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  • Trump freezes grant funding, upending school budgets

    Trump freezes grant funding, upending school budgets


    California State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond speaks at a press conference Tuesday, July 1, 2025.

    Credit: Kindra Britt/California County Superintendents

    Top Takeaways
    • The Trump administration announced it would withhold $811 million in grant funding the day before the money was to be released.
    • The grants fund teacher training, migrant education, school enrichment courses, summer school and after-school programs, and support English learners.
    • California education leaders call the funding freeze a political move that hurts the neediest children.

    The Trump administration’s decision to withhold $811 million in grants to California schools is a political move that weaponizes federal funding, California education leaders said at a press conference Tuesday.

    California isn’t the only state in President Donald Trump’s crosshairs. The White House has frozen a total of $6.2 billion in grants that Congress allocated to support English learners, teacher training, after-school programs and migrant education in schools in every state.

    State departments of education were notified of the funding freeze in an email sent on Monday, just a day before the money was scheduled to be released to school districts. The 84-word message said that the federal grants weren’t “in accordance with the President’s priorities,” said California State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond at the press conference.

    The president intends to withhold the funding approved in the 2024-25 federal budget while the grants are reviewed, according to Politico. In the meantime, Congress is set to approve a budget for 2025-26 that could eliminate the grants altogether or lump them into a block grant.

    “The president and his administration continue to pick on and bully those who are the least among us — students, those who rely on health care, those who rely on the federal government to have a chance at a great education and a great life,” said Thurmond, flanked by the leaders of various state education organizations. “And we won’t stand for it. It will not happen on our watch.”

    The loss of grant funding will impact students across the state, “in red and blue counties, in rural and urban areas,” said David Goldberg, president of the California Teachers Association.

    Among the programs at risk are Supporting Effective Instruction grants to improve the quality of the nation’s educators; 21st Century Community Learning Centers, which fund high school extended-learning programs; English language acquisition; migrant education; and Student Support and Academic Enrichment, which funds music, technology and other programs schools can not afford on their own. 

    Although the federal grant funds are only a small portion of the $8 billion in federal funding California receives for education, their sudden loss is a major disruption for school districts that have already budgeted funds for the upcoming school year.

    Freeze unravels school funding plans

    The U.S. Department of Education action will withhold $110 million from Los Angeles Unified, the state’s largest school district, said Superintendent Alberto Carvalho on Tuesday.

    “The majority of funds are targeting student populations that have some degree of association with fragile communities, and certainly, immigrant communities,” Carvalho said. “And, all this is happening today, as summer school continues, and (we) have immigration enforcement actions around our schools, spreading fear and intimidation.”

    LAUSD serves the country’s largest population of immigrant children and English learners, including through federally funded programs like the Migrant Education Program, which provides additional support for children of migrant agricultural workers.

    LAUSD recently approved an $18.8 billion budget that includes state and federal funding for the upcoming school year. 

    “The vast majority of districts across the state have already approved budgets, and the (Trump) administration knows very well what they’re doing,” Carvalho said. “They’re creating a disruption to the orderly operation of school districts by imposing a potential reduction after the approval, which would force us to reopen the books.”

    Carvalho said the district has “the reserves necessary to fill the gap in the short term,” caused by the $110 million rescission, and will not make immediate reductions to personnel or programs.

    To prevent long-term cuts, he said the district will join the expected legal action by California Attorney General Rob Bonta in hopes of an injunction and the release of withheld funds. 

    Other districts, such as West Contra Costa Unified in the Bay Area, will have a more difficult time managing without the federal funds. The district was able to approve a balanced budget for the upcoming school year, but only by spending down its reserves, said board President Leslie Reckler.

    The district has relied on the funding provided by the grants for years for a range of services, Reckler said.

    The announcement comes as the district is still digesting the fallout from being informed by the U.S. Department of Education that a five-year $4.2 million federal grant it had been awarded to place mental health interns in several schools would be cut to only one year for $600,000. The department told the district that the grant was no longer “aligned with the current goals” of the administration.

    Migrant education at risk

    The Monterey County Office of Education operates several migrant education programs during the summer break. The programs are for students whose parent or guardian is a migratory worker in the agricultural, dairy, lumber or fishing industries and whose family has moved during the past three years for work.

    The programs include academic intervention programs and tutoring to help students catch up with English, math, or other subjects; health services; family literacy programs for parents and guardians; and exchange programs for teachers from Mexico to support students who travel back and forth between Mexico and the U.S.

