SCHOOL DISTRICTS FACE LOOMING THREAT OF CUTOFF OF FEDERAL FUNDS
School leaders in Los Angeles and Denver, among many others, push back, but threat remains
To negotiate, push back, or resist?
Those are the excruciatingly difficult choices facing school districts across the nation as they face a looming threat of losing funds they receive from the federal government.
Schools districts and the states where they’re based have until April 24 to certify to the Trump administration that they have eliminated all diversity, equity and inclusion programs, defined by the Dept. of Education in extraordinarily broad terms, or risk losing federal funds.
In addition, following a Jan. 29 Trump executive order, and another on February 5, districts risk losing “all federal funds” if in the view of the administration they “directly or indirectly support or subsidize the instruction, advancement, or promotion of gender ideology or discriminatory equity ideology.” That includes allowing transgender girls to use girls’ bathrooms, or play on girls’ sports teams.
At least 23 states have told the Dept. of Education that, for a range of reasons, they have no intention of meeting these and a range of other expansive demands, according to Education Week.
Two of the most outspoken school superintendents in the nation are Superintendent Alberto Carvalho of Los Angeles Unified and Superintendent Alex Marrero of the Denver Public Schools. Neither appears to have been intimidated by the extraordinary pressures their districts are under.
In February, the Denver Public Schools was the first district in the nation to file suit against the Trump administration’s declaration that it would end a Biden administration policy classifying schools as sensitive locations off limits to immigration raids.
And on April 7, Homeland Security officials attempted to take custody of five students in two elementary schools in Los Angeles Unified — so far the only school district in the U.S. where this has happened — but were successfully turned away.
The fact that both California and Colorado are among the states that have rejected the demands made by Trump and the Dept. of Education raises the odds that L.A. and Denver will be among the districts that will be targeted.
Yet both Carvalho and Marrero say that losing federal funds would have a devastating impact on their districts, and the students they serve.
In an interview for Sparking Equity, the podcast hosted by myself and Pedro Noguera, Dean of the USC Rossier School of Education, Carvalho says a cutoff of federal funds of any size would be “disastrous” for his district. That’s despite the fact that federal funds comprise “only” about 10 percent of his district’s massive $18.4 billion budget.
Unlike some private universities that have been the principal targets of Trump’s assault on education so far, neither his district — nor any other — has an endowment of any size to offset cuts in federal funds, let alone a multi-billion dollar one.
Carvalho notes that universities may be in a position to reject federal funds in order “to preserve their values.” But school districts like his, he says, “have to rely on the courts or on state intervention … because we have no financial cushion.”
His district, like many others in the state, are already facing huge budget shortfalls due to a range of factors, including declining enrollment and higher absenteeism after the pandemic.
Potentially hundreds of thousands of students in his district would be affected by losses of federal funds.
“We're talking about students with disabilities who receive support through the Individual Disabilities Education Act,” he said. “We're talking about the food and nutrition program that feeds breakfast and lunch and snack to our kids, many of whom depend on those meals as perhaps the only food that they will eat throughout the day. We're talking about reductions or elimination or compromising of Medicaid support systems that provides support to the medically needy amongst us.”
“These are the political pawns they (Trump administration officials) are using: the sick, the poor, the disabled, to force districts to their knees. What level of moral degradation are we trying to achieve by doing so?
“We should never be in a position of negotiating against the best interests of our kids, of our stakeholders, of our workforce,” he said. “We should not be in a position of negotiating the values that we believe in, embrace, and apply every single day.”
Carvalho says “even a temporary cessation of funding would be disastrous because the vast majority of these funds employ people — teachers, psychiatric social workers, counselors, paraprofessionals for students with disabilities — and, more importantly, disastrous to the point of compromising the level of education and services that kids by law deserve.”
Similarly, Denver’s Alex Marrero said the approximately $100 million in federal funds his district receives to serve many of the neediest students in his 90,000-student district “may seem insignificant in the grand scheme of things, but that's a lot of federal funds that serve our most vulnerable and at-risk students.”
“Have you ever seen a drug kingpin sitting crisscross-applesauce on a colorful rug?” he asks. “A drug warlord? What are we trying to accomplish here? Let's stop the antics. Let's get back to the sanctity of the schoolhouse. Let us do what we've been trained to do.”
“Do we really want the educational system to implode? I ask the federal government: is that what you want, for it to implode under your watch?”
Carvalho says he and other school leaders have no choice but to make their voices heard in response to the looming threat to public schools. "If it is met with silence, we need to always remember — and this is not my quote — that silence always benefits the tyrant. Silence always benefits the tormentor.”
But it is far from clear what will happen after the April 24 Trump-imposed deadline, and whether the Trump administration will try to cut off funding to districts in states that have said they won’t meet its demands.
If Maine, whose governor Janet Mills had the audacity to stand up to Trump at a gathering of governors in the White House, is any guide, that is a real possibility.