The delay undermined planning, staffing, and support services when schools should be focused on preparing students for success
Posted: July 25, 2025
Facing bipartisan pressure and a federal lawsuit from 24 states, including Hawaiʻi, the Trump administration announced Friday it would release more than $5 billion in frozen public school funding. In a reckless move earlier this month, the administration had delayed the funding for key after-school, summer and migrant education programs, leaving schools and families in limbo just weeks before the start of the new school year.
The Hawaiʻi State Department of Education estimated that approximately $33 million in federal funds for island students had been delayed by the Trump administration, money that was supposed to become available earlier this month and will flow once again into Hawaiʻiʻs classrooms.
The funding freeze had been challenged by several lawsuits as educators, Congress members from both parties and others called for the administration to release the money. Congress had appropriated the money in a bill signed by Trump this year.
Last week, the U.S. Department of Education announced that it would release $1.3 billion of the funds for after-school and summer programs. Without the money, school districts and nonprofits, such as the YMCA and the Boys and Girls Club of America, had said they would have to close or scale back their educational offerings this fall.
The Office of Management and Budget had completed its review of the programs and will begin sending the money to states next week, the Education Department said Friday, according to the Associated Press.
On July 16, a group of 10 Republican senators sent a letter to the administration, imploring it to release the frozen education funds to states, stating that the withheld money supports programs and services critical to local communities, the AP reported.
“The programs are ones that enjoy longstanding, bipartisan support,” U.S. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, (R-W.Va.), said Friday. She pointed to after-school and summer programs that allow parents to work while their children learn and classes that help adults gain new skills, contributing to local economies.
The Trump administration had inaccurately accused states and schools of using federal education grants earmarked for immigrants’ children and low-income students to help fund “a radical leftwing agenda,” the AP said.
In a statement Friday, National Education Association President Becky Pringle said, “Playing games with students’ futures has real-world consequences. School districts in every state have been scrambling to figure out how they will continue to meet student needs without this vital federal funding, and many students in parts of the country have already headed back to school.”
“These reckless funding delays have undermined planning, staffing, and support services at a time when schools should be focused on preparing students for success,” Pringle added.
“Sadly, this is part of a broader pattern by this administration of undermining public education—starving it of resources, sowing distrust, and pushing privatization at the expense of the nation’s most vulnerable students. And they are doing this at the same time Congress has passed a budget bill that will devastate our students, schools, and communities by slashing funds meant for public education, health care, and keeping students from their school meals—all to finance massive tax breaks for billionaires,” Pringle said.
Speaking at the National Governors Association’s summer meeting in Colorado Springs on Friday, Education Secretary Linda McMahon blamed the administration transition and a lengthy review of the programs for the delay in funds.
She claimed that next year the process will move more smoothly.
“I would think now that we’ve reviewed them … a year from now, we wouldn’t find ourselves in the same situation,” she told governors.
Earlier this month, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration can proceed with dismantling the U.S. Department of Education by firing more than a thousand employees.
The Trump administration has announced plans to fire more than 1,300 U.S. DOE workers, a move that would effectively gut the department, which manages federal loans for college, tracks student achievement and enforces civil rights laws in schools.