The Trump administration has notified schools receiving Biden-era mental health grants that the checks will not be delivered after this year, putting an end to a $1 billion funding project intended to reduce gun violence in schools.
The funding came from the most significant piece of bipartisan gun violence legislation in decades, signed into law by President Biden in 2022 in the wake of the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. The bill sent money to grant programs to help schools hire more psychologists, counselors and other mental health workers.
The decision to pull the funds comes amid widespread cuts to federal education funding, as part of a larger effort by the Trump administration to reduce government spending. In spite of these attempts, President Trump’s first 100 days in office saw $200 billion more in spending compared to the same period last year.
The slashed funds appear to be another casualty of the Trump administration’s rollback of diversity, equity and inclusion policies in schools.
“Recipients used the funding to implement race-based actions like recruiting quotas in ways that have nothing to do with mental health and could hurt the very students the grants are supposed to help. We owe it to American families to ensure that tax-payer dollars are supporting evidence-based practices that are truly focused on improving students’ mental health,” Madi Biedermann, deputy assistant secretary for communications at the Department of Education, said in a statement made to NPR.
Conservative strategist Christopher Rufo first made the cuts public with his social media posts, AP reported. He claimed the grants were a “slush fund for activists under the guise of mental health,” citing portions of the bill that listed goals to hire a certain numbers of nonwhite counselors, as well as other inclusion-based policies.
The impact of the bill is yet to be seen, but school officials predict losses. Superintendent Derek Fialkiewicz in Corbett, Ore., more than tripled the number of mental health professionals in his district, which initially had only two, using the grant money. Now, he told NPR, he worries he will have to lay off the once-federally funded workers.
“To be able to provide those [mental health] services and then have it ripped away for something that is completely out of our control, it’s horrible,” he said. “I feel for our students more than anything because they’re not gonna get the services that they need.”