Recent changes in the U.S. Department of Education have left people wondering if the department can maintain its functions, including providing funding for local schools.
Evanston/Skokie School District 65 and Evanston Township High School District 202 receive 9% and 5% of their budgets, respectively, from the federal government.
Answers right now are thin, but whatever happens to these funding sources, Evanston’s local schools rely mostly on local revenues like property taxes and some state funding.
But students and operations possibly affected by federal funding changes are some of the schools’ most vulnerable, including low-income students and those with disabilities.
Funding sources
Funding sources for local schools on a federal level include Title I under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). These laws provide money to schools with large populations of lower-income students and mandate free education for students with disabilities, respectively.
District 202 relies on $4.48 million in federal aid this school year, around 5% of its total budget. These federal funding sources include Title I/II funds, food subsidy funds, IDEA money and Department of Human Services funding.
This year, the school received $650,000 in free and reduced lunch food subsidies, $320,000 in Title I funding and $2.56 million in combined IDEA funding, according to the school’s revenue sources on the 2024-25 budget.
District 65 relies even more on federal funding, getting roughly $10.5 million in federal grants this year. That’s around 9% of the total budget.
This year, District 65 received $1.36 million in Title I funding to help serve low-income students, and $2.27 million in IDEA funds for special education. Expenses for special education have risen in the district in recent years, too, making it an ever more expensive thing to sustain.
U.S. Department of Education role
Threats to the existence of the U.S. Department of Education might also impact individual high schoolers in their college search, too.
Last year, 264,460 students in Illinois received federal PELL grants to help them attend college. Over half of PELL grant recipients come from families that make less than $20,000 a year. The average PELL grant in 2024 was $4,491.
According to Demisha W. Lee, chief program officer at Evanston Scholars, around 90% of Evanston Scholars’ students are eligible for PELL grants. Every year, Evanston Scholars helps students involved with college access and success, including with applying for financial aid.
“The absence of these dollars can/will put college affordability out of range for not only Evanston Scholars, but the vast majority of low to middle income families,” Lee said in an email to the RoundTable. “This money is critical to college affordability for over 6 million students each year.”
Early tracking of which departments in the DOE saw cuts showed that the federal student loan department took a large hit in staff cuts.
What’s next?
On Tuesday, the Department of Education laid off more than 1,300 workers. With the other layoffs and buyouts already completed at the department, roughly half of its previous 4,100 employees will remain.
President Trump also still may sign an executive order instructing Education Secretary Linda McMahon to “take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education,” NPR reported last week.
He cannot actually close the department through an executive order. Congress created it and would have to be the authority to shut it down. This is also the case with laws like Title I and IDEA.
McMahon also said in a statement Tuesday that the department “will continue to deliver on all statutory programs that fall under the agency’s purview, including formula funding, student loans, Pell Grants, funding for special needs students, and competitive grantmaking.”
But these staffing cuts have raised concerns about the department’s ability to do so, and maintain regular functions.
The federal student loan website already experienced significant outages on Wednesday after the cuts to staffing.
Democratic attorneys general in 20 states and the District of Columbia have filed a lawsuit against the administration for these DOE cuts.
The suit alleges that these cuts are an attempt to dismantle the DOE, which can only be done through Congress.
While it’s unclear what will happen next, experts are saying that this staffing reduction hit will make it much more difficult for remaining employees to keep up with workload and student needs.
How U.S. Department of Education changes could impact Evanston schools is from Evanston RoundTable, Evanston's most trusted source for unbiased, in-depth journalism.