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The Vaughn Next Century Learning Center in San Fernando, Calif., this week is wrapping up the first year of what was supposed to be a seven-year federal education grant totaling $19 million. Thousands of 6th and 7th graders at more than a dozen Los Angeles-area public charter schools have been getting tutoring and mentoring aimed at exposing them to college opportunities they might otherwise see as out of reach.<\/p>\n
As rumors swirled this summer about potential federal cuts, program leaders hoped the Trump administration would spare them, given that the Vaughn center is a charter school district, and charter schools are among the few education priorities for which the administration wants to increase federal investment.<\/p>\n
But on Sept. 12, the U.S. Department of Education sent Vaughn administrators a notice of \u201cnon-continuation\u201d that eliminates their remaining $16 million of funding for the next six years, effective Oct. 1. <\/p>\n
\u201cDuring the review process, department staff identified that Vaughn Next Century Learning Center has proposed project activities that may conflict with the department\u2019s policy of prioritizing merit, fairness, and excellence in education; or violate the letter and purpose of federal civil rights law,\u201d reads the notice.<\/p>\n
If the Education Department doesn\u2019t approve the appeal the Vaughn team rushed to submit last week, 11 full-time employees and 16 part-time tutors will likely lose their jobs, and more than 3,300 students from low-income neighborhoods will lose programming that would have followed them for the rest of their K-12 careers.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn our heart, based on the rhetoric that we\u2019re seeing nationally, as positive as we are here, it feels like they might not even hear our call,\u201d said Fidel Ramirez, CEO of Vaughn. \u201cIt\u2019s devastating.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Vaughn initiative\u2019s funding came from Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs, also known as GEAR UP, which Congress established in 1998. GEAR UP is among more than 40 education funding streams that the Trump administration in May proposed to eliminate beginning with the new federal fiscal year that starts next week.<\/p>\n
Lawmakers from both parties in Congress have since rejected most of those proposed cuts, and still aren\u2019t close to passing a final budget. <\/p>\n
But in the meantime, the Trump administration has begun advancing its budget priorities, making unprecedented use of a legal mechanism for nixing individual grants, while leaving other grants issued under the same programs intact. <\/p>\n
For instance, the department has discontinued a total of nine GEAR UP grants\u2014including four in Ohio and one in New Hampshire\u2014while issuing routine continuation awards for dozens of others, and soliciting new applicants this summer.<\/p>\n
In the four months since the Trump administration released its budget proposal, the Education Department has discontinued more than 200 separate grants across at least 16 competitive programs the administration has proposed to eliminate altogether, according to an Education Week analysis. Those 16 programs cover a wide range of priorities:<\/p>\n
On top of issuing non-continuation notices for some grants in those 16 programs, the Trump administration last week alleged civil rights violations and threatened to revoke tens of millions in grant funds for school desegregation efforts from school districts in Chicago; Fairfax County, Va.; and New York City.<\/p>\n
Earlier this year, the administration canceled hundreds of ongoing grants for mental health services and teacher-training programs.<\/p>\n
And on Sept. 10, the Trump administration announced a slew of across-the-board cuts for higher education grant programs, including $350 million for minority-serving institutions.<\/p>\n
The administration has already announced plans to repurpose some of the funds it\u2019s clawing back\u2014including by launching new grant competitions for existing programs, and expanding investments in charter schools and civics instruction above the funding levels approved by Congress.<\/p>\n
Education advocates and former department officials have become increasingly alarmed as the department\u2019s new approach to ongoing grants has taken shape.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese programs have a long history of bipartisan support in most cases,\u201d said Kayla Patrick, who served as a senior policy adviser in the department\u2019s office of planning, policy development, and evaluation from 2022 to 2024, under President Joe Biden. \u201cEnding them without warning is breaking a longstanding agreement between the federal government and local communities.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some lawmakers have taken notice as well. Two Democratic senators and one Democratic congresswoman last week urged the department to halt \u201cplans to unilaterally eliminate and significantly cut several programs through a reprogramming of fiscal year 2025 funding.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe department has never used reprogramming authority in this manner, even during previous full-year continuing resolutions, to make wholesale changes to programmatic funding levels simply based on administration priorities,\u201d wrote Sens. Patty Murray, D-Wash., and Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., and Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., in a Sept. 18 letter to McMahon.<\/p>\n
The Trump administration is \u201cno longer allowing taxpayer dollars to go out the door on autopilot,\u201d Ellen Keast, the agency\u2019s deputy press secretary, wrote in a statement to Education Week.<\/p>\n
On Monday, McMahon posted a thread on X with seven examples of what she called \u201cprograms that don\u2019t put students first,\u201d including a technical assistance center aiming to dismantle systemic racism, and a school for the blind that pledged to \u201cembed the values of diversity, equity and inclusion in all aspects of our work.\u201d<\/p>\n
For years, taxpayer dollars fueled wasteful, divisive education projects – rubber-stamped with no proof of results.<\/p>\n