What’s at stake if Sacramento schools lose federal funding? A lot, leaders say
As President Donald Trump pursues the dissolution of the Department of Education, local leaders are scrambling to understand how staffing cuts and the potential loss of federal funding will affect schools.
Rep. Ami Bera, D-Elk Grove, held a news conference at Leo A. Palmiter School where he promised to fight the Trump administration’s actions, which he and others say are illegal, and to help schools survive potential fallout.
“We don’t think the president can take those funds, but in the interim, it’s causing a lot of uncertainty,” Bera said.
He and Sacramento County Office of Education Superintendent David Gordon made clear what is at stake for local schools should Trump succeed — a lot. Sacramento County schools have budgeted for an estimated $266 million in federal funding this school year, or about 6.8% of the districts’ combined budgets.
Federal dollars fund initiatives across all sectors of the educational experience, including support for homeless students, English learning students and students with disabilities plus programs for early literacy and nutrition. Cuts to DOE staff will also have implications for students’ civil rights, with fewer people to process claims related to discrimination and access to special education.
“This is not about budgets and programs,” Gordon said. “This is about young people who need to be supported to be the future workforce, but most of all, to be the future members of this community.”
Education cuts reach beyond academics
It’s not just cuts to the education budget that could hurt schools. Federal cuts to California farm programs like the Local Food for Schools and Child Care Cooperative Agreement affects schools’ abilities to provide locally-produced unprocessed foods for children.
“For many kids, the only hot meal they get every day is when they come to school,” Bera said.
Gordon spoke about how Medi-Cal cuts could threaten the existence of a county program that has stationed 60 mental health clinicians in Sacramento schools at no cost to the districts or students.
“It’s not just cuts of education, it’s cuts across the board of things that affect our students and our families,” he said.
Bera and Gordon did not speak about specific plans should the cuts go through and instead emphasized preventing the Trump administration from doing so through the courts. He pointed to the lawsuit by 26 attorneys general, including California’s Rob Bonta, as a key effort in saving the department.
He said that they have been successful proving many of Trump’s actions to be unconstitutional in the courts, but that it takes time that schools don’t have when they are planning next year’s budgets and programming.
Beyond litigation, Gordon and Bera both emphasized a communal approach to addressing threats to public education in which Sacramento-area educators join together to help address the crisis.
“We’re going to win this battle because we have to win this battle,” Bera said. “It is about the future of the next generation.”
