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.
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:
Nearly three out of four respondents said they will have to eliminate academic services for students. The programs include targeted literacy and math coaches, before and after school programming, tutoring, credit recovery, CTE and dual enrollment opportunities.
Half of respondents reported they will have to lay off teachers and personnel. These personnel include those who work specifically with English-language learners and special education students, as well as staff who provide targeted reading and math interventions to struggling students.
Half of respondents said they will have to reduce afterschool and extracurricular offerings for students. These programs provide STEM/STEAM opportunities, performing arts and music programs, and AP coursework.
Four out of five respondents indicated they will be forced to reduce or eliminate professional development offerings for educators. These funds are used to build teachers’ expertise such as training in the science of reading, teaching math, and the use of AI in the classroom. They are also used to ensure new teachers have the mentors and coaching they need to be successful.
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.”
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In Kern County, the first rule in counting homeless students is not saying “homeless.”
Instead, school staff use phrases like “struggling with stable housing” or “families in transition.” The approach seems to have worked: More families are sharing their housing status with their children’s schools, which means more students are getting services.
“There’s a lot of stigma attached to the word ‘homeless,’” said Curt Williams, director of homeless and foster youth services for the Kern County Office of Education. “When you remove that word, it all changes.”
Largely as a result of better identification methods, Kern County saw its homeless student population jump 10% last year, to 7,200. Those students received transportation to and from school, free school supplies, tutoring and other services intended to help them stay in school. For the purposes of this data, the definition of homelessness is broader than the state’s point in time count.
The trend is reflected statewide. In the latest state enrollment data released last month, California had 230,443 homeless students — a 9.3% increase from the previous year. Some of the increase is due to the state’s ongoing housing shortage, but most of the increase is because of better identification, advocates and school officials said.
Homeless students face numerous obstacles in school. They have higher rates of discipline and absenteeism, and fare worse academically. Last year, only 16% of homeless students met the state’s math standard, some of the lowest scores of any student group.
“Schools can’t solve homelessness, but they can ensure the students are safe in the classroom and getting the education they need to get out of homelessness,” said Barbara Duffield, executive director of Schoolhouse Connection, a national homeless youth advocacy group. “That starts with identifying the child who’s homeless.”
Challenges of counting homeless students
Under the federal McKinney-Vento Act, schools are required to count their homeless students throughout the school year and ensure they receive services. Homeless students also have the right to stay enrolled in their original school even if they move.
For many years, schools struggled to identify homeless students. Under state law, schools must distribute forms at the beginning of the school year asking families where they live — in their own homes, in motels, doubled-up with other families, in shelters, cars or outdoors.
Some schools were less-than-diligent about collecting the form, or reassuring families understood the importance. Often, homeless families were reluctant to submit the form because they were afraid the school might contact a child welfare agency. Immigrant families sometimes feared the school might notify immigration authorities. And some families didn’t realize that sharing quarters with another family — by far the most common living situation among homeless families – is technically defined as homeless, at least under McKinney-Vento.
A 2021 bill by former Assemblymember Luz Rivas, a Democrat from Arleta in the San Fernando Valley, sought to fix that problem. The bill requires schools to train everyone who works with students — from bus drivers to cafeteria workers to teachers — on how to recognize potential signs of homelessness. That could include families who move frequently or don’t reply to school correspondence.
The bill seems to have helped. Last year, the state identified 21,000 more homeless students than it had the previous year, even as overall enrollment dropped.
Still, that’s probably an undercount, researchers said. The actual homeless student population is probably between 5% and10% of those students who qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, according to the National Center for Homeless Education. In California, that would be a shortfall of up to 138,713 students.
Influx of funding
Another boost for identifying homeless students came from the American Rescue Plan, the federal COVID-19 relief package. The plan included $800 million for schools to hire counselors or train existing staff to help homeless students. Nearly all schools in California received some money.
About 120 districts in California won grant money through the McKinney-Vento Act, which last year dispersed about $15.9 million in California to pay for things like rides to school, backpacks, staff and other services. Districts are chosen on a competitive basis; not all districts that apply receive funds.
But those funding sources are drying up. Most of the pandemic relief money has already been spent, and President Donald Trump’s recently approved budget does not include McKinney-Vento funding for 2026-27.
The cuts come at a time when advocates expect steep increases in the number of homeless families over the next few years, due in part to national policy changes. Republican budget proposals include cuts to Medicaid, food assistance and other programs aimed at helping low-income families, while the immigration crackdown has left thousands of families afraid to seek assistance. For families living on tight budgets, those cuts could lead to a loss of housing.
And in California, the shortage of affordable housing continues to be a hurdle for low-income families. Even Kern County, which has traditionally been a less pricey option for families, has seen a spike in housing costs as more residents move there from Los Angeles.
Joseph Bishop, an education professor at UCLA and co-author of a recent report on homeless students nationwide, said the loss of government funding will be devastating for homeless students.
“California is the epicenter of the homeless student crisis, and we need targeted, dedicated support,” Bishop said. “Folks should be extremely alarmed right now. Will these kids be getting the education they need and deserve?”
Better food, cleaner bathrooms
In Kern County, identification has only been one part of the effort to help homeless students thrive in school. Schools also try to pair them with tutors and mentors, give them school supplies and laundry tokens, and invite them to join a program called Student Voice Ambassadors. There, students can tour local colleges, learn leadership skills and explore career options.
As part of the program, staff ask students what would make school more enticing — and then make sure the suggestions happen. At one school, students said they’d go to class if the bathrooms were cleaner. So staff improved the bathrooms. At another school, students wanted better food. They got it.