    The Trump administration is withholding $121 million in grants for migrant education in California.

    Constantino Silva, senior director of migrant education in Monterey County, said the county superintendent has said these programs will continue through July, even if federal funding does not come through. The county will either use leftover funds from the previous fiscal year or pull them from another source. 

    After July, he does not know how long programs will continue without federal funding, although the outlook is not good, he said.

    State has 1 million English learners

    Withholding $158 million in grants for English language acquisition could have a huge impact on California K-12 schools where 1 in 3 students speak a language other than English at home, Goldberg said.

    Martha Hernandez, executive director of Californians Together, said the announcement that federal funding is being withheld for English language acquisition has districts scrambling to figure out how they will provide legally mandated services to English learners.

    Administrators are frantic about what they’re going to do, particularly about staffing, because state law requires school staff to be notified in March if they are going to be laid off, she said. 

    “So now, having to think about, with declining enrollment and budgets already being tight, how are they going to possibly retain staff that have been paid for out of Title III?” Hernandez said.

    Districts are still required under federal law to provide services to English learners to help them learn English and help them understand their classes, she said.

    “It’s just an unconscionable blow to districts. To cut it on July 1, when the funding was supposed to be disbursed, is just really cruel,” Hernandez said.

    Summer school, teacher training impacted

    Several of the frozen grants could impact over 10,000 after-school and summer programs serving 1.4 million students, said Jodi Grant, executive director of the Afterschool Alliance. Many will have to close, leaving more children unsupervised.

    “Parents across the country are counting on these programs to support their kids this summer, this fall, and throughout the school year,” Grant said.

    The largest chunk of funding being frozen is $232 million from the Supporting Effective Instruction grant, which can be used to reform certification programs, support new teachers, provide additional training for existing teachers and principals, and reduce class size by hiring more teachers. 

    In February, the Department of Education threatened to withhold federal funding from schools and colleges that did not abandon “diversity, equity and inclusion” programs.

    Last month, Trump also threatened to withhold federal funding from states or schools that allow transgender students to play sports on teams that align with their gender identity. The state went to court seeking to have the funds restored and won. 

    But even after California won cases against the Trump administration, it has sometimes had trouble drawing down funds from the federal government.

    Thurmond said it may look for legal recourse again to restore the grant funding.

    “We are going to push back on these egregious overreaches by the federal government and what we’re calling an illegal impoundment of federal education dollars,” Thurmond said.

    In the meantime, David Schapira, chief of staff for Thurmond, recommended that school districts consult their legal counsel on how to proceed while the grants are in limbo and make individual decisions about what is best for their communities based on the information available.

    Education leaders at the press conference had strong words about Trump’s actions. The president is willing to punish students in states that refuse to conform to his political ideology, Schapira said.

    “The taxpayers entrusted their elected representatives in Congress to appropriate dollars that are meant to serve students across this country. Those should not be held hostage by the priorities of one person,” Schapira said.

    Lasherica Thorton and Louis Freedberg contributed to this report.





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  • Trump’s budget would reduce Pell Grant awards and work-study programs

    Trump’s budget would reduce Pell Grant awards and work-study programs


    A commencement ceremony at California State University, Fullerton, in 2021.

    Credit: Cal State Fullerton/Flickr

    • New “K-12 Simplified Funding Program” is effectively an elimination, advocates say.
    • Proposal eviscerates programs for low-income students in both K-12 and higher education.
    • Funds for disabled students increased, but shift to flat funding is concerning to educators.

    The Trump administration is proposing the biggest cuts in a half-century to federal financial aid by reducing Pell Grant award amounts for low-income college students, plus the government’s contribution to the Federal Work-Study program. Fewer students will likely enroll in college and achieve a degree as a result, college officials say.

    The cuts are included in a proposed 15% reduction to the U.S. Department of Education’s budget, totaling $12 billion in cuts to K-12 and higher education, plus sweeping changes to how remaining funding would be distributed.

    The president’s initial budget, issued on May 2, foreshadowed programs in danger of cuts or eliminations, but specifics remained vague until late last week with the release of new details.

    The budget is still under review by the Senate, which could change the administration’s proposal in any direction.

    Advocates, however, remain pessimistic and warn that this education budget request is only one aspect of the larger budget and policy concerns.

    “The biggest thing is what happens in the Senate with budget reconciliation,” said Rob Manwaring, a fiscal and policy analyst at the advocacy organization Children Now.

