WRAL by Will Doran
President Donald Trump’s decision to cut off billions of dollars in federal education spending will hurt almost no school district nationwide as much as it’ll hurt Wake County Public Schools, two of the area’s Congressional representatives wrote Wednesday, asking for the money to start flowing once more.
Wake County is represented in the U.S. House of Representatives by three politicians: Democratic Reps. Valerie Foushee and Deborah Ross, and Republican Rep. Brad Knott. Wednesday’s letter asking Trump’s education secretary Linda McMahon to give back the money was signed by Foushee and Ross, but not Knott.
In North Carolina, the state’s largest county is also home to its largest school system. More than 161,000 students attend WCPSS public schools, more than the total population of most counties statewide.
Trump’s decision to pause — at least temporarily, and maybe permanently — tens of millions of dollars for North Carolina included more than $8 million lost for WCPSS specifically. And it comes just weeks before classes start in August for schools on the traditional calendar. Ross and Foushee wrote that out of the thousands of school districts across the nation, only a few dozen are losing more money than WCPSS.
"The withholding of these funds is already disrupting hiring, delaying program planning, and reducing the capacity of Wake County educators to provide a safe, equitable, and high-quality education," they wrote.
Robert Taylor, the Wake County superintendent, told WRAL last week that local schools could keep the programs that the federal money used to pay for going for about three months. Those programs include school safety and mental health efforts, as well as English-as-a-second-language courses and teacher trainings.
But after that, hard decisions might have to be made about those programs as well as the 180 people whose jobs are fully or partially funded by the federal dollars.
Trump's Department of Education has said it's concerned some of the money might help unathorized immigrant families, in addition to other potential concerns.
"The Department remains committed to ensuring taxpayer resources are spent in accordance with the President’s priorities and the Department’s statutory responsibilities," it said this month when first announcing it would withhold the funds.
Ross and Foushee emphasized that the English-as-a-second-language courses were only one piece of what the funds are used for, and that regardless, there's already been a vote taken to authorize the spending.
“It is important to underscore that these funds were lawfully appropriated by Congress,” Ross and Foushee wrote. “The executive branch has no authority to block or delay the disbursement of this money. The continued obstruction of these funds is not only deeply harmful, but also illegal.”
That’s also the official stance of the State of North Carolina, which last week sued the Trump administration over the withheld funds.
Attorney General Jeff Jackson joined with fellow Democratic state attorneys general in that lawsuit, seeking to get K-12 funds returned to their states — similar to another lawsuit arguing Trump lacked the legal authority to cancel billions of dollars in scientific research grants, including more than $1 billion for North Carolina universities.
The K-12 money supports about 1,000 people working in schools across the state, WRAL previously reported — jobs that could be cut unless Trump agrees to let the money flow again, or is ordered to do so in court.
Trump has backtracked on some of his efforts to cut spending already, re-starting the funds for afterschool programs that are often operated by local nonprofits including the YMCA or the Boys & Girls Club after facing mounting criticism over that effort.