Education Department consolidates 18 Title I programs eliminating $4.5 billion

Trump's FY2026 "skinny" budget proposes consolidating 18 existing K-12 formula and competitive grant programs into a single $2 billion "K-12 Simplified Funding Program," cutting roughly $4.5 billion from the combined current funding level of about $6.5 billion.

The White House proposal would eliminate the 🏛️21st Century Community Learning Centers program — the federal government's primary afterschool and summer learning grant — which receives about $1.3 billion a year and serves roughly 1.4 million students, prompting warnings that many afterschool sites could close.

The budget calls for an approximately 15% reduction in overall Department of Education discretionary funding, proposing $66.7 billion for FY2026 compared with $78.7 billion the prior year — a cut the administration frames as part of winding down the department.

Rural and low-income districts that depend heavily on federal grants would be hit especially hard: in Maine's MSAD 54, federal dollars fund 74 staff positions, free meals, mental health supports, and afterschool programming that local tax bases cannot replace.

A wave of personnel reductions at the Education Department in March 2025 left the 🏛️National Center for Education Statistics with only three staff after most employees were placed on administrative leave or laid off — a change researchers warn will undermine federal education data collection.

The administration also halted more than $1 billion in multiyear federal grants for school-based mental health services authorized after the 2022 Uvalde school shooting, cutting 14,000 mental health professionals in training for K-12 schools in virtually every state.

The budget preserves core formula programs — maintaining Title I at roughly $18 billion and proposing an IDEA increase to about $14.9 billion — but shifts dozens of smaller targeted programs into a block grant that eliminates program-specific protections and reporting requirements.

Because a president's budget is a request, Congress decides which changes become law; the bipartisan Senate appropriations committee advanced a bill preserving 21st CCLC at $1.329 billion, demonstrating that constituent pressure can constrain executive budget proposals.