Nick began his career with Nottingham Trent University in the UK working in international student recruitment, before going on to a wide range of leadership and consultancy roles in the private sector. He joined The PIE in 2021 and is a key commentator on the current trends in the global higher education industry. He curates content for our PIE Live conferences and is the co-host of the Tales from the Departure Lounge podcast. Get in touch with Nick at [email protected]
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The U.K.’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) recently warned of a surge in cyberattacks from “insider threats”–student hackers motivated by dares and challenges–leading to breaches across schools. While this trend is unfolding overseas, it underscores a risk that is just as real for the U.S. education sector. Every day, teachers and students here in the U.S. access enormous volumes of sensitive information, creating opportunities for both mistakes and deliberate misuse. These vulnerabilities are further amplified by resource constraints and the growing sophistication of cyberattacks.
When schools fall victim to a cyberattack, the disruption extends far beyond academics. Students may also lose access to meals, safe spaces, and support services that families depend on every day. Cyberattacks are no longer isolated IT problems–they are operational risks that threaten entire communities.
In today’s post-breach world, the challenge is not whether an attack will occur, but when. The risks are real. According to a recent study, desktops and laptops remain the most compromised devices (50 percent), with phishing and Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) cited as top entry points for ransomware. Once inside, most attacks spread laterally across networks to infect other devices. In over half of these cases (52 percent), attackers exploited unpatched systems to move laterally and escalate system privileges.
That reality demands moving beyond traditional perimeter defenses to strategies that contain and minimize damage once a breach occurs. With the school year underway, districts must adopt strategies that proactively manage risk and minimize disruption. This starts with an “assume breach” mindset–accepting that prevention alone is not enough. From there, applying Zero Trust principles, clearly defining the ‘protect surface’ (i.e. identifying what needs protection), and reinforcing strong cyber hygiene become essential next steps. Together, these strategies create layered resilience, ensuring that even if attackers gain entry, their ability to move laterally and cause widespread harm is significantly reduced.
Assume breach: Shifting from prevention to resilience
Even in districts with limited staff and funding, schools can take important steps toward stronger security. The first step is adopting an assume breach mindset, which shifts the focus from preventing every attack to ensuring resilience when one occurs. This approach acknowledges that attackers may already have access to parts of the network and reframes the question from “How do we keep them out?” to “How do we contain them once they are in?” or “How do we minimize the damage once they are in?”
An assume breach mindset emphasizes strengthening internal defenses so that breaches don’t become cyber disasters. It prioritizes safeguarding sensitive data, detecting anomalies quickly, and enabling rapid responses that keep classrooms open even during an active incident.
Zero Trust and seatbelts: Both bracing for the worst
Zero Trust builds directly on the assume breach mindset with its guiding principle of “never trust, always verify.” Unlike traditional security models that rely on perimeter defenses, Zero Trust continuously verifies every user, device, and connection, whether internal or external.
Schools often function as open transit hubs, offering broad internet access to students and staff. In these environments, once malware finds its way in, it can spread quickly if unchecked. Perimeter-only defenses leave too many blind spots and do little to stop insider threats. Zero Trust closes those gaps by treating every request as potentially hostile and requiring ongoing verification at every step.
A fundamental truth of Zero Trust is that cyberattacks will happen. That means building controls that don’t just alert us but act–before and during a network intrusion. The critical step is containment: limiting damage the moment a breach is successful.
Assume breach accepts that a breach will happen, and Zero Trust ensures it doesn’t become a disaster that shuts down operations. Like seatbelts in a car–prevention matters. Strong brakes are essential, but seatbelts and airbags minimize the harm when prevention fails. Zero Trust works the same way, containing threats and limiting damage so that even if an attacker gets in, they can’t turn an incident into a full-scale disaster.
Zero Trust does not require an overnight overhaul. Schools can start by defining their protect surface – the vital data, systems, and operations that matter most. This typically includes Social Security numbers, financial data, and administrative services that keep classrooms functioning. By securing this protect surface first, districts reduce the complexity of Zero Trust implementation, allowing them to focus their limited resources on where they are needed most.
With this approach, Zero Trust policies can be layered gradually across systems, making adoption realistic for districts of any size. Instead of treating it as a massive, one-time overhaul, IT leaders can approach Zero Trust as an ongoing journey–a process of steadily improving security and resilience over time. By tightening access controls, verifying every connection, and isolating threats early, schools can contain incidents before they escalate, all without rebuilding their entire network in one sweep.
