When Barbara Duffield, executive director of SchoolHouse Connection, heard that the federal budget passed by Congress could eventually eliminate funding for the Education for Homeless Children and Youth (EHCY) Program, she immediately worried about how it would impact the unhoused students her organization champions.
The cut could strip money from the liaisons who work in every school district in the U.S. to make sure that unhoused students have everything they need to ensure consistent school attendance — whether that’s clothing, counseling, food, medical care, transportation, tutoring, or a connection to subsidized housing programs.
By all accounts, these are important, life-saving, and far-reaching programs. They also have a proven track record.
The McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act has authorized EHCY since 1987 and presently serves approximately 1.4 million unhoused pre-K to 12th-grade students. The Trump administration has made clear that it hopes to make EHCY part of a block grant allocated to the states to cover 18 separate education programs — a policy shift that has been widely condemned by educators. Moreover, the total amount states receive could drop from $6.5 billion to $2 billion under a proposal that could be voted on by Congress sometime this fall.
“The last time McKinney-Vento was updated by Congress was 2015,” Duffield told Truthout. “We’ve seen great improvements in the decade since because the bill became much more explicit in addressing school stability. It made clear that if a child wants to remain in the same school, even if they are staying in a shelter, living doubled-up with another family, or have moved to another county, they have the right to do so and must be given transportation to make this possible. The bill also explicitly included pre-school children in the provision of services.”
The results, she said, have been dramatic: Chronic absenteeism has plummeted, and student graduation rates and standardized test scores have risen.
But, she warns, making EHCY part of a block grant could undermine — or even reverse — these gains.
“If states and localities do not have a targeted requirement to make sure unhoused kids remain in school, and get the concrete supports they need, it usually does not happen,” Duffield said. “The McKinney-Vento liaisons have been the open door to school services.”
The so-called Big Beautiful Bill Act and the consolidation of programs into block grants would be disastrous, she said. “If the federal government does not mandate that school districts maintain the outreach and support necessary for this population, many unhoused kids will languish. This is especially cruel because the number of unhoused families with children has been consistently rising throughout the country.”
Joe Willard, the former policy director of HopePHL, a Pennsylvania advocacy group that supports unhoused students in the Keystone state, is now a consultant to the organization. Since 2015, he says, school staff in his state have made great strides in identifying those in need and connecting unhoused families with housing justice organizations. “There’s been better training for counselors, teachers, and principals in how to be effective ‘system navigators’ who can connect people with housing agencies, regardless of whether they’re in rural, urban, or suburban areas,” Willard told Truthout. “They’ve also helped students access transportation to school, sometimes by bus and sometimes by taxi or Uber. Some programs have purchased washers and dryers to ensure that kids have clean clothes. Others have established after-school tutoring programs and safe spaces where kids, whether they’re on their own or living with family members, can hang out. Stigma is a big problem, and unhoused students need a place to talk to one another and just be.”
But now, Willard, like Duffield, worries that these gains could be reversed.
What’s more, Willard says that the unhoused are not the only population at risk of falling through the cracks. New America, a Washington, D.C-based think tank, reports that nearly $350 billion in cuts to public education are currently looming, threatening to “set back our American education system as well as the health and well-being of students, families, and workers.”
Special Education in the Crosshairs
As usual, the devil is in the details. In addition to unhoused students, kids who receive special education services could be adversely impacted by funding shortfalls. New America reports that many of the more than 30 million children who rely on Medicaid receive therapies and access to assistive technologies during the school day, all paid for by Medicaid. Medicaid, the group explains, is the third-largest source of funding for K-12 public schools, providing revenue for about 30 percent of intervention services — including speech, occupational, and physical therapy — that benefit kids in all 50 states, from toddlers to teens.
Food is also in the crosshairs for the 14 million kids whose families receive Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits. Prior to the budget bill’s passage, children who received SNAP were automatically eligible for free school meals. This is no longer true. Families will now need to complete a written application for no-fee meals at the start of the school year.
The Big Funding Freeze Adds to Financial Precarity
But even before schools open their doors for the 2025-26 year, a nearly $7 billion “freeze” in education funding temporarily left schools scrambling and previewed the possible mayhem that could unfold. Although the money was restored at the end of July, during the three weeks that it was withheld, teacher training, student math and reading supports, after-school tutoring, and programs to benefit English Language Learners (ELL) and migratory populations hung in the balance. Schools had expected to receive the funds on July 1; the money was finally released on July 28.
The National Association of Elementary School Principals called the withheld money an intentional plan by the Trump administration “to flex its fiscal muscles” in an effort to undermine public education.
