California schools are scrambling as Trump administration withholds almost $811 million

Students in class at George Washington Elementary School in Madera on Oct. 29, 2024. California and Massachusetts banned bilingual education for almost 20 years and then reversed their bans at about the same time seven years ago. Photo by Larry Valenzuela, CalMatters/CatchLight Local This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.

California school districts are short hundreds of millions of dollars in federal grant money they had already budgeted for this year. While Congress approved the funds as part of its 2025 budget, the Trump Administration today refused to release them, sending districts across the country scrambling.

The grant money pays for teacher professional development, after school and other enrichment programs, services for students learning English and migrant education. Across all five programs the money funds, California schools are due almost $811 million, according to an analysis by the Learning Policy Institute. Nationwide, the grants total $6.2 billion for K-12 schools.

After Congress approves the total funding amounts, the U.S. Department of Education has historically discussed state-level allocations between March and May, releasing the money on July 1. On Monday, states received an email saying the department was still reviewing 2025 funding for the five affected programs. In many California districts, that money was built into school budgets this spring and administrators expected to start spending it this month and next.

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Without the money, some school districts will have to cancel teacher professional development events this summer and summer learning activities as soon as this week.

“The harm of this decision is immediate. The costs are real and the impact is long lasting,” said Tatia Davenport, director of the California Association of School Business Officials. “By withdrawing those funds, our district leaders will be forced to reduce staff, delay programs and cancel services. That means disrupting the learning for the students who need us the most.”

The state is considering several options, including suing the Trump administration, said State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond. The state has sued Trump over school funding several times already, after Trump threatened to withhold funding over diversity and other initiatives.

Meanwhile, Thurmond encouraged school districts to find resources to keep summer programs running, in hopes of a resolution soon. Schools start re-opening in late July with the majority opening in August.

Student services at risk

Among the programs that didn’t receive funding is the 21st Century Community Learning Center grants, which provide about $146.6 million to California schools and community organizations for after-school programs. The state provides the bulk of after-school funding, but 21st Century grants are the primary source of money for middle and high schools. The money pays for tutoring, snacks, field trips, enrichment activities and other investments intended to help students stay on track academically while gaining social skills and having fun.

Jodi Grant, executive director of the Afterschool Alliance, called after school and summer learning programs an American success story, providing a lifeline for working parents. She said every hour of delay on the federal funds could lead to closures and cancellations that will ripple into the start of the 2025-26 school year.

“It’s going to mean more children and youth are unsupervised, and at risk, more academic failures, more hungry kids, more chronic absenteeism, higher dropout rates, more parents forced out of their jobs and a less STEM-ready and successful workforce as our child care crisis worsens dramatically,” she said.

In the Oxnard School District, in Ventura County, Superintendent Anabolena DeGenna said the programs this federal money supports “are not luxuries in our schools; they’re lifelines,” supporting student services, teacher training and critical family engagement programs that help caregivers support their children. All of this as the district continues to recover from challenges brought on by the COVID pandemic.

The U.S. Department of Education has released some money Congress approved for K-12 schools this year as part of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act and its various programs. All of the withheld funding was destined for programs the administration has proposed defunding in 2026.

Amaya Garcia, director of PreK-12 research and practice at the left-leaning D.C. think tank New America, said this is not a coincidence.

"By [withholding] these funds, the Trump administration is finding a way to enact their budget priorities without the approval of Congress,” Garcia said.

In the department’s Monday email to states, it said it “remained committed to ensuring taxpayer resources are spent in accordance with the President’s priorities and the Department’s statutory responsibilities.”

Education leaders and advocates roundly condemned the funding delays and the administration’s claims that it had anything to review.

“There’s nothing to review from the department because Congress has already approved this funding back in March,” said Amalia Chamorro, director of education policy for UnidosUS, the largest Latino civil rights organization in the country. “This action is illegal and it is an overreach of the executive branch,” she continued. “We are calling on the administration to stop playing politics and immediately release these funds without further delay. Our students deserve better.”

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.