Cyber awareness starts in the classroom
Technology alone isn’t enough. Because some insider threats stem from student curiosity or misuse, cyber awareness must start in classrooms. Integrating security education into the learning environment ensures students and staff understand their role in protecting sensitive information. Training should cover phishing awareness, strong password practices, the use of multifactor authentication (MFA), and the importance of keeping systems patched.
Building cyber awareness does not require costly programs. Short, recurring training sessions for students and staff keep security top of mind and help build a culture of vigilance that reduces both accidental and intentional insider threats.
Breaches are inevitable, but disasters are optional
Breaches are inevitable. Disasters are not. The difference lies in preparation. For resource-strapped districts, stronger cybersecurity doesn’t require sweeping overhauls. It requires a shift in mindset:
When schools take this approach, cyberattacks become manageable incidents. Classrooms remain open, students continue learning, and communities continue receiving the vital support schools provide – even in the face of disruption. Like seatbelts in a car, these measures won’t prevent every crash – but they ensure schools can continue to function even when prevention fails.
For a party that it’s become fashionable to criticise for failing to have prepared for power, Labour has in fact set an awful lot of ambitious policy machinery into motion over the last 16 months.
There’s barely been a month go by without some large-scale reform to how the country is governed, organised, and understood as a sum of diverse parts and competing pressures, and we’ve had our work cut out thinking through the implications of each for the higher education sector: from devolution to industrial strategy, from health reform to an explicit tying together of skills and migration (which has barely got started yet), from a new communities strategy to belatedly moving skills policy to the Department for Work and Pensions.
Whatever your views on the merits and mechanics of these, and the many other initiatives that different departments have launched, they are all downright interesting – and pose a plethora of questions for how higher education fits in and demonstrates value.
But all need time. The overall ambitions of devolution are still on their starting blocks as councils pitch their ideas for new geographies; the industrial strategy was explicitly badged as bearing fruit in 2035; the NHS workforce plan that should really have been alongside the 10-year health plan has been delayed to the spring – and so on and so on. No-one involved in pulling together all these long-term reforms did so under the assumption that all the pieces would be in place within one parliamentary term.
Yet here we now are, with the commentariat consensus being that both Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves are toast, and public sentiment pointing emphatically in that direction as well – though this is not to say the party cannot regain momentum under a new leader. The sector is already asking questions about how to prepare for a Reform government (as discussed in the most recent instalment of our new HE Influence newsletter, I should mention).
The post-16 white paper presented a somewhat upbeat vision of what the government would like higher education’s role to feel like across the country, but was weaker on any kind of immediate reform, proposing instead that traditionally glacial changes to research funding, a piece-by-piece strengthening of the Office for Students’ remit, and putting FE, HE and business in the same room would do much of the heavy lifting, given time and goodwill.
All this feels like a recipe for the sector to retreat to more comfortable home territory over the next few years, fighting battles over the international student levy, the size of teaching grants, and the shape of the REF, and gradually giving up on pushing for a central role in the government’s overall vision for the country, given the increasing probability that dreams like a planned and unswerving industrial strategy will all be swept away in 2029.
Quite what’s to be done about all this is a question for another day – with the Budget looming on Wednesday, and admittedly still three and a half years in office remaining for Labour, the other thing that’s worth reflecting on is quite how much the choices the Chancellor makes around tax, public spending, debt, and general macroeconomics will determine the success – or otherwise – of higher education institutions in England over the next few years. These big tickets items all impact the sector deeply, however much the temptation might be to throw one’s hands up in the air, snipe about a “tax” on overseas recruitment, and start looking at what opposition parties can be convinced of.
There’s a pretty strong case to be made for the most consequential policy decision for universities since Labour came to power being the decision to hike employer national insurance contributions in last autumn’s budget. Clearly it has cost universities a small fortune, and the move also sucked up a sizeable slice of the government’s various funding “boosts” for schools and FE colleges – and the NHS and elsewhere – leaving less putative generosity to go around.
But perhaps most importantly of all, the ENICs rise has decimated the labour market for young people – in the court of public opinion at least – by making new hires and part-time workers more expensive, all while AI is supposedly making them obsolete.
The result is that university graduates – and the institutions ever more judged on those graduates’ success – are seen to be in a right old state. The Guardian was the latest to take a run at this last week, with tales of qualified grads banging their heads against the job application wall, accompanied by analysis from the paper demonstrating that almost half of all jobs lost since Labour came to power were among the under-25s. Down in the small print we see that this is driven almost entirely via reduced employment of 16- and 17-year-olds, but the vibes aren’t good, even if less hyperbolic analysis from the likes of the Institute of Student Employers and Prospects Luminate paints merely a concerning, rather than cataclysmic, picture.