    The proposal eviscerates funding for programs that support students experiencing homelessness, rural students, English learners, and more. However, President Donald Trump would maintain Title I, which provides supplemental funds to schools in neighborhoods with concentrated poverty, at the current $18 billion.

    K-12 funding

    Funding for the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) is slightly higher in the budget request, but advocates are concerned that federally mandated costs are rising faster than federal funding.

    Manwaring said special education, for instance, is “one of the fastest growing costs for school districts,” due to a rise in students being screened and diagnosed with disabilities, plus costs associated with the resources provided.

    The budget request lists funding for special education as an “increased investment,” but a consolidation of various programs supporting students with disabilities ultimately amounts to flat funding.

    This type of funding “is further reducing the federal government’s role in supporting special education” because it does not account for variables such as cost-of-living increases, costs of salaries and benefits for educators, a rise in disabled student populations, and other such changes, Manwaring said.

    At risk of elimination are hundreds of millions for programs that support the education of migrant students, teacher training, education research and English learners.

    The proposal includes pooling together 18 grant programs currently funded at about $6.5 billion into a single $2 billion block grant. It is titled K-12 Simplified Funding Program and the administration argues it will allow states and local education agencies flexibility in how funding is allocated.

    Those 18 programs include:

    • Education for Homeless Children and Youths (EHCY)
    • Assistance for Arts in Education
    • Statewide Family Engagement Centers
    • American Civics and History Education
    • Comprehensive Literacy State Development

    Advocates say the consolidation amounts to elimination.

    “It’s just another way of saying ‘we’re eliminating funding,’” said Barbara Duffield, executive director of SchoolHouse Connection. “Whether the funding is zeroed out because the line item is zeroed out or whether it’s zeroed out because supposedly it’s put into a new block grant, the program doesn’t exist anymore.”

    Part of the problem with the consolidation plan is the removal of targeted funding, she added.

    California’s Local Control Funding Formula, or LCFF, provides an example of how the federal consolidation plan could play out: While schools receive funding for several vulnerable student groups, the stream is not only often limited in how it can be spent, but is also shared among students with widely varying needs. This has historically led to insufficient funding for students who require much greater support, according to the Learning Policy Institute.

    Lack of targeted funding for vulnerable student groups, such as students experiencing homelessness, fails to address the specific types of support that students may need in order to keep attending school, Duffield added.

    “Who’s doing the outreach and awareness? Who’s going knocking on the doors of motels? Who’s going to shelters?” she asked, listing a multitude of tasks that homeless liaisons, funded in part with federal dollars, take care of.

    Students experiencing homelessness are one student group with a specific federal policy outlining supports that schools are required to offer. In their case, it’s the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act.

    Advocates are raising questions about whether the proposed funding changes could impact other federal policies.

    “Will the requirement go away if the funding goes away? That is where the ambiguity of what the information that’s been shared so far is: Will there be changes in law that accompany changes in budget?” Manwaring said.

    How higher education is faring

    California college leaders said the proposed changes and cuts to federal financial aid programs, including TRIO programs, the Pell Grant, and federal work-study, would make it more difficult for students to enroll and complete their degrees.

    TRIO programs — such as Upward Bound, Veterans Upward Bound, and McNair Post-Baccalaureate Achievement — aim to help disadvantaged students enroll in and complete college. Its funding, over $1 billion across 10 programs, would be fully eliminated.

    In project year 2024-25, TRIO funded almost 450 projects in California, according to an EdSource analysis of grant award data for all eight TRIO program types published by the U.S. Department of Education. Together, projects in California received about $150 million to engage more than 100,000 student participants and train 556 staff members.

    The White House proposal would also reduce the maximum Pell Grant by 23% — nearly $1,700 — from $7,395 to $5,710. The administration defends the proposed cut, saying that not reducing the maximum amount “would put the program in an untenable financial position,” and contends that the maximum award will still cover the average full amount of in-state tuition and fees for community college students. The budget summary says that overall funding levels have not kept up with broader eligibility requirements approved by former President Joe Biden.

    The proposed cut to the Pell maximum grant is the first in more than 30 years and certainly the largest by far in the more than 50 years of the program’s existence, according to federal records. Very modest reductions to the maximum award were made in 1993 and in the early 1980s.

    Additional changes imposed in the House’s reconciliation bill would strip any Pell Grant eligibility from many part-time students and change the number of minimum credits students need to get the maximum award from 12 credits per term to 15.

