A coalition of schools and advocacy groups, including the Anchorage School District, is suing the Trump administration over its decision to withhold some $6.8 billion in federal education funds approved by Congress.
“When longstanding commitments are withheld without warning, it creates instability across our schools and directly impacts the students who depend on these programs the most,” Anchorage School District spokesperson Corey Allen Young said in an emailed statement.
The Trump administration’s Office of Management and Budget has said it’s withholding the funds pending a review. OMB and the Education Department did not respond to emails seeking comment.
The plaintiffs, which also include the Fairbanks North Star Borough and the Kuspuk School District in Western Alaska, along with school districts and teachers’ unions across the country, say the funding freeze violates federal law and the constitutional separation of powers.
“The Department provided no legal authority or timetable for its review, nor did it indicate what it was reviewing given that the statutes leave no discretion in distributing the funds,” the plaintiffs said in their complaint.
The funding approved by Congress is meant to support teacher training, migrant education, English language learning, and academic enrichment. Alaska schools received $47 million for those programs in the last fiscal year, according to the top Democrat on the U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee.
In an interview, Kuspuk School District Superintendent Madeline Aguillard said her district relies heavily on federal funds. She learned June 30 that more than $180,000 in federal funding for her district was on hold.
Aguillard had already signed contracts to send students to remote areas for a summer program studying salmon populations when the news of the freeze came down, she said. Now, she’s not sure how she’ll fill the gap.
“Some of these programs are honestly the cornerstone of what we offer, what we can offer, and what we have historically offered, and now we're talking about literally removing those cornerstones,” Aguillard said.
Anchorage has seen nearly $12 million frozen, according to the lawsuit. Young, the district spokesperson, said the freeze had caused “significant disruption to our core mission of educating all students for success in life.” The frozen funds, bolstered early literacy programs, teacher training and mental health services and supported students whose families work in logging, agriculture and fishing, he said.
Brianna Gray, executive director of student support services with Fairbanks’ school district, said the freeze of funding intended for teacher training, academic enrichment and student support would hurt students throughout the district. The Fairbanks North Star Borough School District saw $2.5 million in federal funding frozen, according to the lawsuit.
“Our teams have had to pivot and adjust programming without this dedicated funding,” she said in a statement. “There is now a clear risk for staffing impacts and program cuts.”
The plaintiffs are asking a Rhode Island federal judge to order the Trump administration to distribute the funding.
Ten Republican senators, including Sen. Lisa Murkowski, sent a letter to the administration July 16 urging it to release the money. The Trump administration said it would unfreeze some of the funds meant for after-school programs, but Gray said her district was still waiting for the money to arrive.