The sad fact is that, longer term, this deluge of negative publicity about the value of a degree – alongside a necessary tailing off of the supposed “graduate premium” as a viable sector talking point as the minimum wage heads ever up – will inevitably move from being fodder for anti-HE journalists to actually driving changes in young people’s decision-making (even if a tight jobs market in the short-term often pushes graduates back towards postgraduate study) and scar the sector’s ability to make its case for its value.
The result is that keeping a watchful eye on Labour’s economic moves around the costs associated with employment – both on Wednesday and beyond – has become a matter of some importance for higher education. Further increases in the national living wage over the next few years, lower-profile changes to business taxation, and even wildcards like any surprise revenue-raising changes to the growth and skills levy, all hold the possibility of making this problem worse. All while leading to higher costs for universities and making it harder for students to work alongside their studies, despite this being ever more necessary.
Rachel Reeves finally taking the plunge with an income tax rise, as a good proportion of the Labour backbenches were calling for, seems to have definitively fallen off the table for the Budget – with a handful of consequences worth noting for the sector.
First, it will almost certainly mean that future spring and autumn statements will be equally fraught, as the Treasury fails to leave clear blue water between its spending plans and its spending rules. By not maintaining a sensible “headroom”, public finances will remain permanently at the mercy of external shocks and OBR downgrades, and we’ll probably be back here in less than six months’ time wondering what levers will need to be pulled. At least at some point in the Parliament, said levers will end up being haircuts to departmental budgets rather than new taxes or further borrowing.
Following on from this, the use of a basket of smaller revenue-raising measures to partially fill the gap left by not raising income tax increases the likelihood that this shortfall gets filled by employment-related measures – that is, all the issues we’ve been over above, which have serious consequences for universities as large employers who are not quite in the public sector (as may be the case this week if rumoured changes to salary sacrifice rules go ahead).
And the other effect that an income tax rise would have achieved, which the “smorgasbord” approach will not to the same extent, is bringing down inflation.
Inflation is arguably the most serious financial threat that higher education institutions face. Even if many within the sector, both in internal conversations and public pronouncements, are often quite happy to let audiences believe that measures like the dependants ban are what’s most responsible for blowing a hole in HE finances, the fundamentals weren’t sound even before the post-pandemic recruitment glut.
While tuition fees and maintenance loans in England (and, at least for one year, Wales) are now linked to inflation, or more precisely to inflation forecasts – Office for Budget Responsibility predictions on Wednesday will set the levels for 2026–27 – the idea of any measures to compensate for all the shortfalls baked in over several years of rocketing price rises appears to have been permanently nixed.
And it’s worth bearing in mind that the index link does not mean that either student maintenance or teaching funding will actually keep pace with inflation in the coming years. For one thing, OBR forecasts have repeatedly underestimated inflation, and there’s no corrective mechanism in the system. For student maintenance, even if predictions come true, other features of the system mean that the average, rather than maximum, maintenance loan continues to be worth less each year.
For teaching funding, it’s important to stress that Labour has in no way committed to keeping the overall package inflation-proofed. While tuition fees are the major part here, other elements such as high-cost subject funding took a real-terms tumble this year, and no-one is predicting that the reforming the Strategic Priorities Grant means upward movement on how much it’s worth – the reverse is far likelier, given DfE’s commitments elsewhere.
University staff have had a decade or more of below inflation pay rises, and there doesn’t seem any serious capacity or appetite among higher education employers to do fundamental work here – the year-on-year squabbles will continue, and high levels of inflation over the coming years will eat further into staff remuneration and the attractiveness of higher education careers.
And inflation-linked rises in tuition fees will also change applicant behaviour. One thing we’ll start getting a sense of on Wednesday will be the likelihood of when fees will cross the (supposedly) psychologically important barrier of £10,000. Back in March, the OBR was expecting RPIX to run at 2.7 per cent in Q1 2027, and 2.8 per cent in Q1 2028, which would lead to tuition fee caps of around £9,790 in 2026–27 and around £10,065 in 2027–28. We won’t know for certain until autumn 2026, but the picture will start to come into focus.
Now the significance of fees being materially above, rather than roughly equal to, £10k is perhaps overstated. But DfE isn’t really sure – it has reportedly commissioned modelling on how students will respond to rises, but the results aren’t due until the spring.