Williams credits the program with reducing absenteeism among homeless students. Two years ago, 45% of Kern County’s homeless students were chronically absent. Last year, the number dropped to 39% – still too high, he said, but a significant improvement.
“Without McKinney-Vento funds, the Student Voice Ambassador program would go away,” Williams said. “How will we keep it going? I don’t know.”
Following a record-breaking advocacy campaign that saw 20,636 letters sent to Congress, the House of Representatives has set out drastically modified cuts to US cultural exchanges, which had been at risk of “decimation” under Trump’s previous proposed budget.
The new plans will shrink the funding cuts to the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA) to 5.5% next year, as compared to the 93% initially announced in the proposed FY2026 budget.
Though the proposals still amount to a $41 million cut to current funding, “it’s nowhere close to the doomsday scenario of the [President’s budget request]” executive director of the Alliance for International Exchange Mark Overmann told The PIE News.
“This means that the conversation about FY26 is completely new. The President’s budget can be thrown out the window,” he said, welcoming the “significant show of support for exchanges from the House and a big win for us”.
The plans – laid out in the House Appropriations Bill on July 14 – propose a 22% cut to overall State Department funding and are the latest step in the FY26 budget process, expected to be finalised late this year.
The new legislation earmarks over $700m for ECA, a “surprising” figure and a vote of confidence in the value of educational and cultural exchanges.This includes $287 million for Fulbright.
“And this mark from the House means that our community’s advocacy has been heard,” said Overmann.
This means that the conversation about FY26 is completely new. The President’s budget can be thrown out the window.
Mark Overmann
Though there are still many steps to go, including a review by the Senate, the unexpected move is an encouraging development and a rare piece of good news for stakeholders who expected the worst after Trump’s “draconian” proposals this May.
While important, the President’s budget request has no sway over the final allocations, with stakeholders emphasising at the time of its release that it amounted to nothing more than a “wish list” and was not binding.
The true figures will be drawn from the House and Senate Appropriations, with the latter expected imminently.
Traditionally, the Senate has come in higher than the house for ECA funding, with stakeholders hopeful that the trend will continue this year.
The news has provided a glimmer of hope during an uncertain time for US study abroad, with 40 ECA employees caught up in the Trump administration’s mass layoffs of State Department staff last week.
Professor Mary O’Kane will lead the interim ATEC. Picture: Hollie Adams
Tertiary education’s new steward will focus on allocating university funding, harmonising tertiary education and negotiating mission-based contracts, according to its Terms of Reference released on Tuesday.
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Funding challenges, promotion issues and heavy workloads are linked, a separate survey found
Erin MorleyJune 25, 2025Last Updated: June 25, 2025
0 2 minutes read
A survey has found academics are working 3,256 hours a year, about double the Australian average, and are suffering worse anxiety and depression as a consequence.
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This is of course a massive own goal with dangerous implications, as commentators such as Holden Thorp and William Kirby have pointed out. But it is not simply about Americans losing scientific/technological supremacy. As the Economist has pointed out, the entire world has a stake in what happens to American science; its hobbling will have consequences not just for global science but for the global economy as well.
It has been fascinating over the past few weeks watching how the American debacle had grabbed the attention of the rest of the world as well. It has been very difficult this past month or so to be somewhere where the papers weren’t obsessing about what was happening to students at Harvard (check out a representative smattering from Ethiopia, Iceland, Vietnam, Malaysia, India and Kazakhstan). At the policy level, almost every OECD government is revving up plans to poach US-based researchers even in places which genuinely don’t have the scientific infrastructure to poach anyone (Ireland? Czechia? C’mon). In other words, you have basically the entire world looking at how the American debacle in a massively self-centred way. Basically, it’s all: “Yeah, yeah, death of the American research university, how does this affect me/how can I profit?”
But the world has yet to grapple in any kind of serious way is how to maintain growth and innovation in a world where the largest spender on research is reducing expenditures by 50%. This has implications for absolutely everybody and at the moment there are no serious discussions about how the world gets by without it. Obviously, other countries can’t replace what used to come out of NSF and NIH. But they can, as Billy Beane from Moneyball might say, recreate it “in the aggregate” by working together. Unfortunately, that’s not quite what they are doing. That would require Australia, Canada, Japan and Korea to be working actively with the European Union; not only is that not happening, but these days the EU can’t even get it’s own act together on research.
Meanwhile, in large parts of the world, the main higher education story we hear about is one of “cutbacks”, “austerity” and the like. But there are, I think, some fundamentally different issues at work in different countries. In the rich Anglosphere, which happens to be where most of the big producers of higher education are located, mature higher education systems highly reliant on market fees are being forced into big cuts as governments remove their ability to attract funds, usually by changing their student visa regimes. (An aside here: many people ask: where will international students go if not Canada/US/Australia/wherever? To which the answer is usually: to a great extent, they will just stay home. But a few countries do seem to be doing better on international students as of late, mostly in Asia. Turkey, Dubai and Uzbekistan in particular seem to be the big winners, though the growth in their intakes is lower than the drop in the intakes of the big anglophone countries).
But in other countries, the fundamental financial tension is that demand for higher education is far outstripping the ability of either public or private funding to keep the system afloat (government could choose not to meet so much demand, but political needs must). Kenya, with its widespread university financial problems comes into this category, and Nigeria, where funding new universities seems to come at the expense of funding existing ones clearly come under this category. Intermediate cases here include France (increasing demand, flat funding), Brazil (which has done a series of policy U-turns on transfers to federal universities and whose overall policy might best be described as “confused”), and perhaps Colombia (promises of money co-existing with widespread institutional precarity, even in the public sector). What is common here is that a lot of countries seem to have built systems which are too big/expensive for what the public – collectively or individually – is willing to pay.