The toll would have been enormous. New America researchers found that most local school districts stood to lose slightly more than $220,000, but noted that schools in some areas — particularly in California, Florida, Georgia, and West Virginia — could have lost millions. Still, despite the restoration, funding remains precarious.
Dale Lee, president of the West Virginia Education Association, fears that cuts could have the harshest impact on ELL students. “We have a law in West Virginia that requires school staff to be notified by April if their position is being eliminated for the next year, so I don’t anticipate many firings,” he told Truthout. “On the other hand, I expect that teachers who retire or leave for other reasons will not be replaced.”
Lee then names two counties, Berkeley and Hardy, where many of the students come from Africa and Central America. As English Language Learners, they quickly enroll in English as a Second Language (ESL) classes.
“Many of the ELL teachers in these counties are actually retirees who work in what is called an ‘at need’ position. This means that they can teach full-time without it reducing their pensions,” Lee said. “I worry that these positions will be cut since ‘at need’ workers do not have the same protections as regular teachers.” In addition, he adds, 53 percent of the schools in West Virginia are designated as Title I, meaning that at least 40 percent of their students live at or below the federal poverty line; these schools receive extra federal funding to provide ramped-up support services.
Moreover, West Virginia receives funding through the Nita M. Lowey 21st Century Fund to establish after-school learning centers. “We just learned that the funding for this has been eliminated,” Lee told Truthout. “This means that thousands of kids in the state will no longer have access to these essential programs.”
Compounding Educational Inequities
But educators note that even before Donald Trump returned to office, public education was in dire straits.
Margaret, a high school English teacher in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, told Truthout that, like Lee, she is extremely worried that threadbare programs for refugee students will become even less robust. (Margaret asked that her surname be withheld for fear of retaliation by school administrators.) Already, she’s learned that the local agency that helped with refugee resettlement has lost half of its federal funding and has had to curtail many of its programs.
She also said that because Iowa provides universal vouchers to students wishing to leave the public school system — a plan that will become national under Trump’s budget law — Iowa’s public school system is facing a massive loss of revenue. According to the Des Moines Register, 27,866 low-income students enrolled in charter or private schools in the state during the 2024-25 school year. Each received $7,800 in public funds to do so.
Staff and supply shortages in Iowa’s public schools are also widespread. “Last year, a history class in my school had 40 students, and this is not uncommon,” Margaret said.
Nonetheless, Margaret says that her biggest fear is that “public schools will become a shell, and teachers will be forced to rely on the internet” to supplement hands-on instruction. “COVID showed us the value of in-person education, but when we have too many kids in a classroom, we end up having to rely on computers,” she said. “Meanwhile, private schools that cherry-pick who they enroll will be able to provide an interactive education. Every school should be required to educate everyone, but charters and private schools are legally allowed to discriminate against disabled kids, unhoused kids, and English Language Learners.”
Gregory, who also asked that his surname be withheld to avoid professional retaliation, teaches 8th-grade social studies in Indiana. Like Margaret, he is quick to tick off the many ways that underfunded public schools have harmed students, teachers, and communities, and stressed that these are longstanding issues. “We were already restricted in terms of ethnic studies and teaching about race, gender, sexuality, diversity, and equity,” he told Truthout. “But the biggest problem I see is staffing. Teaching shortages are making the job much more challenging.” His school, he says, has been short two special education teachers for the last five years. “Two special ed teachers are doing the jobs of four people. They’re overwhelmed.”
Moreover, “When a teacher is absent and substitutes can’t be found, the kids are forced to sit in the auditorium,” Gregory said. “It is not uncommon for 40 or 50 kids to be there, learning nothing, for several periods a day under the watchful eye of an administrator whose job is to keep order.”
Cierra Kaler-Jones, executive director of Rethinking Schools, a not-for-profit publisher and advocacy organization, agrees with both Margaret and Gregory and says that she sees the proposed cuts as part of a broader attack on public goods and services. “Schools have been underfunded for years, and teachers have been paying out of pocket for supplies and snacks to make it possible for their students to learn,” she told Truthout. “Schools are neighborhood hubs, and when services are cut, it causes ripples that take away from the entire community.”
The fight for public education, she said, will need to be fought at both the federal and state levels, and she expects education activists to oppose block grants for EHCY and simultaneously demand state financial support for necessary classroom services and student protections.
“Public educators have long been in the forefront of efforts to make communities safe, nurturing places for children and teens,” Kaler-Jones said. “They support students in their quest to know their history and understand what is happening in the world. They are doing as much as they possibly can to protect public schools as a public good.”
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