All in all, there’s a whole host of reasons why Budget decisions and their effect on inflation, as well as the OBR forecasts themselves, have become heavily intertwined with the future behaviour and wellbeing of higher education staff and students.
Perhaps the most overlooked publication of the last few years for really understanding how the Treasury thinks about higher education is the Institute for Fiscal Studies analysis of how the interplay between interest rates and Treasury gilts affect the cost of student loans.
In a nutshell, it costs far more for the government to borrow than it used to (the 15-year gilt yield has continued to rise since the IFS did its sums in January 2024), and so it’s very reluctant to allow for too much expansion in the student loan book – it’s a far cry from when the broad strokes of student finance were put in place by the coalition government, and this was basically thought of as free money.
This goes a long way to explain why the government is so reticent to use the student loan book in any radical way – and thus we see things like a real-terms freeze in tuition fees being presented as if it’s an almost saint-like act of generosity to the sector, or the foundering of DfE’s tepid-but-probably-genuine desire to properly boost maintenance loans.
We’re waiting for the specifics (hopefully) of maintenance grant implementation on Wednesday, but the cost of government borrowing feels like it has played a role in the last year of behind-the-scenes policy deliberations here. In the run-up to last autumn’s Budget, there was plenty of speculation, and government nods to the press, about the potential for movement on the overall maintenance package and grants in particular. Clearly the battle with the Treasury was lost, and DfE was told to come up with an alternate source of funding – hence the international student levy. What we don’t yet know is to what extent grants will replace, rather than supplement, loans – if what we see is a switch from one to the other, the expense to the public purse of borrowing is a likely primary driver, especially given the hidden costs associated with annual tuition fee rises. While the sector isn’t really getting any more money in real terms, this isn’t to say that the government’s finances are not being stretched by indexing fees.
What this all means is that, unfortunately, the sector needs to keep an eye on the gilts market. The supposed flip-flop on raising income tax has already done some damage here, and the government repeatedly needing to borrow more than it expected to is another issue. There’s a wider question of perceived government competence around balancing the books that drives behaviour too – confidence is in short supply as it is, and it will get worse if the Starmer era implodes. This all equates to longer-term uncertainty about the use of the student loan book.
Even if you’ve given up on the Labour government in its current form, and are pinning hopes on a future government being more receptive to calls for support and investment in both universities and students, Number 10 and the current Treasury team are still setting the economic weather. While much of the sector will be waiting for the moment Rachel Reeves stops speaking on Wednesday to see the fee levy policy paper – assuming there is one, and the can doesn’t get kicked – there are many reasons to think the wider public finances are a much more important determinant of the future of higher education. And it’s one that isn’t painting a particularly cheery picture at the moment.
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Virtual reality field trips now enable students to explore the Great Wall of China, the International Space Station, and ancient Rome without leaving the classroom. Gamified online learning platforms can turn lessons into interactive challenges that boost engagement and motivation. Generative AI tutors are providing real-time feedback on writing and math assignments, helping students sharpen their skills with personalized support in minutes.
Education technology is accelerating at a rapid pace–and teachers are eager to bring these digital tools to the classroom. But with pandemic relief funds running out, districts are having to make tougher decisions around what edtech they can afford, which vendors will offer the greatest value, and, crucially, which tools come with robust cybersecurity protections.
Although educators are excited to innovate, school leaders must weigh every new app or online platform against cybersecurity risks and the responsibility of protecting student data. Unfortunately, those risks remain very real: 6 in 10 K-12 schools were targeted by ransomware in 2024.
Cybersecurity is harder for some districts than others
The reality is that school districts widely vary when it comes to their internal resources, cybersecurity expertise, and digital maturity.
A massive urban system may have a dedicated legal department, CISO, and rigid procurement processes. In a small rural district, the IT lead might also coach soccer or direct the school play.
These discrepancies leave wide gaps that can be exploited by security threats. Districts are often improvising vetting processes that vary wildly in rigor, and even the best-prepared system struggles to know what “good enough” looks like as technology tools rapidly accelerate and threats evolve just as fast.
Whether it’s apps for math enrichment, platforms for grading, or new generative AI tools that promise differentiated learning at scale, educators are using more technology than ever. And while these digital tools are bringing immense benefits to the classroom, they also bring more threat exposure. Every new tool is another addition to the attack surface, and most school districts are struggling to keep up.