A common response to the problem of inadequate public funding is the expansion of private higher education. Almost unbelievably, private higher education now makes up about 20% of total provision in Spain, France and Germany (in two of those countries, tuition is free, and in the third it is minimal – under 1000 euros per year in most cases). In many cases, the expansion is in relatively cheap classroom-heavy courses (often in business) but in many cases these universities are moving into other areas such health care provision. This explosion has led to a significant tightening of regulations on private universities in Spain and a “tri” (meaning triage”) on France’s Parcoursup system, meaning that certain types of private college will have a harder time advertising themselves to prospective students. This phenomenon is not constrained to Europe: Tunisia is also currently pre-occupied with how to regulate private institutions. An alternative to letting domestic private universities rip is to invite foreign institutions into the country. India is the country most in the news for attempting this at the moment but places like Saudi Arabia, Uzbekistan and Vietnam are also eagerly heading down this route.
My tip for the story this summer? Watch graduate unemployment rates around the world, particularly in India and China (where the situation is so bad the government has just announced a kind of emergency blitz on graduate hiring which sure seems like it is set up for failure). I think the push to align higher education more with the labour market is about to go into overdrive.
All caught up now! See you back here in September.
The kindergartners of South Dakota’s Hamlin County are, in fact, in space. To be specific, they are on planet Earth, near the geographic center of North America, sitting crisscross applesauce inside an 11-foot-high inflatable planetarium set up in their school gym.
The darkness is velvety. Childish whispers skitter around the dome like mice. The kids are returning from a short mission to Jupiter, piloted by Kristine Heinen, a young museum educator with a ponytail who knows how to make her voice BIG AND EXCITED and then inviting and quiet to hold little ones’ attention.
“Now we’re over China!” Heinen says.
“My friend went to China!” a girl calls out.
“The other side is nighttime and this side’s bright,” expounds a boy with a crew cut. “The sun shines here so it can’t shine over there.“
The school is in eastern South Dakota, 34 miles northeast of the settlement where Laura Ingalls Wilder grew up and attended a one-room schoolhouse. The sprawling Hamlin Education Center is a modern-day analogue, serving an entire district in one building, with just under 900 students, pre-K through 12. Notable graduates include U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, the former governor of South Dakota.
The center is roughly equidistant from four tiny towns, surrounded by open fields where cornstalks shine in the sun; 95 percent of students arrive by bus, from up to 20 miles away. Over a third of them qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, said Dustin Blaha, the elementary school’s principal.
Hamlin Elementary students line up for their turn visiting a traveling planetarium sponsored by the South Dakota Discovery Center. Credit: Anya Kamenetz for The Hechinger Report
During the planetarium’s daylong visit to the small community of Hayti, S.D., an educator from the South Dakota Discovery Center wowed 500 elementary school students with a presentation about the planets and stars. Credit: Anya Kamenetz for The Hechinger Report
Many Hamlin Elementary haven’t had a chance to visit the South Dakota Discovery Center in Pierre three hours away, so the museum brings traveling exhibits like a portable planetarium to them. Credit: Anya Kamenetz for The Hechinger Report
Blaha said that most of these children have never been to the South Dakota Discovery Center, a hands-on science museum three hours west in the state capital. But thanks to a federal agency called the Institute of Museum and Library Services, a part of the museum can come to them.
The IMLS was established in 1996, combining previously separate programs. The small agency became the largest source of federal funding for museums and libraries, last year awarding $266.7 million in program grants, research and policy development across all 50 states. IMLS awarded the South Dakota Discovery Center about $45,000 in 2023 to upgrade this traveling planetarium.
But students around the state may be waiting a long time for the next upgrade.
Related: Young children have unique needs and providing the right care can be a challenge. Our free early childhood education newsletter tracks the issues.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order in mid-March calling for the agency to be “eliminated to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law.” Mass firings followed.
On May 1, the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., issued a temporary restraining order to block the agency’s dismantling, followed on May 6 by a second federal judge finding the dismantling of this and two other agencies unconstitutional. On May 20, the American Library Association reported that employees are returning to work and some grants have been restored.
But the administration is continuing its legal battle to all but shutter the IMLS. The latest post on the agency’s Instagram account is captioned, “The era of using your taxpayer dollars to fund DEI grants is OVER,” holding up for criticism grants that were aimed at addressing systemic racism in museums, equitable library practices, and diverse staff development. The IMLS and the Department of Government Efficiency did not respond to requests for comment.
A veteran of the agency who asked to remain anonymous because of fear of reprisal said they first saw DOGE staffers meeting with leadership on March 28. “On the 31st, we were put on administrative leave. We had about two hours to turn in your key cards, your ID, get everything off your laptop you’re ever going to need. We were locked out of our computer systems by 3:30 and told to get out of the building.” A skeleton crew was hastily rehired the next day.
The ex-staffer points out that the Institute of Museum and Library Services spends, or spent, just 7 percent of its budget on its 70 staff, passing the rest along as grants. “We are not a bloated agency.” They have two kids at home, one with special needs and are married to another federal employee whose job is also at risk; but they are almost as worried about their grantees as themselves.
“After 20 years, I didn’t even get to put an out-of-office response up. Is someone emailing me right now and getting nothing, because all of a sudden their grant just ended? I hate that,” the former IMLS employee said.
