The U.S. Department of Education terminated "Full-Service Community Schools" grants that dozens of Illinois schools have used over the past few years. Those cuts will go into effect July 1, after a judge denied a preliminary injunction.
Thirty-two Illinois schools will lose the grant funding, including Flinn Middle School and Whitehead Elementary School in Rockford, as well as Wegner Elementary School and Leman Middle School in West Chicago Elementary School District 33.
The schools were in the second year of a planned five-year initiative. Susan Stanton said they were awarded $94 million, but the cancellation means they won't get to spend the around $70 million they had left.
Stanton is the executive director of the education coalition ACT Now, which administered the grants. She said the funding supported community partnerships that provided services ranging from food pantries and tutoring to laundry and dental care.
"Within our first year of collecting data on our programs," she said, "we improved chronic absenteeism, school climate and family engagement faster than any other schools in the state of Illinois, and faster even than peer schools in similar situations."
She said some schools will try to do more with less and keep programs going, but many schools will be forced to terminate staff.
"We've seen a lot of schools have to lock up their clothing closets and their food pantries," Stanton said, "because they don't have donations coming in anymore, or they don't have staff to run it. Schools have had to eliminate enrichment clubs and summer experiences."
ACT Now said the grant termination is unlawful because the only reason the department gave for ending the funding was that it did not align with the administration's priorities. The department also cited a statement from the original application about diversity and equity.
"We had never received any negative feedback from the U.S. Department of Education," Stanton said.
In West Chicago, the "community schools" grant funded extended learning time, health care, tutoring, meals and other services. The community saw heavy immigration enforcement last year during Operation Midway Blitz, and Stanton said the funding fueled an initiative to make Hispanic families feel safer.
"Teachers, volunteers and sometimes paid participants were walking to local apartment buildings and then walking the kids into school to make sure they got there safely," she said. "They were fed and made sure they had what they needed. Supplies for their family could then be sent home that way too."
West Chicago's Sarah Norton says they spent the first year asking over 800 community members what services their city needed the most. In year two, she says they were just getting started.
“We found a mental health organization that was going to hire a third full-time bilingual mental health clinician to serve our families and students with mental health. We cut that," she said.
Some initiatives — like a middle school tutoring program — went so well that they’re going to try to figure out how to keep funding them locally with the grant money gone.
Others will continue, but just be less robust. The grant funded a years-worth of purchases for their food pantry. It’ll stay open, but just be much more reliant on donations.
In Rockford, the district said it used the funding to expand learning time, offer more after-school and extracurricular programs, and increase family and community involvement.
Stanton says ACT Now's legal team is still exploring options, but that students will lose services regardless of how litigation unfolds.
"They're going to have to move forward," she said. "They just might have to do it without a reading tutor or without a mentor, without a counselor that they need, or without medical care that they need. They won't get their third-grade year back, even if we ever got this grant back, and that's really the heartbreaking part of this.”
The Full-Service Community Schools grant program is one of many the federal education programs the U.S. Department of Education has targeted for termination during President Donald Trump's second administration.
Copy Edited by Eryn Lent
