Regarding Donald Trump’s Funding Freeze And its Effect on Education

By Theo Meranze

Donald Trump’s executive orders, directives, and general threats of defunding have caused an understandable amount of terror in the world of education. Most recently, as we’re sure you’ve heard, his directive to freeze trillions of dollars in federal funding, grants, and loans has left many schools and programs for our children concerned that they may be stripped of government backing and have to close their doors due to the pause. (Thankfully, at least as of the time of writing this, the freeze has been rolled back. They are safe for now.) 

It seems that part of Trump’s strategy is to put people in a state of fear despite his inability to fully follow through with his threats. Resultantly, we feel it’s important to give a summary of what is actually going on, what is actually at risk, and what is, at least as of now, safe (thankfully, mostly everything).   

According to the New York Times a spokesperson from the The Department of Education has stated that “the directive only applied to discretionary grants, and not to formula grants, like Title 1, which provides aid to high-poverty schools, or the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which supports children with disabilities.”

Head Start, an early education program which serves over 800 thousand children was originally thought to be under threat. It was later clarified to be not affected by the directive to freeze.

According to a senior administration official, Funding for programs that provide direct assistance to Americans would not be targeted.  This includes Medicaid, food stamps, small business assistance, Head Start, rental assistance and federal Pell Grants for college students, according to a memo sent out Tuesday afternoon by OMB. 

We will continue to monitor the situation and provide updates.