Trump cuts to Department of Education spark divided reaction in New Hampshire

Yahoo

18-03-2025

The Lyndon Baines Johnson Department of Education Building in Washington, D.C., pictured on Nov. 25, 2024. (Photo by Shauneen Miranda/States Newsroom)
A planned reduction of the duties of the U.S. Department of Education by President Donald Trump has rattled teachers and administrators throughout the nation. But educators and state officials have differing views on how much the cuts could affect New Hampshire.
On March 11, the department laid off nearly 50 percent of its staff, following months of proposals by Trump to dismantle the federal department and allow states to distribute the money. Those staff members will be placed on leave March 21.
Some in New Hampshire, including state Department of Education Commissioner Frank Edelblut, say they are open to a downsizing of the federal department — if it leads to block grant funding for states.
'As a department, we've been making plans for probably two months now, anticipating that it's likely that federal funds would be block-granted down into the state,' Edelblut said in an interview March 12. 'We've got a lot of mechanisms in place already to be able to receive these funds and to distribute them through to the schools, because we're primarily a pass-through entity.'
Others are skeptical school districts will receive the same amount of funds if the federal grant programs are eliminated — especially if state lawmakers make changes.
'Education cuts are going to lead to larger class sizes, less support for students and educators, potentially not having special ed funding, things like that,' said Megan Tuttle, president of the National Education Association of New Hampshire. 'It really could end up getting to the point of rural schools closing.'
Tuttle said the firing of employees would make the existing grant programs work less efficiently, even if the block grant system is never implemented. And she raised concerns about the staff cuts to the Office for Civil Rights, which she said could affect students of color and students with disabilities, and to departments overseeing data collection and student assessments.
New Hampshire — like all states — receives a number of regular federal education grants. In the year ending July 2024, it received $51.2 million from Title I, which is designed to support schools with low-income students to bridge achievement gaps, according to analysis by the Education Law Center, a nonprofit group, which used U.S. Department of Education data.
In the same time period, the state received $61.7 million in Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) funds, which go toward special education services, as well as $26.9 million across a range of other grants. Those include the Supporting Effective Instruction program, which supports professional development programs to help teachers improve student outcomes; the Student Support and Academic Enrichment program; 21st Century Community Learning Centers; and a number of smaller grant programs designed to target rural school districts, according to the Education Law Center.
In general, the federal government supplies about 10 percent of education funding across the country; the other 90 percent is supplied by state and local governments – in New Hampshire primarily through property taxes.
Trump and his supporters have floated a block grant program to send much of those funds to states — which could then spend it as it sees fit. It is unclear how that might be achieved; many of the grant programs, such as Title I and IDEA, are established in statute and would require congressional action to fully dismantle.
But New Hampshire leaders are beginning to explore the possibility of block grants.
Earlier this month, Edelblut — who is departing the office at the end of the school year — met with state Senate Republican leadership to discuss how the state would respond to a shift to block grants, according to senators. The commissioner's message: The state could take the reins from the federal government and keep the funds flowing to school districts as before.
'Title I has a really good purpose, right? And it does (serve) a really good need, right?' said Sen. Tim Lang, who was present at that meeting, in an interview. 'To help with kindergarten, to be able to get those teachers to be able to get reading classes and those kind of things for students that are underperforming. So we want to keep those things in place. We don't want to see them removed.'
Edelblut and Lang say New Hampshire already has mechanisms for distributing aid to schools. But that does not necessarily mean lawmakers will choose to continue those programs. A block grant program would give the Legislature discretion to reappropriate the money toward any number of priorities, including school choice programs that could see fewer dollars going to public schools.
'I would assume that funding like this that comes into the state, the Legislature would want to weigh in on how that's used,' Edelblut said. 'They're not going to leave it up to the agency. But my proposal to them is that we don't create new mechanisms — that we use the tools that we already have in place in order to make this work.'
Lang said he does not see the need for New Hampshire to overhaul how it spends the federal education dollars. His preferred way for the state to spend the federal funds would be to carry on the Title I program at about the same funding levels, he said. But he added that there could be room for some adjustments.
To do that, Lang said, the state could use the existing adequacy formula. 'We could still — using the formula and the metrics we have that we put in place last budget cycle — use those metrics to be able to disburse the money out, even if it came in through a block grant,' he said.
For schools with higher populations of low-income students, who currently benefit from the Title I program, 'we'd be able to target that money using those formulas we put in place to be able to get the money back where it belongs,' Lang added.
Lang said lawmakers and the Department of Education could sift through the current spending and make changes if there are any programs that don't fit into New Hampshire's needs. They could also choose to prioritize programs such as reading programs, he said.
'I think that … we may nibble around the edges of it and change some things, if it gives us the opportunity to be more flexible,' he said.
But he added that many of the federal grants received by the state will extend into Fiscal Year 2027, which means state lawmakers would not need to make decisions quickly. Should the process happen quickly, he said the Legislature could meet on an emergency basis.
Tuttle says she is not as confident the state can take the place of the federal government should a block grant system be implemented.
And Tuttle argued that if the Legislature had power over how the grants are spent, funding could change.
'Just saying, 'Well, we're putting the money back in the state' — I think our state has shown they're not really interested right now in funding public education adequately,' she said. 'They're also not really interested in funding special education.'