Saturday, April 26, 2025
As President Trump continues his efforts to slash federal funds from the U.S. Department of Education, local school officials say they cannot supplement the loss of financial aid with state or local funds.
Cuts to the federal education budget and the loss of department personnel, some school officials worry, could result in the deterioration of the quality of education across Long Island.
According to the National Center for Education Statistics, the Elmont School District received over $11 million in federal funds in 2023-24 to support over 3,000 students. Sewanhaka was close behind, receiving over $9 million in federal funds, which help close to 8,000 students.
Federal funding supports programs including the National School Lunch Program, Pell grants, the Office of Special Education and the Every Student Succeeds Act. Schools across the state take part in these programs, including Elmont and Franklin Square.
Trecia Wong, a Board of Education trustee in the Elmont and Sewanhaka school districts, said it isn’t possible for local communities to use other means of generating funds, such as increasing taxes, to plug the budget holes that would be created if federal funds were drastically reduced or eliminated.
“It’s not fair to the community,” Wong said of the potential cuts. “It’s an undue burden that we’re now placing on them.”
She explained that many students, like those in Elmont, depend on federal Title I funding, for school districts with a high percentage of low-income students. And Wong said she worried that dismantling the Education Department could impede its ability to enforce policies such as equal access to education. Without the department, she added, school districts like Elmont could be at an economic disadvantage.
“I don’t want to lose whatever work that has been done so we can have some type of equity,” Wong said.
In a statement, Jared T. Bloom, superintendent of the Franklin Square School District, said his staff was closely monitoring the potential shutdown of education services, and assessing the potential impact on district schools.
According to the NCES, the Franklin Square district received close to $4 million in federal funds in 2023-24 to support about 2,000 students— not directly, Bloom explained, but from the State Education Department, which allocates federal funding.
About $1.3 million of the federal funds the district receives per year, he added, are provided through grants that support critical programs including special education, full-day universal pre-K, reading intervention, professional development, and English as a New Language services.
A Feb. 14 Learning Agency report showed that $1.5 billion in federal funds supports 1.5 million New York students under Title I, and $984 million helps 525,000 students with disabilities through the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.
While the Education Department can be eliminated only by an act of Congress, Trump’s executive order could still shrink its work force and threaten its efficiency.
Likewise, an executive order cannot eradicate Title I programming or the Office for Civil Rights, the study said, but it can impede their functionality by reducing staff and funding.
Bloom suggested that the state could potentially transfer the federal department’s functions to other state agencies, or that the state could funnel other funding into its education department. He was unsure, however, of the likely impact on the Franklin Square district if those actions were taken.
“It remains uncertain whether this would provide the same level of financial support for our district,” Bloom said. “What is clear, however, is that any delay in state funding could disrupt essential student services and place additional financial strain on local taxpayers.”
Assemblywoman Michaelle Solages said the state does not have the capacity to reconcile a drastic loss of funds. “Unfortunately, as a state, there’s no way we could backfill that loss of federal funding,” she said.
According to the New York State Division of the Budget, the state received $8.6 billion in federal education funding in 2024. The Fiscal Policy Institute said the state expects that total to fall to $3.3 billion in 2026.
Grace Amoafo, the district director for Solages’s office, said that until the state budget is released in April, it’s hard to know exactly what the plan would be if the state lost funding from Washington. No matter what, Amoafo added, compensating for the loss would be a challenge.
“We’re trying our best to advocate on the state level to make sure that there are pockets of money that can be allocated to things that matter most,” she said, “like education.”
Wong said that schools on Long Island should be receiving more federal funding, not less. It is an investment, she said, in the future of children in the community.
And, Wong stressed, it’s not just low-income districts that would be impacted by funding cuts. Children of different economic backgrounds, wealthy or poor, would see a reduction in the quality of their education. Even if a high-income district can compensate for the loss of funds, she said, it still shifts the burden onto taxpayers, who have already seen increases in their taxes this year.
Wong said she hoped the Trump administration would hear the pleas of parents and educators and acknowledge the crucial role of the Education Department. “Elimination is not the answer,” she concluded.