    Such a large reduction in the maximum grant would be “troubling” and, together with the possible eligibility changes, would mostly impact low-income students and shut off more of them to the financial aid they need to attend college, said Allie Bidwell Arcese, senior director of strategic communications and engagement for the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators.

    In California, 24% of community college students, 35% of University of California undergraduates and about 42% of California State University students receive a Pell Grant, which is available to low-income students.

    The White House proposal would also reduce funding for Federal Work-Study by $980 million and eliminate the Federal Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grant. Those changes would be less impactful to California students but still significant. To employ students in work-study jobs, colleges would have to put up 75% of their pay; currently, they contribute only 25%. With both the CSU and UC already facing cuts in federal and state funding for next year, it’s unclear whether they could afford such an increase in matching money to sustain work study at current levels.

    More than 41,000 students in California participated in the Federal Work-Study program in the 2022-23 award year, according to an EdSource analysis of Federal Student Aid data. Their earnings include almost $95 million in federal compensation.

    In addition, more than 252,000 California students received Federal Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grants. The federal share of those awards was about $131 million.

    In the San Diego Community College District, more than 12,000 students receive a Pell Grant. The proposals put forth in the White House’s budget request and the House reconciliation bill would have devastating impacts on the district’s students, said Chancellor Gregory Smith.

    Roughly 4,000 students in the district get the maximum award and would lose out on about more than $1,500 annually. An additional 4,500 students take fewer than eight credits and could forgo their Pell Grants entirely under the House’s bill. Smith said he expects many of those students will end up dropping out if the proposed changes are enacted.

    “The likelihood of many of them being able to complete college would be very low,” he said. “So many of our students are in difficult financial circumstances. One bad break — car breaks down — or a medical emergency — will likely force them to have to stop their education.”

    At CSU, where more than $1 billion in Pell Grants was distributed to more than 200,000 students in 2023-24, officials estimate that 60% of Pell recipients would see their awards reduced or eliminated altogether under the White House proposal.

    A number of CSU students also stand to lose out if the cuts to the opportunity grants and work-study are enacted. Almost 40,000 students were awarded the opportunity grants, and 6,300 participated in Federal Work-Study in 2023-24.

    At UC, students and officials in recent years have advocated for the maximum Pell Grant to be doubled, arguing that the current ceiling for the award doesn’t meet student needs and forces many to take out loans. UC was thus “deeply concerned” about the White House proposal, said UC spokesperson Omar Rodriguez, particularly as the system also deals with disruptions to federal research funding.





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  • Federal grant cuts hit California universities hard, putting research in limbo

    Federal grant cuts hit California universities hard, putting research in limbo


    Noé C. Crespo, a professor of Health Promotion & Behavioral Science, poses outside the School of Public Health at San Diego State University.

    EdSource

    Noé Crespo, a professor of public health at San Diego State University, was on the verge of cracking a question he had spent years trying to answer. 

    In the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, Crespo and his colleagues applied for a grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to study ways to boost vaccination rates among Latinos. They designed a community outreach plan, paid a team to implement it, and collected results. All that remained this spring was to analyze their hard-earned data.  

    But in April, Crespo’s grant was terminated by the Trump administration as part of a controversial pullback on research funding in both the sciences and humanities nationwide.

    Crespo has all the data he could want, but no money to pay a statistician to analyze it. 

    “We invest so much — time, energy, resources — to implement a project that is meant to help the public,” he said, “and so it does feel discouraging that we’re put in a position where we can’t continue that work.”

    Around the country this spring, many faculty members who rely on federal funding for research have received similarly abrupt termination notices. The moment is particularly poignant for Crespo’s institution, San Diego State, which this year accomplished the long-awaited goal of joining a prestigious club of top-tier research universities known as R1s. 

    While a dip in federal support is unlikely to jeopardize that coveted recognition, it has disrupted research at San Diego State into subjects like mental health care and HIV/AIDS. The university’s research and development spending hit $158 million in the year ending June 2023, much of it fueled by federal dollars. 

    The cancellations are part of efforts under President Donald Trump to cut federal funding and align it more closely with the president’s political objectives. The White House has targeted grants related to a wide range of areas, from climate change to gender and sexuality. Critically for Crespo, Trump’s NIH has also axed research related to racial inequities in health, vaccine hesitancy and Covid.

    California’s colleges and universities have much at stake when it comes to federal research funding. The state’s higher education institutions notched $7.2 billion in federal research and development (R&D) spending in 2023, according to the Higher Education Research and Development (HERD) Survey. 