Almost all grants awarded required a one-to-one cost share out of the local institution’s budget, the staffer said. Plus, typically the grantees pay for activities first and then apply to get reimbursed. “We’re leaving these often small rural museums and libraries on the hook.”
Anne Lewis, executive director of the South Dakota Discovery Center, said that organizations like hers would be “wobbly” without federal funding and would have to scale back on ambitious programs like the planetarium upgrade.
“The new system has much better interaction and control,” said Heinen, the museum educator. An earlier version had a static point of view, but upgraded visual effects means that “now we have spaceship mode,” she said. “We can travel to destinations including planets, and go in a full 360-degree mode around galaxies.”
With a flick of the touchscreen menu, she can also display the constellations of a dozen different cultures including Lakota, a significant benefit especially when she visits tribal schools.
The South Dakota Discovery Center, based in Pierre, has used federal support from the Institute for Museum and Library Services to pay for a traveling planetarium exhibit. Credit: Anya Kamenetz for The Hechinger Report
It’s a lean operation: Heinen drove solo nearly 200 miles from Pierre to Watertown the evening before and spent the night at an Econo Lodge. From there, it was another 20-some miles to Hayti, where she arrived at 7:30 in the morning, set up the dome herself, and ran 30-minute programs all day.
The whole elementary school, about 500 kids in total, saw the planetarium, with each show customized to the children’s interest and grade level; and she also conducted a parent engagement program in the afternoon. Heinen said she never tires of being a “Santa Claus” for science. ”As soon as they see me, they know something fun is going to happen.”
During this visit, the fan favorites were Jupiter, Mars and the sun. “It was cool when we went to Mars,” said Nash Christensen, 6. “And the volcano on that one moon, and the big hurricane on Jupiter. I think Jupiter is a dangerous place to live.”
Grant recipients of the Institute of Museum and Library Services say the support from the federal government has been critical to running their programs. For example, the Boston Children’s Museum, the second-oldest children’s museum in the country, has used federal grant money to improve school readiness. One of the outcomes was a new exhibit in the museum, “Countdown to Kindergarten,” that mimics a kindergarten classroom, complete with a school bus you can sit in out front.
“It’s helpful not only for the kids, but some of our caregivers who came from other countries and may not have gone to a school like this,” said Melissa Higgins, the museum’s vice president of programs and exhibits.
At the Madison Children’s Museum in Wisconsin, federal funds paid for a multistate partnership that provides climate education for young children and their families. In Fort Lauderdale, Florida, a grant covered five “STEMobiles,” which offer hands-on science activities for children ages 3-5 in low-income parts of Broward County. The Philadelphia School District won a two-year planning grant to try to improve its pipeline of school librarians; they were down to only a handful for a district of 200,000 students.
But the greatest impact may come in rural, often deep-red areas.
“Rural communities have particularly unique challenges,” said Lewis at the South Dakota Discovery Center. “There’s 800,000 people in the state, and they’re dispersed. We don’t have a concentration of funders and donors who can help support these enrichment activities.”
She said the teachers she serves are “passionate, committed and, like every other place in the world, underfunded.” If not for institutions like hers, students would probably go without this kind of hands-on science experience, she said.
Blaha, the elementary school principal, concurred. “The planetarium brings excitement and expertise that we don’t typically have in a community like this,” he said.
For now, the excitement is coming to an end. The class has “landed” on a green lawn, under a deep blue sky. Heinen announces “It’s time to leave.” She’s met with a chorus of, “Noo!”
“You guys, we were in here for a full 30 minutes.”
“It felt like 10!”
“It felt like a second!”
Tonight, many of them will be able to look up at the dark sky over the prairie and show their parents Jupiter, Ursa Major and Mars.
Contact the editor of this story, Christina Samuels, at 212-678-3635 via Signal at cas.37 or [email protected].
The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.
When hackers hit a school district, they can expose Social Security numbers, home addresses, and even disability and disciplinary records. Now, cybersecurity advocates warn that the Trump administration’s budget and personnel cuts, along with rule changes, are stripping away key defenses that schools need.
“Cyberattacks on schools are escalating and just when we need federal support the most, it’s being pulled away,” said Keith Krueger, chief executive officer of the Consortium for School Networking, an association of technology officials in K-12 schools.
Related: Our free weekly newsletter alerts you to what research says about schools and classrooms.
The stakes are high. Schools are a top target in ransomware attacks, and cyber criminals have sometimes succeeded in shutting down whole school districts. The largest such incident occurred in December, when hackers stole personal student and teacher data from PowerSchool, a company that runs student information systems and stores report cards. The theft included data from more than 60 million students and almost 10 million teachers. PowerSchool paid an undisclosed ransom, but the criminals didn’t stop. Now, in a second round of extortion, the same cyber criminals are demanding ransoms from school districts.
Of chief concern is a cybersecurity service known as MS-ISAC, which stands for Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center. It warns more than 5,700 schools around the country that have signed up for the service about malware and other threats and recommends security patches. This technical service is free to schools, but is funded by an annual congressional appropriation of $27 million through the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), an agency within the Department of Homeland Security.
On March 6, the Trump administration announced a $10 million funding cut as part of broader budget and staffing cuts throughout CISA. That was ultimately negotiated down to $8.3 million, but the service still lost more than half of its remaining $15.7 budget for the year. The non-profit organization that runs it, the Center for Internet Services, is digging into its reserves to keep it operating. But those funds are expected to run out in the coming weeks, and it is unclear how the service will continue operating without charging user fees to schools.
