As of July 1, the United States Department of Education (USDOE) withheld nearly 6.9 billion in K-12 funding. These funds include support for migrant education, supporting effective instruction, English language acquisition, student support/academic enrichment and 21st century community learning centers.
“We had heard at the very beginning of January that there was a threat of pulling back all title funds,” superintendent Michael Schumacher said. “So we started to do some strategizing around what-ifs, if we were to lose that amount of money.”
The Shawnee Mission School District (SMSD) took to social media on July 10 that the district will be losing $992,716 in funds. While nearly 300 thousand is already needed to pay staff salaries, along with benefits. Over 500 thousand support training and preparations for teachers and admin. Over 151 thousand support programs and activities for student success, about 256 thousand funds the English Language Learners (ELL) program and 40.5 thousand support quality programs for migratory children.
“We tasked the departments who were going to be impacted, leadership in learning, human resources, take a look at our budgets, and then try to determine what are the must-haves and what are the nice to haves,” Schumacher said.
After about three and a half weeks of planning what the next steps are and what the following school year would look like for all public schools outside SMSD, the USDOE unfroze funds on July 25th.
“It was going to be really bad for some school districts,” Schumacher said. “I think it is important for those of us in leadership to advocate on behalf of all of us. It’s not just Shawnee Mission,but I felt a need to use the strength of our voice because of our size and really advocate on behalf of our peers. ”
Our communications person saw an article in Edweek and sent it to us and then it started to flow through other means. And so, again, we were working with some of our representatives. and shortly after that emailed us and said, hey, good news. It seems like they’re going to release the fund. So, yeah, it was a positive day for sure.