    That figure includes more than $250 million spent at California State University campuses like San Diego State and more than $4.6 billion across the University of California system. The state’s private universities, including Stanford University and the University of Southern California, spent a combined $2.3 billion in federal R&D.

    Fear of ‘losing a whole generation of scientists’

    Putting an exact figure on grant cancellations nationwide has proven elusive, in part because the federal spending databases that track such spending sometimes contradict each other. 

    One recent analysis by researchers at Harvard, Yale and associated teaching hospitals estimated that $1.8 billion in NIH grants were terminated in a one-month period. Meanwhile, as selected grants get reinstated — and as attempts to block terminations advance through the courts — the number of canceled grants has become a moving target. 

    The impact on California could be substantial, even counting terminations at NIH alone. Grant Watch, a project tracking the cancellation of federal scientific research grants since Trump returned to office in 2025, estimates that California researchers have lost $273 million in NIH grants, counting funding that was not paid out because of terminations.

    At San Diego State, Hala Madanat, the university’s vice president for research and innovation, estimates that the university typically receives about 70% of its research funding from the federal government, though that can vary from year to year. The university has so far identified 50 terminated federal grants with about $26 million remaining to be spent, she said, many of them related to climate change, LGBTQ communities and workforce pipeline programs.

    “If we halt doctoral education because there’s no funding for three to four years, you are losing a whole generation of scientists,” Madanat said.

    San Diego State has appealed virtually every grant termination, Madanat said. So far, none have been restored, though two subcontracts were reinstated outside the formal appeal process.

    With appeals still pending, two federal grant recipients reached while reporting this story declined to comment, saying they are worried speaking out could endanger their chance of having funding reinstated. That potential risk is on Crespo’s mind, too.

    “Do I have concerns? Yes,” he said. “At the same time, I was trained in public health to speak the truth, and that’s what scientists do.”

    A poster on the campus of San Diego State University advertises the university’s new status as an R1 research institution.
    EdSource

    A ‘soul-crushing’ loss of federal funding

    As Trump took office in January, San Diego State was capping off an ambitious campaign to become an R1, a distinction requiring it to spend at least $50 million on R&D and confer at least 70 doctoral research degrees. 

    The university saw research funding rise 64% in just three years. It conferred 123 doctoral degrees in 2022-23. And to cement its R1 bona fides, it plans to invest in a multiuse “innovation district” with technology and research facilities.

    But funding for some of the university’s vaunted research projects is starting to vanish as the White House slashes selected grants and contracts.

    In 2023, for example, the university celebrated the establishment of the SDSU Center for Community Energy and Environmental Justice. Equipped with $10 million in federal funding from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), San Diego State would guide historically underserved communities to apply for grants that could help them weather environmental threats like droughts and pollution. 

    “What we were doing was sort of the ‘teaching to fish,’” said Rebecca Lewison, a professor of biology at San Diego State who led the center, one of more than a dozen EPA Thriving Communities Technical Assistance Centers nationwide.

    But then came some bad news. In February, EPA terminated the center’s funding, citing an obligation to ensure its grants do not support diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. The center is likely to lose an estimated $8 million it left unspent.

    The funding reversal came as the White House has moved to roll back environmental justice-related initiatives. An EPA spokesperson said in an email that the San Diego State grant had given “radical [non-governmental organizations] millions of hard-earned taxpayer dollars” and that those groups were “forcing their agenda of wasteful DEI programs and ‘environmental justice’ preferencing on the EPA’s core mission of protecting human health and the environment.”

    For Lewison, the loss of federal support for San Diego State’s center has been “soul-crushing.” She said such technical assistance is “really a bipartisan initiative” and that the EPA statement appears to misunderstand the nature of the center’s work.

    “I appreciate that we were in the environmental justice sort of program umbrella and that that’s become a word that is associated with something negative,” Lewison said. “But honestly, ‘Thriving Communities’ is really what it sounds like: it’s wanting communities all over to thrive.”

    Lewison is now exploring options to keep the center alive. San Diego State has set aside $1 million to sunset certain projects, Madanat said, and is also turning to private philanthropy. 

    ‘I would love to know that answer’

    At the time that Crespo filed a project summary for his vaccine grant, Covid had taken a dire toll on Latinos in California. UCLA researchers would later confirm that Latinos had experienced a disproportionate rate of Covid cases and deaths during the pandemic’s first year.