“Many districts don’t have the budget or resources to do this themselves, so not having access to the no cost services we offer is a big issue,” said Kelly Lynch Wyland, a spokeswoman for the Center for Internet Services.
Sharing threat information
Another concern is the effective disbanding of the Government Coordinating Council, which helps schools address ransomware attacks and other threats through policy advice, including how to respond to ransom requests, whom to inform when an attack happens and good practices for preventing attacks. This coordinating council was formed only a year ago by the Department of Education and CISA. It brings together 13 nonprofit school organizations representing superintendents, state education leaders, technology officers and others. The council met frequently after the PowerSchool data breach to share information.
Now, amid the second round of extortions, school leaders have not been able to meet because of a change in rules governing open meetings. The group was originally exempt from meeting publicly because it was discussing critical infrastructure threats. But the Department of Homeland Security, under the Trump administration, reinstated open meeting rules for certain advisory committees, including this one. That makes it difficult to speak frankly about efforts to thwart criminal activity.
Non-governmental organizations are working to resurrect the council, but it would be in a diminished form without government participation.
“The FBI really comes in when there’s been an incident to find out who did it, and they have advice on whether you should pay or not pay your ransom,” said Krueger of the school network consortium.
A federal role
A third concern is the elimination in March of the education Department’s Office of Educational Technology. This seven-person office dealt with education technology policies — including cybersecurity. It issued cybersecurity guidance to schools and held webinars and meetings to explain how schools could improve and shore up their defenses. It also ran a biweekly meeting to talk about K-12 cybersecurity across the Education Department, including offices that serve students with disabilities and English learners.
Eliminating this office has hampered efforts to decide which security controls, such as encryption or multi-factor authentication, should be in educational software and student information systems.
Many educators worry that without this federal coordination, student privacy is at risk. “My biggest concern is all the data that’s up in the cloud,” said Steve Smith, the founder of the Student Data Privacy Consortium and the former chief information officer for Cambridge Public Schools in Massachusetts. “Probably 80 to 90 percent of student data isn’t on school-district controlled services. It’s being shared with ed tech providers and hosted on their information systems.”
Security controls
“How do we ensure that those third-party providers are providing adequate security against breaches and cyber attacks?” said Smith. “The office of ed tech was trying to bring people together to move toward an agreed upon national standard. They weren’t going to mandate a data standard, but there were efforts to bring people together and start having conversations about the expected minimum controls.”
That federal effort ended, Smith said, with the new administration. But his consortium is still working on it.
In an era when policymakers are seeking to decrease the federal government’s involvement in education, arguing for a centralized, federal role may not be popular. But there’s long been a federal role for student data privacy, including making sure that school employees don’t mishandle and accidentally expose students’ personal information. The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, commonly known as FERPA, protects student data. The Education Department continues to provide technical assistance to schools to comply with this law. Advocates for school cybersecurity say that the same assistance is needed to help schools prevent and defend against cyber crimes.
“We don’t expect every town to stand up their own army to protect themselves against China or Russia,” said Michael Klein, senior director for preparedness and response at the Institute for Security and Technology, a nonpartisan think tank. Klein was a senior advisor for cybersecurity in the Education Department during the previous administration. “In the same way, I don’t think we should expect every school district to stand up their own cyber-defense army to protect themselves against ransomware attacks from major criminal groups.”
And it’s not financially practical. According to the school network consortium only a third of school districts have a full-time employee or the equivalent dedicated to cybersecurity.
Budget storms ahead
Some federal programs to help schools with cybersecurity are still running. The Federal Communications Commission launched a $200 million pilot program to support cybersecurity efforts by schools and libraries. FEMA funds cybersecurity for state and local governments, which includes public schools. Through these funds, schools can obtain phishing training and malware detection. But with budget battles ahead, many educators fear these programs could also be cut.
Perhaps the biggest risk is the end to the entire E-Rate program that helps schools pay for the internet access. The Supreme Court is slated to decide this term on whether the funding structure is an unconstitutional tax.
“If that money goes away, they’re going to have to pull money from somewhere,” said Smith of the Student Data Privacy Consortium. “They’re going to try to preserve teaching and learning, as they should. Cybersecurity budgets are things that are probably more likely to get cut.
“It’s taken a long time to get to the point where we see privacy and cybersecurity as critical pieces,” Smith said. “I would hate for us to go back a few years and not be giving them the attention they should.”
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US higher education is exposed both to presidential and to state interference. Government powers to intervene in US HE reside in presidential control of federal funding, which may come with conditions. Trump cannot simply shut down the Department of Education by executive order but it seems he can direct that the Department’s grant- and loan-giving functions are taken on by another government department.
A letter to Harvard dated 11 April signed on behalf of the Department of Education and other federal agencies asserted that the United States had ‘invested in Harvard University’s operations’ because of ‘the value to the country’ of its work, but warned that ‘an investment is not an entitlement.’ This letter, if accepted, was to constitute ‘an agreement in principle’. Governance was to be ‘exclusively’ in the hands of those ‘tenured professors’ and ‘senior leadership’ who were ‘committed to the ‘changes indicated in this letter’. Its ‘hiring and related data’ and its student ‘admissions data’ were to be ‘shared with the federal Government’. International students ‘hostile to American values’ were not to be admitted and those already admitted were to be reported to federal authorities. Policies on diversity, equity and inclusion were to end and student protest restricted.
