More than $4 million dollars in federal grants will be released to Springfield Public Schools after the U.S. Department of Education withheld the money as part of nationwide freeze of education grants. The Trump administration claims the DOE needed to review the funds to ensure spending aligned with the White House's priorities.
More than $100 million in education funding was withheld from Massachusetts on July 1st.
Mary Bourque is the executive director of the Massachusetts Association of School Superintendents. She said as of June 30 superintendents were notified these federal funds that were due July 1 were not going to be released.
“For our superintendents, the anxiety and the stress of trying to meet the needs of their students…they were scrambling to develop contingency plans," she said. " They were scrambling to help us with advocacy and to have conversations with our congressional delegation, the governor and attorney general to really highlight that these were critical funds and the fact that they remained frozen did not help in the best interest of our students."
Bourque said it has been “extremely difficult” for school districts in the state to plan for summer school or academic remediation classes with the sudden freeze of federal funds.
"Our superintendents are constantly developing the ‘what if’ plans, the contingency plans in case funds are not going to come through,” Bourque said. “And so it's leaving us all in a place where we are not trusting the federal government to come through for public education and that's sad.”
Twenty-three states including Massachusetts have filed a lawsuit over the Trump administration’s decision to withhold these funds.
