Fairfax Co. superintendent concerned about impact of $13M in frozen grant funding
Over $13 million in federal funding for Fairfax County Public Schools has been frozen while the U.S. Department of Education reviews the grants, a step that school leaders said could impact teachers and multilingual learners.
Superintendent Michelle Reid said she learned about the funding freeze in a message from the Virginia state superintendent’s office this week. The grants typically help cover the cost of professional development for teachers, and several are “significant funding for multilingual students,” Reid told WTOP.
Reid first mentioned the frozen funds during Thursday night’s school board meeting. If the funds are frozen for a long time, Reid said the district will have to “create some alternative planning.”
“When we talk about freezing funds or cutting programming, we’re talking about people,” Reid said. “These are real children, real educators, real families and we’re a real community.”
The U.S. Department of Education is reviewing the funding, though Reid said it’s unclear “what that means, or what about the funding needs review at this time, since it’s previously been appropriated.”
WTOP contacted both the U.S. Department of Education and Virginia Department of Education for comment.
The grants that have funding frozen, Reid said, are Title I Part C, Title II Part A, Title III Part A, Title IV Part A, Title V Part B and Adult Basic and Literacy Education state grants.
Title I Part C, for one, describes the migrant education program, which has a goal of making sure
“all migratory children reach challenging academic standards and graduate with a high school diploma (or complete a HSED) that prepares them for responsible citizenship, further learning, and productive employment,” according to the education department website.
Fairfax County has 48,500 multilingual students, Reid said, and the freeze “will potentially alter programming to support our students who are multi-language learners.”
For Virginia’s largest school district, the frozen funds total over $13 million.
Scott Brabrand, executive director of the Virginia Association of School Superintendents, said he and other education leaders met with the state’s congressional delegation this week about similar concerns. Rural districts could be particularly affected, he said.
“We want the review complete and funds released,” Brabrand said. “There will be an impact if funding is not released before the school year starts.”
The budget process has been completed, Reid said, so “we’re implementing the plans that we budgeted for. Any shifting right now is clearly disruptive to both our planning and our programming moving forward.”
District leaders will meet next week to review programming and determine whether some of the frozen funds could be covered using carryover dollars, Reid said.