Districts are now facing these critical challenges with even fewer resources. With the U.S. Department of Education closing its Office of EdTech, schools have lost a vital guidepost for evaluating technology tools safely. That means less clarity and support, even as the influx of new tech tools is at an all-time high.
But innovation and protection don’t have to be in conflict. Schools can move forward with digital tools while still making smart, secure choices. Their decision-making can be supported by some simple best practices to help guide the way.
5 green flags for evaluating technology tools
New School Safety Resources
With so many tools entering classrooms, knowing how to assess their safety and reliability is essential. But what does safe and trustworthy edtech actually look like?
You don’t need legal credentials or a cybersecurity certification to answer that question. You simply need to know what to look for–and what questions to ask. Here are five green flags that can guide your decisions and boost confidence in the tools you bring into your classrooms.
A strong privacy policy should be more than a formality; it should serve as a clear window into how a tool handles data. The best ones lay out exactly what information is collected, why it’s needed, how it’s used, and who it’s shared with, in plain, straightforward language.
You shouldn’t need legal training to make sense of it. Look for policies that avoid vague, catch-all phrases and instead offer specific details, like a list of subprocessors, third-party services involved, or direct contact information for the vendor’s privacy officer. If you can’t quickly understand how student data is being handled, or if the vendor seems evasive when you ask, that’s cause for concern.
Student data is highly personal, extremely sensitive, and must be treated with extra care. Strong vendors explicitly separate student data from educator, administrator, and parent data in their systems, policies, and user experiences.
Ask how student data is accessed internally and what safeguards are in place. Does the vendor have different privacy policies for students versus adults? If they’ve engineered that distinction into their platform, it’s a sign they’ve thought deeply about your responsibilities under FERPA and COPPA.
Trust, but verify. Look for tools that have been independently evaluated through certifications like the Common Sense Privacy Seal, iKeepSafe, or the 1EdTech Trusted App program. These external audits validate that privacy claims and company practices are tested against meaningful standards and backed up by third-party validation.
Alignment with broader security frameworks like NIST Cybersecurity Framework (CSF), ISO 27001, or SOC 2 can add another layer of assurance, especially in states where district policies lean heavily on these benchmarks. These technical frameworks should complement radical transparency. The most trustworthy vendors combine certification with transparency: They’ll show you exactly what they collect, how they store it, and how they protect it. That openness–and a willingness to be held accountable–is the real marker of a privacy-first partner.
Cybersecurity shouldn’t be a one-and-done checklist. It’s a continual practice. Ask vendors how they approach ongoing risks: Do they conduct regular penetration testing? Is a formal incident response plan in place? How are teams trained on phishing threats and secure coding?
If they follow a framework like the NIST CSF, that’s great. But also dig into how they apply it: What’s their track record for patching vulnerabilities or communicating breaches? A real commitment shows up in action, not just alignment.
Trustworthy technology tools collect only what’s essential–and vendors can explain why they need it. If you ask, “Why do you collect this data point?” they should have a direct answer that ties back to functionality, not future marketing.
Look for platforms that commit to never repurposing student data for behavioral ad targeting. Also, ask about deletion protocols: Can data be purged quickly and completely if requested? If not, it’s time to ask why.
Laying the groundwork for a safer school year
Cybersecurity doesn’t require a 10-person IT team or a massive budget. Every district, no matter the size, can take meaningful, manageable steps to reduce risk, establish guardrails, and build trust.
Simple, actionable steps go a long way: Choose tools that are transparent about data use, use trusted frameworks and certifications as guideposts, and make cybersecurity training a regular part of staff development. Even small efforts , like a five-minute refresher on phishing during back-to-school sessions, can have an outsized impact on your district’s overall security posture.
For schools operating without deep resources or internal expertise, this work is especially urgent–and entirely possible. It just requires knowing where to start.
This press release originally appeared online.
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Communities across the nation began the budget process for the 2025-2026 school year after Congress passed the FY25 Continuing Resolution on March 14, 2025. Historically, states receive these funds on July 1, enabling them to allocate resources to local districts at the start of the fiscal year.
Even though these funds were approved by Congress, the Administration froze the distribution on June 30. Since that time, AASA, The School Superintendents Association, has advocated for their release, including organizing hundreds of superintendents to meet with offices on the Hill to share information about its impact, the week of July 7.
On July 16, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) announced that Title IV-B or 21st Century funds (afterschool funds) would be released. AASA’s Executive Director issued a statement about the billions of dollars that remain frozen.
To gather more information about the real-world effects on students across America, AASA conducted a survey with its members.
