Hundreds of public school employees have lost their jobs, with many more fearing they’ll be next, as a flurry of legal challenges and political backlash to the Trump administration’s latest round of abrupt grant cancellations continues to develop.
As of early December, the U.S. Department of Education had more than 70 active grant awards through the Full-Service Community Schools program, which helps schools network with local organizations and expand on-site social services for students and families. On Dec. 12, the department notified recipients of 19 of those grants, across 11 states and the District of Columbia, that they would not be receive their remaining two or three years of expected funding—$168 million in total.
Much of that money covers salaries for community schools coordinator positions in school buildings, many in rural areas. Some school districts might be able to absorb payroll costs for those employees if the federal grants don’t return—but many will have no choice but to eliminate those positions and lay off staff, school leaders told Education Week.
In Illinois, more than 200 educators have already lost their jobs as a result of the grant cuts, said Susan Stanton, who leads the nonprofit organization administering the state’s two Community Schools grants, which each had three years of funding remaining. That includes full-and part-time tutors, clinicians, family liaisons, social workers, counselors, and facilitators of after-school programming.
“In these first two years, we had really built that foundation and built those trusting partnerships,” Stanton said. “Overnight, those trusting partnerships were ripped away.”
The Community Schools grant cancellations were part of a larger effort by the Trump administration in the last year to cancel funding for hundreds of initiatives that officials allege are engaged in improper “diversity, equity, and inclusion” initiatives. In many cases, the agency has flagged language in grant recipients’ application materials that the Biden administration required grant applicants to include.
The Education Department gave Full-Service Community Schools grant recipients seven days last month to appeal the decisions to cut off funding. One recipient—a nonprofit organization in Idaho—got an appeal rejection letter from the department on Dec. 30, only to get another letter the next day reversing the rejection and restoring the funds.
The agency subsequently sent all the funds it had clawed back to other Community Schools grantees whose awards remain intact.
But that status quo may not hold. Last week, three separate court challenges emerged, covering five discontinued Community Schools grants totaling more than $85 million.
Two lawsuits filed Dec. 29—one led by the American Federation of Teachers and the other by the nonprofit organization in Illinois that Stanton leads—are challenging the cancellation of the two Illinois grants, which are worth nearly $56 million for 32 schools that enroll 19,000 K-12 students combined.
Separately, three Democratic state attorneys general—in Maryland, North Carolina, and the District of Columbia—on Dec. 30 sued the Trump administration, calling for the reinstatement of more than $30 million worth of discontinued Community Schools grants in their jurisdictions.
An Education Department spokesperson didn’t respond to requests for comment Tuesday on the amount of Community Schools grant money it clawed back or which recipients of ongoing grants received additional funds.
Legal challenges and elected officials’ pushback have emerged
Hearings have already begun in both legal cases challenging the Illinois cuts.
Stanton’s organization, ACT Now Illinois, lost $17 million in unspent funds from the first two years of its two grants, in addition to losing $57 million in future funding, she said.
In one of the Illinois cases, Judge Sparkle Sooknanan on Dec. 31 said she couldn’t grant a restraining order halting the Community Schools grant cuts in Illinois because the Education Department had already committed the clawed-back funds to other grant recipients.
Then, on Jan. 6, lawyers representing ACT Now and the Education Department said during a status hearing for the second Illinois case that they’re negotiating an agreement to delay the cancellation of the Illinois grant funds by a month while the lawsuit plays out.
But many schools had already moved to let staff go by the time news of the temporary relief came through, Stanton said.
“It’s definitely helpful, it’s providing us hope that we can keep these crucial services going, but it’s been difficult to truly maintain staff,” she said.
Meanwhile, political backlash to the Trump administration’s grant cancellations has transcended party lines.
Idaho’s two Republican senators, Mike Crapo and Jim Risch, sent a letter to the department on Dec. 17 urging the agency to restore the Community Schools grant for Idaho’s schools, which was administered by the nonprofit United Way for Treasure Valley.
When the department denied the grantee’s appeal on Dec. 29, Idaho state Superintendent Debbie Critchfield, a Republican, also began contacting federal and state officials in an attempt to understand the decision, Critchfield told Idaho Education News on Jan. 2.
Through those conversations, the Idaho publication reported, Critchfield apparently helped department officials locate a message the United Way team had sent the federal agency in September, saying it had proactively removed mentions of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” from its publicly available grant application materials.
An Education Department program officer had confirmed receipt of that email months before the department discontinued the grant. Nevertheless, Critchfield’s advocacy appears to have made a difference: On Dec. 31, the department informed United Way that its funding would continue, reversing a decision the department had communicated only one day earlier.
School district leaders across the state likely breathed a sigh of relief upon learning that news. The grant covers salaries for 60 community schools coordinators in 47 school buildings.
“Other than the communal toll it took over a three-week period of thinking we were losing our programming and staff, we were able to maintain programming from December to January,” said Brian Smith, who runs the community schools initiative for the Moscow School District in Idaho.
But in states like Illinois, the path forward is less assured.
“Even if funding were to be restored, it will have created an ongoing harm to these programs,” Stanton said. “It will take time to rebuild, to get staff back, and to regain trust.”