Harvard and other Ivy League Universities were indignant. Harvard in particular rode the headlines for some days, objecting to the Government demand that it immediately agree:
to implement the Trump administration’s demands to overhaul the University’s governance and leadership, academic programs, admissions system, hiring process, and discipline system—with the promise of more demands to come
and thus ‘overtly seek to impose on Harvard University political views and policy preferences advanced by the Trump administration and commit the University to punishing disfavored speech’. There were reports that US academics were seeking to escape to employment in Canada, the UK or Europe.
American institutions of higher learning have in common the essential freedom to determine, on academic grounds, whom to admit and what is taught, how, and by whom
and that such ‘American institutions of higher learning’ were ‘essential to American prosperity’.
It stressed a ‘longstanding collaboration between universities such as Harvard and the federal government dating back to the Second World War’. It pointed to Harvard’s success in using federal funding to achieving significant research outcomes. The recent ‘broad attack of Government’ on ‘universities across America’, not only on Harvard and the other Ivy League Universities listed, had affected the ‘critical funding partnerships’ that made this invaluable research possible.
This case was being brought because, it was argued, the Government had been using ‘the withholding of federal funding as leverage to gain control of academic decision making at Harvard’. Harvard cited the Government’s letter of 11 April as demanding governance reform and a ‘third-party’ audit ‘of the viewpoints of Harvard’s student body, faculty, and staff’, followed by the hiring of new Faculty and admission of students whose views were satisfactory to the Government. It had asserted that teaching should be ‘to the Government’s satisfaction as determined in the Government’s sole discretion’ and to that end Harvard should ‘terminate or reform its academic “programs” to the Government’s liking’. The Government had since ‘launched multiple investigations and other actions against Harvard’.
The Government had ‘within hours of the Freeze Order ‘ended ‘$2.2 billion in multiyear grants and $60M in multiyear contract value to Harvard University’ and Harvard began receiving ‘stop work orders’. In order to bring a case against the Government it was essential for Harvard to establish that the Government’s action constituted a breach of public law. To that end it stated that the ‘Court has jurisdiction over Harvard’s claims’ because the University did not ‘seek money damages or an order mandating specific performance of any contract’, but:
an order declaring unlawful and setting aside sweeping agency action taken in violation of Harvard’s constitutional rights under the First Amendment and its rights guaranteed by statute and regulation.
Harvard stressed that even though it is a private university its research is federally funded ‘through a grant process administered by federal agencies’. It cited Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which requires ‘a detailed and mandatory statutory framework’ of procedures to be followed. Harvard had its own procedures, added to or created in August, September and November 2024. Specifically in March 2025, Harvard released updated “Frequently Asked Questions” clarifying that both Jewish and Israeli identities are covered by the University’s Non-Discrimination Policy.
Harvard explained that it had attempted ‘collaboration’ in the weeks following the government letter and the Federal Task Force’s press release announcing campus visits. It had sought to arrange a meeting on the campus and that was scheduled for late April 2025, yet on April 20 it was reported that the ‘Trump administration has grown so furious with Harvard University’ that ‘it is planning to pull an additional $1 billion of the school’s funding for health research.’
Trump’s threatened sanctions concerned the future of Harvard’s funding. Harvard has endowments of c$53 billion so any threat from Trump to reduce federal funding posed a limited risk to its future. However he made a further proposal on 18 April to remove Harvard’s exemption from Government tax on its income, which could have hit its normal operation harder.
The US counterpart to HMRC is its Internal Revenue Service (IRS). The IRS may grant tax-exempt status to a charitable, religious, scientific or literary organization, on condition that it refrains from campaigning or seeking to modify legislation. However, the President is not permitted to direct the IRS to conduct an investigation or audit. To that extent the counterbalancing of executive, legislative and judicial powers in the US seems to be holding.
Harvard was making its challenge at a time when the balance between the executive and the judiciary in the US had come into question in a number of cases where Trump’s executive orders sought to override the courts. It claimed that ‘the Freeze Order is part of a broader effort by the Government to punish Harvard for protecting its constitutional rights. … multiple news outlets have reported that the Internal Revenue Service is considering revoking its recognition of Harvard’s tax exempt status’. Representing 86 universities, the Presidents’ Alliance has filed an Amicus brief supporting the litigation.
Harvard sought in its litigation to have the Freeze Order declared unconstitutional and also the ‘unconstitutional conditions’ sought to be imposed in the April 3 and April 11 and any action taken under it so far, also banning any future orders in the same vein. It pleaded six Counts, first a violation of the First Amendment in that the letters had targeted the ‘academic content that Harvard professors “teach students”’. Count 2 was that ‘even if the prerequisites of review under the Administrative Procedure Act were not satisfied, federal courts have the “equitable power” to “enjoin unconstitutional actions by state and federal officers.”’ Count 3 was that Title VI does not permit wholesale freezing of a recipient’s federal financial assistance. Instead, it requires that a “refusal to grant or to continue assistance” be “limited in its effect to the particular program, or part thereof, in which . . . noncompliance has been so found.” Count 4 was the Government’s failure to ‘comply with their own regulations before freezing Harvard’s federal financial assistance’. Count 5 alleged that the action had been arbitrary and capricious and Count 6 that it had been ultra vires.
At Indiana University a professor of Germanic studies was recently investigated under a state law after a student accused him of speech in support of Palestine.
Could this happen in the UK?
English higher education providers have their autonomy protected by the Higher Education and Research Act (2017)s.2 [HERA]. This legislation created the Office for Students, a non-departmental public body, whose nearest US counterpart is the Higher Learning Commission, an independent agency founded in 1895 which accredits higher education institutions. The University of Michigan, for example seeks, renewal of its accreditation from the Higher Learning Commission every ten years.