From July 11th to July 18th, AASA received responses from 628 superintendents in 43 states.
Eighty-five percent of respondents said they have existing contracts paid with federal funds that are currently being withheld, and now have to cover those costs with local dollars.
Respondents shared what will be cut to cover this forced cost shift:
As federal funding is still being withheld, 23 percent of respondents have been forced to make tough choices about how to reallocate funding, and many districts are rapidly approaching similar inflection points.
Notably, 29 percent of districts indicated that they must have access to these funds by August 1 to avoid cutting critical programs and services for students. Twenty-one percent of districts will have to notify parents and educators about the loss of programs and services by August 15.
Without timely disbursement of funding, the risk of disruption to essential educational supports for children grows significantly.
As one superintendent who completed the survey said, “This isn’t a future problem; it’s happening now. Our budget was set with these funds in mind. Their sudden withholding has thrown us into chaos, forcing drastic measures that will negatively impact every student, classroom, and school in our district. We urgently need these funds released to prevent irreparable harm to our educational programs and ensure our students get the quality education they deserve.”
BOSTON — Ignite Reading — a Science of Reading-based virtual tutoring program serving students in 18 states nationwide — today announced its approval by the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) to continue providing 1:1 high-dosage evidence-based literacy tutoring to K-3 students across the commonwealth.
Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey’s administration called on her state to invest heavily in high-dosage tutoring (HDT) earlier this year, earmarking $25 million in her state budget proposal to help accelerate literacy growth, “complementing the more systemic, long-term improvement work” being supported under the administration’s five-year literacy improvement campaign, Literacy Launch.
In its approval process, DESE evaluated Ignite Reading’s services to Massachusetts districts over the past three school years and approved the literacy company to again provide school districts and charter schools with tutoring that is focused on building foundational skills — including phonological awareness, phonics knowledge and decoding skills — to help students become independent fluent readers in the early grades.
Since Ignite Reading first gained DESE approval during the 2022-23 school year:
The Healey-Driscoll Administration recently announced that schools and districts in Massachusetts are invited to apply for high-dosage early literacy tutoring for K-3 students with 1st grade as the state’s top priority.
“When we get kids reading proficiently by the end of 1st grade, we set them up for a lifetime of academic success,” said Ignite Reading CEO Jessica Sliwerski. “Our continued approval by DESE means we can keep delivering the intensive, personalized support that Massachusetts 1st graders need to learn to read on grade level and on time. We are honored to be able to continue to partner with Massachusetts districts to ensure all students can access the tools they need to succeed as readers.”
For more information about Ignite Reading’s Massachusetts partnerships, visit https://info.ignite-reading.com/massachusetts.
About Ignite Reading
Ignite Reading is on a mission to ensure every student can access the tools they need to be a confident, fluent reader by the end of 1st grade. School districts nationwide depend on Ignite Reading’s virtual tutoring program to deliver literacy support at scale for students who need help learning to read. Our highly trained tutors provide students with 1:1 tutoring in foundational literacy skills each school day, helping them go from learning to read to reading to learn.
A recent study by the Center for Research and Reform in Education at Johns Hopkins University found that Ignite Reading students across demographics — including students who are English Learners, Black, Hispanic, and those with Individualized Education Programs (IEPs) — achieve the same outstanding gains of more than 5 months of additional learning during a single school year. For more information about Ignite Reading, visit www.ignite-reading.com.
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Every school in Kentucky’s LaRue County provides free breakfast and lunch to any student who wants it.
It’s been that way for a decade, ever since the federal government launched a program allowing LaRue County Schools, and thousands of other districts nationwide, to skip the paperwork asking how much families earn.
In these communities, lots of kids already receive other kinds of assistance for low-income families. Federal officials saw a way to make the subsidized meals program more efficient: Cover meal costs based on how many children are in similar assistance programs, rather than verify every family’s income.
But LaRue County Schools won’t be able to do that anymore if sweeping changes to social programs proposed by congressional Republicans become law. GOP lawmakers say they want to ensure only eligible families get help and that taxpayer dollars are reserved for the neediest students, so that federal subsidies for school meals remain sustainable. But by one estimate, the Republicans’ plan would affect nearly a quarter of the students in the nation’s public schools.
Research has found that universal free school meals can boost school attendance, increase test scores, and decrease suspensions, likely because it eliminates the stigma students often associate with the free meals. Taking them away from students on a large scale could also have downstream effects on everything from families’ household budgets to local unemployment.