    “If there’s a wildfire in a particular part of town, we would want to send the firefighters over there to put out that fire,” Crespo said. “And that’s what we do also in public health and in research: we identify where there are problems, and in some cases, there are subgroups of people that are disproportionately affected.”

    NIH awarded Crespo and his colleagues a grant of $1.8 million in 2022, as highly transmissible subvariants of the Covid virus circulated. The team finally could put in motion the study they had planned at 10 San Diego-area health clinics.

    There was still $314,690 remaining in the grant at the time it was canceled, according to data on grant terminations published by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Without the ability to use those funds, the team will have to seek other ways to pay collaborators with data analysis expertise. 

    In the meantime, Crespo is left wondering: What worked and what didn’t?

    “The data are there,” he said, “so I would love to know that answer.” 





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  • Governor must OK expanded Cal Grant access for struggling students

    Governor must OK expanded Cal Grant access for struggling students


    The University of California, Riverside sign on University Avenue.

    Credit: UC Riverside / Stan Lim

    What does a Cal Grant signify for students embarking on their college journeys? For individuals like me, it embodies an unparalleled opportunity to traverse the realms of academia and pursue aspirations that once seemed shrouded in uncertainty due to the lack of financial resources. 

    Raised in a first-generation household where the prospect of higher education was esteemed but financially not realistic, attending college initially appeared impossible for me. When my parents discussed college, they explained that despite their desire for me to focus solely on my studies, it wasn’t financially feasible. My parents immigrated when they were 16 years old from a small Zapotec town in Oaxaca, Mexico. My dad works as a fry cook and my mom cleans houses; yet even with their long hours, they struggle to cover their own bills. They could only contribute about $20 every two weeks toward my education. 

    Qualifying for a Cal Grant made college feel like a possibility.

    Unfortunately, we know my situation is not unique. In my work in the financial aid office, where I field countless calls about Cal Grant eligibility, I have heard many students with similar predicaments voice their challenges. Many callers are desperate for assistance with steep tuition fees, housing fees and basic expenses such as food. Some students, even though their parents’ income surpasses the threshold to receive financial assistance, still struggle to afford tuition and rent and must work full time, which often results in missed classes and lower grades. There were numerous occasions where, after I had outlined the annual costs for a student, they opted to withdraw from the university due to the overwhelming expenses.

    But there is a beacon of hope for countless aspiring scholars who have long grappled with financial barriers: the Cal Grant Equity Framework, California’s commitment to reforming the Cal Grant to expand access to higher education. Approved in 2022, the framework is a set of strategies to promote equal access to grants for all eligible students, regardless of background or socioeconomic status. It does so by making it easier for students and families to understand what aid they’re eligible for, reducing eligibility barriers, aiming to cover the total cost of college, and more.

    But making this happen requires a dedicated push by California’s policymakers to fulfill their promise and fund the framework, communicate to students and families about this opportunity, and monitor its long-term effects.

    On May 30, the Legislature included funding in the budget plan to phase in implementation of the Cal Grant Equity Framework — and thereby begin comprehensive Cal Grant reform. The Legislature’s proposal would restructure and streamline the Cal Grant program, aligning eligibility with federal standards; include a cost-of-living adjustment for the new Cal Grant 2 award that would go to community college students, and remove several barriers to access the new Cal Grant 2 and Cal Grant 4 (four-year college) award. The current 2.0 grade point average (GPA) requirement for community college students would still be in effect, but will be phased out over a four-year period. The current Students With Dependent Children grant would start at $3,000 for these newly eligible students, climbing up to $6,000 over the same four-year period as the GPA phase-out. All current Cal Grant and Students With Dependent Children recipients would see no reduction to their financial aid as they will all be grandfathered in during the Cal Grant reform phase-in period. Taken together, this proposal presents a low-cost option to begin the implementation of Cal Grant reform and expands crucial financial aid to students who need it. 

    By keeping Cal Grant reform in the final state budget this year, California is on a path to opening the doors of opportunity for an additional 137,000 students once fully implemented, further extending the transformative power of higher education to communities that have historically been marginalized. Among these beneficiaries, 11,000 Black students and 95,000 Latino students stand poised to embark on their academic journeys, armed with the tools and resources necessary to thrive in an ever-evolving world.

    These reforms come at a critical juncture when California students’ basic needs insecurity has reached alarming levels. While Cal Grants provide substantial assistance, it’s imperative to recognize that covering tuition alone falls short of addressing the needs of many students, who often struggle to secure housing and may lack sufficient access to food. Our universities also have a role to play by leveraging their institutional aid to cover non-tuition costs.

