Hoping for No Summer Reruns this Year
By Manish Naik, Director of Legislative Services

Last summer, school districts were already dealing with the new administration’s grant cancellations, shifting definitions of longstanding discrimination laws, and mass firings of federal employees, when the White House also ordered a hold on about $6 billion in federal funds that Congress had approved for the 2025-26 school year. This funding is historically made available to states and school districts at the start of July, yet in the summer of 2025 was frozen just weeks before the new school year was set to begin. 

The impact was instantaneous for summer school funding provided to the 21st Century Community Learning Centers program, with a number of districts forced to cancel sessions due to the budgetary uncertainty. Professional development training, support for English learners, school safety, and other planned expenditures were also halted or suspended at the local level while the federal funds’ future remained unclear. Eventually, political pressure and public outcry at this turn of events, as well as the introduction of multiple lawsuits, led to the White House backing down and releasing all of the education funds, ending the pointless affair after three weeks.

As the 2025-26 academic year ends and school districts enter the summer break, local education officials are hoping to avoid a repeat of the delays in funding that occurred last year. The summer months are essential for school districts to plan for the new school year and operate targeted intervention and academic programs for students. Any disruptions to the July federal allocations will impact school district funding for teacher training and salaries, partner contracts, academic programs, and student services. Hopefully, two recent developments might mean that money will flow on time this summer.

The final FY 2026 appropriations bill for the U.S. Department of Education included a statement that, “The Secretary shall award to each State an amount as required under the applicable provisions of the ESEA, McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, IDEA, Perkins Act, and AEFLA for each formula grant program to which funds are appropriated in this Act on the date such funds become available for obligation.” This specific language was included by Congress to avoid the hold in funding that the White House enacted on funding last summer. It essentially directs the U.S. Department of Education to release funding to states once they receive it from the U.S. Department of Treasury at the beginning of July.

The other hopeful development for school districts involves the interagency agreements the U.S. Department of Education has signed directing other federal agencies to administer federal education programs. This questionable interagency re-arrangement has the potential to cause any number of problems, as a result of outsourcing K-12 programs to the U.S. Department of Labor. Among the concerns, school districts and states have specifically been worried about a possible delay in receiving federal K-12 education funds because of a shift to the Department of Labor financial payment system. Technical problems occurred in some states when the much smaller career and technical education programs were transferred to the Department of Labor last year. 

Luckily, the U.S. Department of Education recently reversed course, at least with regards to the technical changes for the upcoming school year. Federal officials notified states in April that in 2026-27 the major federal education formula funds for Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) programs, including the cornerstone Title I program, would continue to be distributed through the U.S. Department of Education’s existing G5 grant system and not a new Labor Department system. The about-face, coupled with the directives from Congress about immediate distribution of funding, hopefully means there will not be disruptions to the flow of money from the federal government to states and school districts this summer. School and district leaders have enough to do this summer without dealing with the problems caused by delays again this year.