School districts and adult learning centers across Vermont are beginning to feel the impact of the $26 million in federal funding President Donald Trump’s administration is withholding from the state.
The U.S. Department of Education told state education officials on the evening of June 30 — less than 24 hours before the funds were set to be dispersed — that they would be conducting a review of the grant programs. No timeline was given for when that would be completed.
The funding pause was part of a broader freeze by the Trump administration of more than $6 billion nationwide for after-school and summer programs and English language instruction.
Six federal grant programs were affected, including Title IIA and Title IIIA grants, which respectively fund professional development for teachers and staff, and support services for English language learners.
In Vermont, the grants for years have helped fund nearly 100 afterschool and summer programs, serving more than 10,000 students, as well as an array of English language programs, according to the office of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.
The abrupt pause in funding has left many school districts in limbo. The announcement, which came just days before the Fourth of July holiday, has sent school officials scrambling to realign their budgets without federal funds.
That is likely to be a tough task for some districts. In the Winooski School District, the funding pause has left a roughly $700,000 budget hole for the high-poverty district, according to the district’s director of finance and operations, Sarah Haven.
The district has primarily used those dollars to fund staff salaries and has signed contracts with its staff through the 2025-26 school year, Haven said.
Because the district is a designated high-poverty district, officials have been able to pool those federal grant dollars together and have primarily tied them to salaries, Haven said.
“The hardest thing about what’s happened here is that this decision came after we had done a lot of financial planning, and we’re caught really off guard,” said Michael Eppolito, the director of curriculum and learning with the Winooski School District.
“We don’t really know what the impact is going to be, other than somebody is going to have to pay for it, particularly because most of this money is tied up in positions that we’ve already agreed that we will pay,” he said.
Eppolito said he expects to cut programming that is not vital.
“We need to start looking anywhere we can to trim things that are not essential,” he said. He pointed to a digital program teachers use to support math and English language arts instruction in the classroom.
Haven said she expects leadership to begin developing an action plan in the coming weeks. Any changes to the district’s budget allocations will need board approval.
She anticipates the district will be able to manage the hit this upcoming school year but said harder decisions may need to be made during next year’s budgeting cycle.
“In the long run it is going to impact the students that have the fewest resources or the most vulnerable students — there’s no doubt that they’re going to be the ones that are hit,” Eppolito said. “And it will be really apparent in Winooski because anything that we cut out is going to affect those kids right away.”
Budget shocks
Other districts took similar hits to their budget. The Essex Westford School District had allocated in its fiscal year 2026 budget more than $400,000 from federal grant funding, according to Mark Holodick, the district’s new superintendent.
“It’s a significant source of funding for us,” he said. “We’ve already had a number of internal meetings. We’re beginning to plan accordingly if these dollars are not released.”
In the Harwood Unified Union District, Superintendent Michael Leichliter said the funding pause is forcing the district to pause professional development programming.
Leichliter said the federal funding pause threatens to exacerbate an already difficult budget climate for school districts in the state.
“We’ve already been in that trim back mode,” he said. “We’re getting to the point where in order to provide basic services, it will be challenging to reduce any further.”
Holodick, likewise, said his district over the past two years has cut $10 million from its budget.
“What I don’t want to see is the mindset shift from the expectation being, ‘We are providing an outstanding education to our students,’ to ‘This is an adequate educational system where we’re getting by,'” he said. “That worries me greatly with the way we’re chipping away at our budget and resources for our students and families.”
‘Wait and see’
Local school districts are not the only organizations that are affected. The grant money also helped fund adult learning centers, institutions which offer residents a path to earn a high school diploma or GED, as well as offer English language classes and workforce development programs.
Tara Brooks, the head of VT Adult Learning, which runs adult learning services in seven counties throughout the state, said the funding pause will “drastically impact our ability to serve students.”
Her organization last year served nearly 1,500 residents, helping some earn their GED or bolster their English language skills.
Brooks estimated the pause will amount to a nearly $500,000 hit to her organization. If the funds are not released, she said she will have to cut staffing.
“There’s no way around it,” she said. “We already have wait lists for a lot of our bigger locations, so in Chittenden and in and some of our southern locations … it’s only going to increase the wait lists that we have if we have to reduce staff.”
Sean-Marie Oller, who operates The Tutorial Center in Bennington County, said the roughly $36,000 cut to her organization means she will have to cut back on night classes.
“We will continue to do the work with what we have, but I’m cutting people’s hours back, I’m cutting two classes that would be in the evening,” Oller said. “Things like that impact people directly.”
The Vermont Agency of Education has yet to hear from federal officials since their decision last week, according to Toren Ballard, a spokesperson for the agency.
Ballard said the agency is “closely coordinating with the governor, the attorney general and our congressional delegation on next steps, as well as continuing to provide intensive support to school districts.”
It’s unclear what the Trump administration will ultimately decide about the funds. Similar federal funding cuts in other sectors have resulted in litigation against the federal government.
Sanders wrote to Secretary of Education Linda McMahon and Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought last week, demanding they immediately reverse what he called “their illegal and unconstitutional decision” to withhold those funds.
“Your unexpected and cruel decision has sent shockwaves, distress and heartbreak in local communities all over America who now may be forced to cancel or substantially delay summer school activities that had been planned for months,” Sanders wrote.
“Further, your illegal actions have denied teachers the funding they rely on for professional development,” he added. “Important services for English learners have been halted. Thousands of school principals, superintendents, and school board members may be forced to lay off dedicated staff. And school district budgets in every State and community have been negatively impacted. That is beyond unacceptable.”
Patrick Barham, a spokesperson for Sanders, said they have not gotten a response to their letter.
Some are holding out hope that the funds will be released. Brooks said her organization is “in a wait and see mentality.”
“We’re trying not to knee-jerk react to the news yet,” she said.
Catherine Kalkstein, the head of Central VT Adult Education, which serves Washington, Orange and Lamoille counties, said her organization is relying on reserve funds in the meantime.
“We don’t want to impact our students in any negative way and disrupt the services that we’re currently providing,” she said. “We don’t know whether these cuts are going to stick.”
“But,” Kalkstein added, “it’s not something we can continue to do long term.”
Holodick hoped that officials at the federal level would “come to their senses and release this funding — not just for kids in Essex Westford, or Vermont, but for the students across this country right now.”
Correction: An earlier version of this story misspelled Sean-Marie Oller’s name.
