The Florida Department of Education has notified Central Florida schools that they will receive, this week, all or most of the allocated federal funding that had been frozen.
The U.S. Department of Education had withheld $6 billion from schools across the country during a Trump administration review of the education budget.
Almost all of the $396 million that had been allocated to but frozen for Central Florida K-12 schools has been restored or is in the process of being released this week.
Florida Education Association President Andrew Spar said this means public schools won’t have to lay off staff and make other cuts weeks ahead of a new school year.
Spar said many districts were considering those measures.
“Some of them were in the process of making cuts,” Spar said. “In fact, I know one school district in the Central Florida area where they were talking about having teachers come in and starting to tell them they're going to be reassigned to other positions. And once the news came down that the money was coming, they stopped that and continued as they had planned.”
Spar said it’s thanks to grassroots efforts in Central Florida that this money was restored. Educational groups like the FEA had also sued the Trump administration to get the money back.
“So I think it's a great thing that the money got released. And I think kudos to everyone who got involved, who called their Congress person, who called their senator and said, ‘Hey, the administration should not be able to hold money back that has been allocated to our schools, and schools are counting on you',” Spar said.
In total, the Trump administration’s Office of Management and Budget is releasing $5.5 billion of the funds across the country, with only some grants withheld as they supported “woke” programming.
The OMB started to release federal funding for some educational programs last week, beginning with afterschool programs like the Boys & Girls Clubs of America. The Boys & Girls Clubs of Central Florida in Orlando received $2.4 million.
At a press conference last Thursday, Gov. Ron DeSantis correctly predicted the federal funds would be restored to Florida schools, saying the OMB was specifically looking for programming that had already been banned from K-12 schools in the state.
“I think what the administration is doing is they are not going to give funding to school districts that are going to pursue harmful policies and objectives," DeSantis said. "In Florida, you're required to honor parents' rights. You're required to have the core subjects and live up to our standards. So I don't think there's going to be any issues in Florida for not following the rules of the road.”
With this news, several school districts are publicly celebrating as they receive funds.
"We are very pleased to hear that this federal funding is being released,” the Polk County Public Schools said in a statement. “This funding provides necessary support for students throughout our district. We greatly appreciate the opportunity to continue our life-changing work made possible by this federal funding."
In Marion County, a district statement said: “Marion County Public Schools received confirmation that about $5,583,000 in grant funding was restored. Nearly $4.3 million of this was for salaries so this will significantly impact our schools in a very positive way.”