The Office for Students is both regulator and funder, and distributes Government funding to higher education providers. This may take into account ‘particular policy areas and government priorities. Yet HERA outlaws any attempt by the OfS to impose the restrictions Trump sought to impose on the universities of the USA. English higher education providers must be free:
(i) to determine the content of particular courses and the manner in which they are taught, supervised and assessed,
(ii) to determine the criteria for the selection, appointment and dismissal of academic staff and apply those criteria in particular cases, and
(iii) to determine the criteria for the admission of students and apply those criteria in particular cases.
Academic staff in England also enjoy ‘freedom within the law’:
(i) to question and test received wisdom, and
(ii) to put forward new ideas and controversial or unpopular opinions,
without placing themselves in jeopardy of losing their jobs or privileges they may have at the providers.
There is some Government oversight. In protecting ‘the institutional autonomy of English higher e providers’, the Office for Students is subject to the ‘guidance’ of the Secretary of State, though Government requirements are held off by the legislative fencing. The guidance of a higher education provider by the Office for Students:
must not relate to—
(a) particular parts of courses of study,
(b) the content of such courses,
(c) the manner in which they are taught, supervised or assessed,
(d) the criteria for the selection, appointment or dismissal of academic staff, or how they are applied, or
(e) the criteria for the admission of students, or how they are applied.
The legislation adds that:
guidance framed by reference to a particular course of study must not guide the OfS to perform a function in a way which prohibits or requires the provision of a particular course of study.
This seems to place universities safely out of reach of the kind of restrictions Trump sought to impose on Harvard and other Ivy League Universities, but the Office for Students is potentially able not only to set its Government funding levels but also affect its students’ access to loans from the Student Loans Company. That can certainly be at risk, for example in the case of the Oxford Business College, whose funding (via franchise arrangements) was blocked in April 2025 when it was found to have abused the student loan system by admitting unqualified students.(US accreditors do hold a lot of power, because universities must be accredited by a federally recognized agency in order to access federal student aid.)
Access to Government funding through the OfS requires listing by the Office for Students on its Register as an approved provider. The Office for Students did not impose its Conditions of Registration on pre-existing universities before including them in 2018 on its first Register under HERA. It simply treated them as proven acceptable providers of higher education. Each university duly publishes an account of its compliance (eg at Oxford) with the requirements which enable it to remain on the Office for Students Register. What might happen if they were found not to have done so? Short of removal from its Register the OfS has been known to impose fines, notably of more than £500,000 in the recent case of the University of Sussex when it was alleged to have failed to follow its own procedures designed to protect academic freedom.
Government oversight of the work of HE providers may overlap with or sit uneasily beside forms of ‘accreditation’ and ’qualification’. The accreditation of qualifications in the UK may be the responsibility of a number of ‘agencies’ external to HE providers, some of which are bodies offering professional qualifications. For example the Solicitors Regulation Authority keeps its own register of qualified solicitors. A university degree may not constitute a ‘qualification’ without the completion of further recognised study, some of which may be provided by the university itself, for example the Postgraduate Certificate in Education.
An area of ‘accreditation’ undergoing significant reform and expansion in the UK covers ‘skills’, including apprenticeships. Not all universities offer their own apprenticeships, though they may recognise some of those available from other providers at Levels 4 and 5. Nevertheless ‘skills’ are potentially at risk of Government intervention. At the beginning of March 2025, the House of Lords was debating whether ‘skills’ might benefit from the establishment of a ‘new executive agency’.
It was recognised that there would need to be a report from the Secretary of State ‘containing draft proposals’ for an agency, ‘to be known as “Skills England”. Ian Sollom MPobjected that that that would represent ‘a significant centralising of power in the hands of the Secretary of State, without providing proper mechanisms for parliamentary oversight or accountability.’ A ‘statutory, departmental body would have more clout’, he argued.
It looks as though some universities, at least, are safe from any initiative to interfere from above with the right to self-government and to determine what to teach and research. Harvard records a ‘revenue base’ of $65billion, with ‘federal funding ‘ as its largest source of support for research. The research income of Oxford, for example, is £778m, with commercial research income of £148m. That cannot compare with Harvard, but at least Oxford and some others will remain free to choose how to use that income for its academic purposes.
This is a modified version of an article first published by the Oxford Magazine No 477 in May 2025, republished with the permission of the editor and author.
SRHE member GR Evans is Emeritus Professor of Medieval Theology and Intellectual History in the University of Cambridge.
In 2020 and 2021, the COVID pandemic exposed weaknesses in the United States’ supply chain for key items in American households.
The Biden administration spent millions of dollars through the U.S. Department of Agriculture on new programs that helped farmers sell their produce to local schools, create produce boxes for households and provide more direct food access to their communities.
The Local Food Purchase Assistance (LFPA) and Local Food for Schools (LFS) programs provided incentives for schools and community organizations to buy food from local farmers. They allowed states to create contracts with farmers so schools could purchase their foods and gave farmers the promise of a guaranteed sale when harvest time arrived.
Now, with rocky trade partnerships and tariffs looming, President Donald Trump’s administration has slashed the remaining money for the programs, leaving farmers across the country heading into their growing season unsure who will buy their produce.
“We really figured out how to get local farm product into community spaces under LFS and LFPA,” said Thomas Smith, the chief business officer at the Kansas City Food Hub, a cooperative of farmers near the Kansas City area. “We were making our whole organization around meeting those new needs, because we believe in the government’s promise that they believe in local food.”