    Embracing the principles outlined in the framework, California is taking steps toward realizing the state’s vision of an educational system that is accessible and equitable for all. By actively addressing systemic inequities and providing robust support for underserved communities, California is paving the way for a brighter, more inclusive future in which the transformative power of education is fully harnessed.

    The Legislature has now made clear their commitment to putting a down payment on Cal Grant reform in the 2024-25 state budget and the final decision is in the hands of Gov. Gavin Newsom.

    Governor, we are counting on you to approve the Legislature’s path forward for Cal Grant reform and the futures of thousands of students.

    •••

    Carmen Abigail Juan Reyes is a 3rd-year Political Science, Law and Society major at the University of California, Riverside and the UC Student Association’s Fund the UC Vice Chair for the 2023-2024 academic year.

    The opinions expressed in this commentary represent those of the author. EdSource welcomes commentaries representing diverse points of view. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.





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  • Grant rollout fiasco: CDE announces $470 million in Golden State Pathways awards for a third time

    Grant rollout fiasco: CDE announces $470 million in Golden State Pathways awards for a third time


    Students in a Linked Learning Engineering Pathway.

    Photo: Linked Learning Alliance

    This story has been updated to include the news that the California Department of Education announced the awards for a third time.

    Will the third time be a charm?

    The California Department of Education announced the recipients of $470 million in grants for the Golden State Pathways Program, for a third time on Friday.

    The ambitious effort is aimed at high schools creating career pathways in fields such as STEM, education and health care, but it has faced a troubled rollout.

    CDE first announced the grant awards in May and then pulled them back in July. The announcement that the grants were revoked once again came on Oct. 1.

    CDE said the agency temporarily removed the September grants results after school districts “questioned the funding results,” according to a statement from CDE spokesperson Scott Roark. This decision was made to “ensure the integrity of the grant distribution process, so that all [Local Educational Agencies] receive their allocated funds based on correct and verified data.”

    Advocates call the Golden State Pathways an important investment to improve the economic mobility for the next generation of Californians. But they are frustrated that more than two years after the legislature approved the program, money has not begun to roll out.

    “To our knowledge, the CDE hasn’t been forthcoming about why they’ve recalled these latest results, nor why we’re seeing yet another delay, which we find alarming,” said Denise Luna, the higher ed policy director for EdTrust-West. “What we need to see as soon as possible is grant award information that the CDE can stand by and for those monies to flow to districts immediately.”

    The advocacy group was one of the signatories of a September letter calling on state leaders to release the promised funds by November.

    The Golden State Pathways Program was approved by the legislature in 2022. The application called for grant proposals for programs that would begin in April. But the CDE didn’t announce the grant results until May 31. In July, CDE announced it was recalling and reviewing those grants.

    CDE has offered no explanations about what caused the problems that led to the recall of the May grant results or those results announced Sept. 20.

    After the July recall, administrators told EdSource that there were some clear red flags: some school districts had been awarded up to three times the amount of funding that they had applied for. Schools were counting on that money for this school year. 

    Roark acknowledged that this delay is “frustrating” but stated that the reevaluation was done to “ensure the integrity of the grant distribution process.” 

    “The review of these results is a top priority for CDE as we work to expedite the process and deliver final outcomes as quickly as possible,” he wrote, in a statement.

    Tulare County Superintendent of Schools Tim Hire, who is heading the lead agency for the state, said that he is not sure what kind of technical issues the CDE is facing in rolling out these grants. However, he has seen the CDE take additional steps to ensure the grants are rolled out more smoothly, such as bringing on Erika Torres, deputy superintendent of strategy, policy and special projects.

    “I think there’s been some movement and some effort by the CDE to improve the process,” he said.

    Right now, everyone is in a “holding pattern,” said Hire, but these regional agencies are doing everything they can to prepare for the grants to be disbursed — and ultimately help students to have unique experiences and opportunities that prepare them for fulfilling careers.

    “We’re continuing to plan and try to do everything we can to prepare the regional leads,” he said, “so that when the allocations come — and everyone agrees that they’re appropriate and accurate — they can fast-track the work of the districts.”





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  • West Contra Costa Unified loses big chunk of federal grant to support students’ mental health

    West Contra Costa Unified loses big chunk of federal grant to support students’ mental health


    West Contra Costa Unified School District administration building.

