About $68 million in expected federal K-12 funding for Alabama schools is now tied up in a freeze announced this week by the Trump administration.
The grant money was expected starting July 1.
“These are funds that Congress has authorized for the 2025-26 school year to support classrooms across the state,” State Superintendent Eric Mackey said in a written statement. “Much of this amount is directly tied to salaries for teachers, teacher aides, and other employees. Some of the funds are tied to affordable after-school programs.”
Nationwide, the grants total more than $6 billion in federal education grants meant for immigrant and low-income students. Officials say they are reviewing the funds to ensure alignment with President Donald Trump’s priorities.
Last week, the Office of Management and Budget claimed some grants were misused to support immigrants in the country illegally or promote LGBTQ+ inclusion. Programs for English learners and migrant children are among those affected, leaving schools scrambling to adjust.
Advocates say the majority of children in English language programs were born in the United States.
“Many of these grant programs have been grossly misused to subsidize a radical leftwing agenda,” the Office of Management and Budget said in a statement.
Advocates for low-income and immigrant children connected the grant freeze to the Trump administration’s larger crackdown on immigrants. Two of the federal programs put on hold were appropriated by Congress to help support English proficiency of students still learning the language and migrant children who move with their parents to follow agricultural and other jobs.
School districts use the $890 million earmarked for English learners in a wide range of purposes, from training teachers’ aides who work with English learners, to running summer schools designed for them, to hiring family liaisons who speak the parents’ native languages. The $375 million appropriated for migrant education is often used to hire dedicated teachers to travel close to where students live.
By “cherrypicking extreme examples,” the administration is seeking to conflate all students learning English with people who are in the country illegally, said Amaya Garcia, who directs education research at New America, a left-leaning think tank in Washington, D.C.
In reality, the majority of English learners in public schools were born in the United States, according to data from the Migration Policy Institute.
Even if the students lack legal status, states may not deny public education to children in the country illegally under a 1982 Supreme Court decision known as Plyler v. Doe.