and addiction in their homes. And when they got to school at age 5, they were already on a trajectory of despair; the school systems cannot afford to provide all the services and support these children need, especially for those who have suffered trauma at an early age.
Our new state budget only prioritizes these children once they are ready to be locked away.
Unfortunately the hype about Wisconsin making record investments in our children is terribly overblown. Instead, the truth of the matter is that we are putting in the minimum, and this budget keeps us on the lowest tier as a state for investment in our public schools and our young children compared to other states. Meanwhile, we continue to be among the biggest spenders on our juvenile offenders.
Our political leaders have misled us.
I don’t think most Wisconsinites care whether their representatives can compromise or not. I think we would all rather have elected politicians who will actually represent us with integrity. Represent us with values that prioritize our children, families, workforce and our economy. This is our common humanity. We can stop generational poverty. We can stop children from going hungry, we can support children who have been abused and neglected, and we can give children a chance in life. But we just made the choice not to do that.
Correction: An earlier version of this commentary misstated the amount of Gov. Tony Evers’ budget request as 90% instead of 60%. We regret the error.
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 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.
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 guidanceon 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.
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.
Milwaukee’s Trowbridge Street School of Great Lakes Studies, which had to temporarily close due to unsafe levels of lead, pictured on Feb. 28, 2025. (Evan Casey / WPR)
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.”
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