Presidential Actions Threaten Federal Education Funding—What’s at Stake for Kids

President Trump signed into law last week an Executive Order on closing the Department of Education that furthers his end goal: gutting our country’s public education system. This comes after putting the department under the leadership of Secretary Linda McMahon, an ardent advocate for expanding private school vouchers with next-to-no experience in public education.   

The vast majority of students learn in public schools, meaning the vast majority of families and businesses rely on them. Every school and community will be impacted by bigger class sizes, the loss of qualified educators, and the lack of support for college and career training that will stem from these cuts. Educational attainment will suffer and over the longer term, our society will have fewer people prepared to participate in our democracy, engage in healthy debate, lead our communities in solving big problems, or start businesses that innovate to meet our state’s needs. As if those impacts are not enough, cuts to public school funding will lead to job losses for public school employees from teachers to bus drivers, causing economic harm to ripple through our communities.   

The Executive Action comes on the heels of an illegal layoff of nearly half of the nation’s Department of Education staff — people who are charged with protecting the right of every child to education. And as congressional leaders consider deep cuts to federal funding in order to finance tax cuts for the very wealthy, federal budget decisions could reduce funding for public schools.  

In North Carolina, federal funding to public school districts totaled over $3 billion in the 2024 school year. On average, across North Carolina’s school districts, close to $1 out of every $5 supporting the state’s public education system is from federal sources. 

While the specifics of what could be cut aren’t totally clear, cutting this funding for our state’s schools could impact a wide range of issues: teacher hiring and retention, whether class sizes are optimal for learning, students’ ability to get additional learning support, and family costs for everything from school meals to classroom supplies.

Federal funding plays an important role in children’s education 

Federal funding comes in various forms—as grants or as direct funding to programs and services—to bolster the efforts by state and local governments to ensure where a child lives doesn’t limit their educational experience.   

The largest funding streams deliver proven support to educational outcomes for students and their overall well-being: 

Title I funds for low-income students: $518 million in 2024. Title I dollars support education for kids in high poverty schools. Funds can pay teachers, promote parent engagement, operate after-school programs, fund mentoring and counseling, and provide other services. Over 60 percent of North Carolina schools are served by Title I funding.   

IDEA funding for special education: $461 million in 2024. These funds help support the extra costs of special education, services, and preschool for over 200,000 kids with disabilities.  Dollars can be used to hire and train special education teachers, provide assistive equipment and therapy services, and support specialized transportation, among other costs.  

Because federal funding is targeted to kids with the greatest needs, it is most important in higher-poverty districts, most of which are in rural communities across Western and Eastern North Carolina.

Funding cuts aren’t the only federal threats to the education of 1.6 million students in North Carolina’s 2,600 public schools 

Potential funding cuts are just one of multiple threats to North Carolina schools and children that could result if the federal administration and Congress advance their plans to gut public education: 

• The Department of Education protects every child’s right to an education. Cutting staff and dismantling the agency’s responsibilities will mean less protection for students with disabilities, students of color, and other protected students whose education is vital to the overall success of our communities.   

• The department serves as a clearinghouse of education research and monitors critical data that makes it possible for school districts and educators to improve their approaches. This data also means that timely information on student outcomes is available to parents and communities. Destroying the agency that conducts this research means less transparency around public school performance.  

• The Department of Education’s work is not limited to K-12 education. Its programs also support access to education and training after high school.  North Carolina received $220 million through the department in 2024 for career and technical training, to connect people to high-quality jobs in rural communities, and other workforce supports. More than $54 billion was provided to students continuing their learning at community colleges or universities through student loans, Pell grants, and other supports to keep these pathways affordable and accessible.  

• Recent administrative actions have cancelled U.S. Department of Agriculture programs that purchase food from local farmers to provide school meals so children are ready to learn. Additional federal funding that makes sure children aren’t hungry at school, like the National School Lunch Program and School Breakfast Program, is also at risk. Almost two-thirds of North Carolina schools that participate in the school lunch program do so under what is known as the Community Eligibility Provision. With this provision under threat, an estimated 409,000 children attend schools that would no longer be able to provide free meals to all their students.  

• On top of executive actions and congressional budget plans that weaken public education, Congress is also considering the Educational Choice for Children Act, which would give tax breaks to the super rich while boosting private school vouchers that further undermine our public schools. The act would give donors dollar for dollar tax credits for giving money to non-profit organizations that distribute private school vouchers and allow donors to avoid capital gains taxes on donations of stocks. These costly measures would mostly benefit the wealthiest households and reduce federal revenue by $134 billion over 10 years.  

State underinvestment means North Carolina students are particularly vulnerable to federal funding cuts  

Across North Carolina, the vast majority of students and families benefit directly from their local public school, while neighbors and businesses benefit from the role these schools play in community life. Yet decades of underinvestment in the state’s public school system leave North Carolina communities at greater risk of harm if federal funding cuts move forward.  

As the Public School Forum of North Carolina finds, the state’s commitment to funding public education has declined over the past fifty years. In the 2022-23 school year, under 40 percent of the state’s General Fund was appropriated for K-12 public education. In comparison, over half of the General Fund was dedicated to K-12 public education in 1970. North Carolina is also one of the lowest ranked states — in 49th place — in terms of public education “funding effort,” a measure of state and local funding for schools as a share of the state economy overall. State legislative leaders have refused to fund the Leandro Plan, which would ensure that every child received the sound, basic education guaranteed in our state constitution. 

This lagging state commitment to our children’s education has shifted more funding responsibilities to local governments, generating inequities across the state.  Analysis from the Public School Forum finds that the richest counties with the highest property values spend more than four times as much per student as the lowest wealth counties.

Over the past dozen years, state lawmakers have prioritized tax cuts for the richest North Carolinians and profitable corporations over adequate funding for public education while pouring hundreds of millions of our public dollars into private school vouchers that benefit rich families. Federal cuts will further jeopardize our community schools, our children’s wellbeing, and our state’s economic future.  

We can come together to tell our federal legislators to oppose a budget that hurts our public schools. At the same time, our state leaders must protect students from potential cuts by reversing tax breaks for the very wealthy and the expansion of private schools vouchers, and instead committing shared public dollars to public education.