The Trump administration canceled about $660 million in funding for the programs that was to be paid out over the next few years. Through the programs so far, USDA has paid out more than $900 million to states and other recipients.
KC Food Hub took on the challenge of helping farmers, school districts and the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education work together to streamline the processes under the Biden-era programs. It was almost an instant success.
In 2024, the cooperative brokered more than $500,000 in sales for small farmers in the Kansas City region — more than the group had seen in its first five years of operation.
KC Food Hub hoped that the new partnerships would continue putting money back into farmers’ pockets and was aiming for over $1 million in sales for the farmers they represent. Now, they’re huddling with school districts across Kansas and Missouri to try and keep some of the contracts alive in the absence of the federal money.
How purchasing agreements relieve stress for small farmers
The local food programs were an extra pillar of support for small farmers across the country.
USDA data show that since 1980, the number of farms across the U.S. has decreased from about 2.5 million to 1.88 million in 2024. Part of that struggle, Smith said, is like many small-business owners, farmers are forced to take on many different roles.
“What they really want to be doing is farming, knowing their soil, knowing their land,” Smith said. “But because there is no distributor like the Food Hub in most communities, they have to be business people, too. They have to be in the board meetings, meetings with school administrators. And that just puts so much stress onto the food system.”
Over the years, as small farms have dwindled and larger operations have consolidated agricultural production in the United States, the middle market and distributors like the Food Hub have phased out.
When it comes to large-scale distributors, there are plenty of places a farmer could turn to sell their products. But the return for that farmer when selling to a large distributor is much lower.
“You get pennies on the dollar,” Smith said. “No respect to your work, no respect for your worth.”
There are other USDA programs that dedicate money to states through their nutrition assistance programs and set aside funds for seniors and low-income families to buy produce from local farmers.
Studies show ripple effects through local economies when higher quantities of local food are purchased. A 2010 study found that for every dollar spent on local food products, there is between 32 cents and 90 cents in additional local economic activity.
For Mike Pearl, a legacy farmer in Parkville, the programs pushed him to expand faster than he’d planned. Now, without the guarantee of those contracts, he’s scaling back his production plan for the year.
“If you think about it, it was an early game changer,” Pearl said. “We were able to, for the first
time … grow on a contracted basis for a fair price for the farmer, in a way that we never would have been able to do before.”
That encouraged Pearl to increase production and begin making upgrades before he felt completely ready to do so, he told The Beacon. New equipment, growing more produce and hiring more staff were all side effects of the local food purchasing agreements.
“I’m not sure that a lot of vegetable farmers were actually ready for it,” Pearl said. “I wasn’t prepared for it. But we made some changes to grow a bit more and do as much as we can on a short runway. We were set up for a perfect storm.”
Anything extra Pearl produces will be donated, as his farm is one of the largest donors of food in the Kansas City area. But other farmers are left with questions about what will happen with their crops — and their revenue.
It raises a question of trust that Maile Auterson has encountered throughout her life as a fourth-generation farmer in the Ozarks and the founder of Springfield Community Gardens, which facilitates local produce boxes and the LFS programs in the Springfield, Joplin and Rolla areas.
“We promised the farmers,” Auterson said. “The biggest insult to us is that we cannot follow through on the promises we made to the farmers that we had made with that money.”
The area her group serves was set to get $3 million in federal funds over the next three years. While Auterson is trying to fulfill some of those contracts, the trust that small farmers were building with the government through the program has been severed, she said.
“We talked the farmers into participating and scaling up specifically for this program,” Auterson said. “Then when we can’t follow through, the government has done what they were afraid the government would do, which would be to not look out for the small farmer. It’s a terrible moral injury to all of us.”
What’s next for small farmers and local food purchasers?
Smith said the Food Hub is in talks with its participating school districts — including Lee’s Summit, Blue Springs and Shawnee Mission — to continue their purchasing agreements even without the federal funds.
So far, even with the funding cancellation, 95% of 2024’s produce sales are set to be maintained through this year, Smith said.
“As small farmers, they can’t meet the streamlined industrial agriculture price points, but we can come close,” said Katie Nixon, a farmer and the co-director of New Growth Food Systems, which is affiliated with the West Central Missouri Community Action Agency.
“Our quality is usually a lot higher,” Nixon said. “Lettuce, for example, will last three weeks in the cooler, whereas lettuce coming from greenhouses in God knows where will last a week before they turn to mush.”
The Blue Springs School District saw a 40% increase in the use of its cafeteria salad bars after switching to local produce, Smith said. And school districts often find less waste and more savings, despite the slightly higher price when purchasing the produce, Nixon said.
Research shows that farm-to-school programs, like sourcing local produce and teaching kids about farming, resulted in students choosing healthier options in the cafeteria and eating more fruits and vegetables. Schools also saw an average 9% increase in students eating their meals from the school cafeteria when they participated in farm-to-school programming.
During Trump’s most recent Cabinet meeting at the White House, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kenendy Jr. said the administration is planning a massive overhaul of the federal school meals program.
“It’s going to be simple, it’s going to be user friendly. It is going to stress the simplicity of local foods, of whole foods and of healthy foods,” Kennedy said. “We’re going to make it easy for everyone to read and understand.”
Auterson and Nixon feel that the cancellation of the program is retribution for those who benefited from policies and funds initiated during the Biden administration.
“They’re hurting everyone,” Auterson said. “Everyone is suffering from them being retributional.”
