The Trump administration says it will stop paying out $1 billion in federal grants that school districts across the country have been using to hire mental health professionals, including counselors and social workers.
The U.S. Department of Education is telling impacted districts that the Biden administration, in awarding the grants, violated “the letter or purpose of Federal civil rights law.”
The grants were part of the 2022 Bipartisan Safer Communities Act — a bill passed in the aftermath of the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, in which a teen gunman killed 19 elementary school students and two adults and injured 17 people. The bill, among other things, poured federal dollars into schools to address rising concerns about a student mental health crisis.
Those dollars helped Superintendent Derek Fialkiewicz in Corbett, Ore., more than triple the number of school mental health professionals in his largely rural district of 1,100 students east of Portland. Before the grants, Fialkiewicz says his district had just two counselors, “and we realized, that’s just not sustainable for our students and especially coming out of COVID.”
In early 2023, thanks to the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, the district received a federal grant that fully covered the salaries and benefits of five new trained social workers.
“It’s been amazing,” says Fialkiewicz of the difference that federal money — and the social workers it paid for — have made in his school community.
He says he was shocked when he heard the Trump administration was putting an end to this federal support. Just Tuesday, a U.S. Department of Education employees who oversee their grant had given their district the go-ahead to add a telehealth texting service for students. An hour later, Fialkiewicz says, he got an email that the grant would be discontinued.