Stephanie Utley, the LaRue County district’s director of child nutrition, said that inevitably, fewer kids would eat school meals, either because their families no longer qualify for free breakfast and lunch or because they cannot produce documents to verify their income.
When fewer kids eat school meals, it’s harder for districts to cover their costs. To save money, Utley would likely swap higher-quality foods for cheaper ones, she said.
Apples and beef from local farms would go. The high school would serve fewer salads — they’d be too labor-intensive to prep. And a popular chicken breast sandwich would become a ground chicken patty.
Utley may have to lay off staff, too, she said, which would hurt the rural community’s economy.
“We’re the biggest restaurant in town,” she said. “It would be a nightmare.”
Republican lawmakers are considering a trio of proposals to help offset tax cuts sought by President Donald Trump that would be “devastating” to children and schools, said Erin Hysom, the senior child nutrition policy analyst for the nonprofit Food Research & Action Center.
One proposal would dramatically increase the share of students who need to be enrolled in aid programs — such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families — for schools to be eligible to serve free meals to all kids through the Community Eligibility Provision.
Right now, schools need to show 25% of students are enrolled in those kinds of assistance programs to participate in community eligibility. The House Republican proposal would raise the share to 60% — higher than the threshold has ever been. That would kick more than 24,000 schools off of community eligibility, and some 12 million students would no longer automatically qualify for free meals, Hysom’s organization estimated.
Essentially, only communities where nearly every child qualifies for free or reduced-price lunch could serve free meals to all kids.
“They’ve really moved the needle to the upper echelon of poverty,” Hysom said. “You couldn’t get any higher than that.”
Another proposal would require all families who don’t automatically qualify for free school meals through programs like SNAP to submit documents to verify their income with their application. That would burden families and schools with time-consuming added paperwork. Schools could end up cutting staff who serve food and work on school menus to hire more people to process applications.
Together, those changes would save $12 billion over 10 years, according to the list of proposals circulated by U.S. Rep. Jodey Arrington, the Republican chair of the House budget committee.
A third proposal would change how families qualify for SNAP and likely make over 1 million students no longer automatically eligible for free school meals. That would increase the paperwork burden even more.
All of that would make it more costly for states with universal free school meals to run their programs, because they rely heavily on federal reimbursement. Some states were already weighing whether they could afford to keep up free meals for all.
These three proposals are part of a process known as budget reconciliation that GOP lawmakers are using to make long-term changes to federal spending and revenue. As of Wednesday, Congress was considering a separate, stopgap budget that would keep funding essentially flat for the Agriculture Department, which pays for the school meal program, through the end of September.
School staff and child nutrition advocates are taking the House’s budget reconciliation proposals seriously. The Trump administration has already cut a $1 billion Agriculture Department program that helped schools buy food from local producers.
If fewer kids have access to free meals at school, more families would likely struggle to afford groceries at home. Many families who don’t qualify for free meals struggle to pay for food. This school year, a family of four qualified for free school meals if they made under $40,560 a year.
When schools eliminated free school meals for all following the pandemic, there was a surge in unpaid school meal debt, an issue school staff say will only intensify if these proposals go through.
Right now, schools typically have to verify the family’s income for 3% of their applications. If schools had to check income for every application, the burden would be enormous, school staff and child nutrition advocates said.
Many families who eke out a living working multiple jobs would have a hard time gathering up all the required documents to show how much they earn. Though children can participate in the school meals program regardless of their immigration status, undocumented parents may be afraid to hand over personal documents when Trump is threatening mass deportations.
“Eligible children are going to fall through the cracks,” Hysom said.
Many schools are already facing financial pressures from higher-than-usual food and labor costs, a 2024 survey of nearly 1,400 school nutrition directors showed. On top of that, schools are navigating new and stricter requirements for how much salt and sugar can be in food served by schools.
Schools have to buy most of their food from American sources, but if Trump puts certain tariffs in place for the long term, that could create new financial constraints.
“Cost is absolutely a concern,” said Diane Pratt-Heavner, a spokesperson for the School Nutrition Association, which represents school nutrition directors and conducted the survey. “When avocados or tomatoes from Mexico become much more expensive, that will cause an increase in demand for domestic produce, and an increase in price, as well.”
Shannon Gleave, the president of the School Nutrition Association, understands the need to make sure the school meal program runs as it should.
In Arizona’s Glendale Elementary School District, where Gleave is the director of food and nutrition, kids can speed through the lunch line because everyone qualifies for free meals. But staff scan student ID badges to make sure each kid only takes one meal, and that children with dietary restrictions get the right food.
