This was written by staff at the nonprofit newsroom CalMatters. It was republished by The Mendocino Voice in partnership with CalMatters to bring relevant nonpartisan news to Mendocino County readers. Learn more about CalMatters here.
SACRAMENTO, CA., 7/1/25 – California school districts, including in Mendocino County, 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.
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 first appeared in CalMatters here.
Close government schools and teach students to hunt boar 🐗 with spears and pit bulls and make jerky out of the meat to feed the people addicted to processed foods.
Is this some kind of joke?? Not actually a bad idea
And u can eat feces of the boar …as fir da dogs hope they dnt bite ur balls!
If our state reigned in wasteful spending and follow immigration law we wouldn’t be in this predicament.
Exactly. California State Government wants illegal immigrants to come into the state to live and kids go to school then you pay to teach them English, not the Federal Government. There is a cost directly resulting from liberal policies so pay it. Stop whining.
Idiota, our state literally pays for all the red states’ school systems.
I seriously doubt the money goes to children’s education. These people are complaining because they won’t have a higher salary and they’ll actually have to teach. So sick of these people 😡
Really!!! You try teaching 27 students that are unruly because their parents do nothing but put them in front of a screen, do your job as a parent!!! Teachers are paid near nothing to put up with BS that they bring to a classroom because their parents are dead beats!
Oh, boo-hoo! Our schools never had these programs and my siblings and I turned out just fine. Our mother worked 3 jobs as a single parent and learned English at home with me and my older sister helping her. My dad never paid a dime in alimony or child support. Nowadays, people expect the government to pay for everything! It makes me sick!
If your mother had to learn English, then according to our Government she doesn’t belong here and neither do you.
Then maybe you should talk to Governor about that. 811 million is a drop in the bucket compared to what will be with held if he don’t start cooperating. And what’s he asking for money fr. He said the gloves were off and he does work for trump. Yet here is asking for fire money. You don’t work for trump remember. Figure it out. Stop taking homeless money,fire money, all this money and diverting from the people to your Act Blue coffer. Pathetic. Just add a few taxes on the people. That’s what you do best.
Deport the illegal students and save a ton of money. You won’t have to teach them English and your test scores will go up. It’s a win win. California schools are now performing worse than schools in Mississippi. Look it up. Switch to charter schools. They get better results at a lower cost. Problems solved.
That would literally be pocket change we’d save expelling them. How stupid and indoctrinated are you people
These cuts fail to mention how this state is attempting to cut all funding for charter and home school programs via AB84. Of course the teachers union that runs this state is looking to cut out competition to preserve their monopoly of a horrendous education system. But they couldn’t possibly thing to stop funding so many programs specific to illegals.