    Credit: Louis Freedberg / EdSource

    TOP TAKEAWAYS
    • West Contra Costa Unified anticipates it will receive only about $600,000 of $4.2 million it was awarded last year. 
    • The cut is part of a big push by the Trump administration to roll back or eliminate funding to support student mental health in schools across the nation. 
    • The district was one of only three school districts in California to be awarded grants from the Mental Health Professional Services program.

    The West Contra Costa Unified School District is the latest school district in California to feel the direct impact of the Trump Administration’s elimination of a range of grant programs approved by the U.S. Department of Education during the Biden administration.

    At its meeting on Wednesday night, Interim Superintendent Kim Moses told board members, who were caught unawares by the news, that she had received a letter the previous day from the department of education indicating that the five-year, $4.2 million grant awarded last fall will be cut to one year.

    The letter stated that the grant was no longer “aligned with the current goals of the administration,” she said.

    As a result of the cut, the district anticipates it will only receive about $600,000 of the funds it was expecting, all of which must be spent between August and December of this year.

    Board president Leslie Reckler summarized her reaction in two words: “Total bummer.”

    The district was one of three in California to receive a five-year grant last fall. They were among 46 grants awarded last year under the Mental Health Services Professional Grant program begun by the Biden Administration.

    The grant was supposed to enable the San Francisco Bay Area district to address the mental health needs of its students by placing graduate student counseling interns in its schools, in collaboration with San Jose State University and St. Mary’s College in Oakland.

    The goal of the program, as described in the Federal Register, is “to support and demonstrate innovative partnerships to train school-based mental health services providers.”

    Interim Superintendent of West Contra Costa Unified, Kim Moses
    Caption: Courtesy West Contra Costa Unified

    Moses said she was taken aback by the news of the drastic reduction.  “Of all the things that I am worrying about being reduced or taken away, I didn’t have this grant in mind,” she said in an interview after the meeting. “The grant is to build our workforce (of mental health workers). How could building our workforce and supporting students with their mental health needs be against what the administration stands for?”

    School board member Demetrio Gonzalez-Hoy described the funding cut as “atrocious.”  “This is just another way they (the Trump administration) are going to start hurting our kids, our staff, our school district, because of what we stand for, because of what we look like.”

    The drastic grant cutback comes as a blow to the district, which has made significant progress over the past year in cutting major budget deficits and averting the prospect of a state takeover.  Especially since the pandemic, educators have realized that addressing the mental health needs of students is essential to their ultimate academic success.  A particular challenge has been to boost the number of school mental health professionals, especially those reflecting the backgrounds of students.

    The reduction appears to be part of an aggressive drive by the administration to eliminate mental health programs serving schools. On the same day West Contra Costa heard about its grant reduction,  the Associated Press reported that the U.S. Department of Education is moving to terminate $1 billion in mental health grants to schools, signed into law by President Biden after the school shooting massacre in Uvalde, Texas in 2022.

    The district applied for the funds in the spring of 2024 and was awarded them in the fall. It had been working on signing a Memorandum of Understanding to begin implementing the program this fall.

    The funds were designated to be spent in “high-need” school districts like West Contra Costa Unified, where nearly two-thirds of its almost 30,000 students qualify for free and reduced-price meals.

    Program probably targeted because of emphasis on diversity

    What almost certainly caught the Trump administration’s eye was the emphasis on diversity in the grant application guidelines, a term the current government is using as a rationale to cut federal funds to education institutions at all levels. 

    One of the goals of the program, according to the guidelines, is to “increase the number and diversity of high-quality, trained providers available to address the shortages of mental health services professionals in schools served by high-need districts.”

    The mental health professionals serving students in those districts, according to the guidelines, “should reflect the communities, identities, races, ethnicities, abilities, and cultures of the students in the high-need districts, including underserved students.”

    “We considered appealing, but the reality is that they just erased this whole grant, and everybody is in the same boat,” interim Supt. Moses said. “This isn’t a case of  ‘we picked on you because you’re doing something wrong, we picked on you because the grant is going away.’”

    Looking forward, board member Gonzalez-Hoy said, “We must just continue to reassure our students that even if we have less resources, we are here to support and protect them, and we will give them what we can with what we have.”  

    Other districts that received grants under the program are Trinity Alps Unified and the Wheatland Union High School District, both in Northern California.  Also receiving grants are the Marin County Office of Education, Cal State East Bay and the University of Redlands, as well as two charter schools, Entrepreneur High School in San Bernardino and Academia Avance in Los Angeles.





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