Upping the verification requirements a little could work, she said. But verifying 100% of applications “is not an efficient use of time.”
“There is no way my existing staff could do that now,” she said. “You have to figure out a way to be good stewards of resources, but also look at the amount of administrative burden that it’s going to entail.”
This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools. Sign up for their newsletters at ckbe.at/newsletters.
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OKLAHOMA CITY — As state officials anticipate a smaller budget in the next fiscal year, lawmakers on Tuesday appeared doubtful of requests to spend millions on Bibles for public schools and salary increases at the Oklahoma State Department of Education.
The agency’s leader, state Superintendent Ryan Walters, again asked for $3 million to purchase copies of the Bible, the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution to place in every public school classroom. He also requested $2.3 million for a 6% cost-of-living salary bump for Education Department employees, who last saw a pay raise in 2019.
Although his total budget request would increase the agency’s funding by $113 million, Walters hinted at “potential staff cuts” to limit the Education Department’s operational expenses during a meeting Tuesday with the Senate Appropriations Committee.
“I do believe we can save $1.3 million in some of the costs that we’ve been able to absorb through rolling positions together, cutting positions that are duplicated in their services,” Walters said during the meeting.
Members of the influential appropriations committee heard Walters’ budget requests for the 2026 fiscal year. The state is required to pay some of the projected expenses, such as an extra $88.6 million for the rising cost of health insurance for public school employees.
Another $4 million would increase the teacher maternity leave fund, which Walters said is growing in popularity. He also asked for $500,000 to offer firearms training to teachers.
Senators of both parties questioned Walters’ request for $3 million to buy 55,000 copies of the King James Version Bible, which they suggested could be donated to schools or found for free online.
House lawmakers had similar questions during a hearing with Walters last week.
The state superintendent has advocated for more instruction on the Bible to help contextualize American history and the beliefs of the country’s founding fathers. He said he doesn’t intend for schools to preach Christianity to students.
Last year, he ordered all school districts in the state to incorporate the Bible into their lesson plans and proposed new academic standards for social studies that would mandate instruction on biblical stories. His agency already spent under $25,000 on 532 copies of Lee Greenwood’s God Bless the USA Bible, which is informally known as the Trump Bible because it has the president’s endorsement.
Walters’ Bible instruction mandate already faces a legal challenge on church-state separation grounds.
Sen. Brenda Stanley, R-Midwest City, said she never encountered a classroom that didn’t have a Bible available to students during her 43-year career in education.
Sen. Dave Rader, R-Tulsa, encouraged Walters to exhaust all resources for Bible donations before having the Legislature consider spending $3 million.
“We could take the $3 million elsewhere, if somebody is willing to make those available to us at no cost,” Rader said during the hearing.
The Senate committee also appeared dubious of funding a COLA increase for an agency that has lost dozens of employees over the past two years. Walters told the committee the Education Department employed 520 people when he took office in January 2023 and that it now counts 460 employees.
“If you have decreased your (full-time employees), it would appear to me that there are already dollars inside your operating budget to offer salary increases,” Sen. Kristen Thompson, R-Edmond, told Walters during the hearing.
Walters disagreed that staff departures would be enough to fund the increase. A complicating factor is the large number of federally funded salaries at the agency, he said.
The department has considered reducing its staff even further after the state Board of Equalization projected the Legislature will have $119 million less to spend in the 2026 fiscal year, Walters said.
The projection is preliminary, and the Board of Equalization will meet again this month for updated numbers.
“After the last Board of Equalization meeting, we really went in and tried to do a deep dive into can we continue to see cuts, and we believe that we do need to be able to do that,” Walters said.
Legislative leaders are preparing to limit expenses in light of the budget projections, especially as Gov. Kevin Stitt pushes for further tax cuts, flat agency budgets and “eliminating wasteful government spending.”
The governor suggested no funding increases to public schools nor to the state Education Department in a budget proposal he released Monday.
House Speaker Kyle Hilbert, R-Bristow, said Monday that he shares many of the governor’s priorities “as we seek to tighten our belt fiscally this year.” Senate President Pro Tem Lonnie Paxton, R-Tuttle, echoed Stitt’s tax-cut message when he endorsed “improving the lives of Oklahomans by allowing them to keep more of their hard-earned money.”
Oklahoma Voice is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Oklahoma Voice maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Janelle Stecklein for questions: [email protected].
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