From the start, Na’Siah Martin and H’Sanii Blankenship’s July trip to Washington, D.C., was destined to be a riveting stop on the teenagers’ passage to adulthood. There were the scheduled meetings with lawmakers, the monuments, the reflecting pool near where Martin Luther King Jr. broadcast his dream for racial equality 62 summers ago.

For years, the pair have been involved in the Boys and Girls Clubs of the Austin Area, the revered summer and after-school program that was now making it possible for the two blossoming leaders to meet with Texans in Congress and present their game plan for tackling mental health challenges among student-athletes, a struggle both were deeply familiar with.

But two weeks before their arrival on Capitol Hill, President Donald Trump’s administration threw one of many curveballs lobbed during the first months of his second term. The U.S. Department of Education on the last day of June that it would pause the disbursement of nearly $7 billion in funds for teacher development, support for students learning English, and before- and after-school programs predominantly serving low-income families, pending a review of how schools had put the money to use. That notice went out a day before states expected to begin receiving the money.

For Texas, it meant a potential loss of nearly $670 million. For Martin and Blankenship, it potentially meant losing the Boys and Girls Club, a space that has aided their growth as both leaders and individuals. Martin, 18, graduated from Navarro Early College High School in June and has participated in the club since elementary school. Blankenship, a 17-year-old incoming senior at the same school, has participated in the club for about as long as Martin.

The focus of their trip immediately broadened: They now wanted to convince federal lawmakers that cutting the funds would harm Texas kids.

“These programs aren’t just for fun,” Blankenship said. “They actually give us resources, help us grow into adults instead of just coming here and just goofing around and stuff like that. These programs, they help us cope with things we need to cope with.”

The education funding freeze was typical of the Trump administration. In recent months, it has also cut billions of dollars in and for families in poverty; in financially supporting universities; billions for foreign aid and public broadcasting stations; thousands of employees working in ; and sought to overhaul the U.S. immigration landscape through actions like attempting to .

Those cuts and changes have often been sweeping and abrupt, disrupting federally funded services and programs serving large swaths of people of color, people with disabilities, low-income families, LGBTQ+ Americans and immigrants. And they have come at the same time the administration has moved to for some of America’s wealthiest households.

“We can’t look at just the cuts to education in isolation,” said Weadé James, senior director of K-12 education policy at the Center for American Progress. “I think what we’re witnessing is really the undoing of a lot of progress, and also actions that are really going to keep a lot of families trapped in cyclical and generational poverty.”

Ongoing changes to the country’s educational landscape are only one part of Trump’s larger goals to eliminate what the second-term president has deemed “wasteful” spending and crack down on anything he views as diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. A large piece of his efforts involve closing the Department of Education and sending “education back to the states,” though most decisions about education and public school funding already happen at the state and local levels.

“Teachers will be unshackled from burdensome regulations and paperwork, empowering them to get back to teaching basic subjects. Taxpayers will no longer be burdened with tens of billions of dollars of waste on progressive social experiments and obsolete programs,” Trump Secretary of Education Linda McMahon earlier this year. “K-12 and college students will be relieved of the drudgery caused by administrative burdens—and positioned to achieve success in a future career they love.”

The disarray has resulted in profound consequences for Texas, one of the largest and most diverse states in the nation, home to more than 9,000 school campuses and 5.5 million students — the majority of whom live in low-income households and come from Hispanic and Black families. Public schools serve as a safety net for many of them. They are one of the few places where some children have consistent access to meals, where working-class parents know their kids will be taken care of.

The prospect of federal cuts to school programs triggered a wave of concern across the state. For 44-year-old Clarissa Mendez, it jeopardized the after-school program her two daughters attend while she works as a nurse in Laredo.

“I’m on shaky grounds right now because I don’t know what I’m going to do,” Mendez said last month. “I understand there has to be cuts. I understand the government needs to find out how to save money. But why does it have to affect us and our kids?”

For Gay Hibbitts, a 57-year-old trying to become a certified teacher in rural Throckmorton, the worries began months earlier.

Earlier this year, the federal government cut roughly from a program that helps teaching candidates like her pay for their education as they gain hands-on classroom experience. That left participating rural districts with one of two options: cover the costs at a time when schools are financially struggling to make ends meet, or get rid of their preparation programs during a teacher shortage.

In both scenarios, Hibbitts said, children would pay the price.

“They’re the main ones that are going to suffer,” she said.

For as long as Martin and Blankenship can remember, they have each helped raise their younger siblings, a responsibility that has been rewarding but stressful. On the one hand, Martin said, her siblings look up to her, and her academic success has motivated them to do well in school. On the other hand, Blankenship said, taking on adult responsibilities at an early age meant missing out on the type of exhilarating childhood experiences many kids desire.

Since joining the Boys and Girls Club, the program has provided them the space to be kids.

They receive tutoring and time to finish homework. They go to live sporting events, watch movies and listen to music — SZA some days, Lauryn Hill on others. They play sports, cards and board games. They can earn scholarships. They find mentorship.

“We’re the future adults, so I feel like if you help us now with programs like this, that make us happy, that give us stress relief, that let us be kids, because we can’t be kids at home, I feel like that’ll equate to happier adults,” Martin said.

Neither Martin nor Blankenship enjoys public speaking. Martin actually fears it. But with the Austin Boys and Girls Club’s future in jeopardy, they decided to lean into the discomfort and use the face time with lawmakers and their staffers to make a case for the after-school program.

The pair and several other clubmates sat down with the staff of Texas Republican Sens. and . They also met with Rep. , an Austin Democrat. The kids wore blue polo shirts with the words “America Needs Club Kids” etched in white. Martin, rocking a black one-button blazer, led the way.

“​​I gotta let these people know,” she thought.

Erica Peña is responsible for taking care of about 400 kids as she coordinates Hebbronville Elementary’s summer and after-school programs. Working with an assistant and about 25 paid volunteers, the 37-year-old often stays after hours — sometimes as late as 7 p.m. — depending on when parents can leave work to get there.

Peña breaks the after-school schedule into blocks. The first hour is for tutorials and worksheets, the later hours are usually for more fun activities like arts and crafts, kickball and cooking.

But shortly after the federal education funds were paused, the district notified Peña that it could no longer afford to keep her or the program.

“I cried, to be honest,” Peña said. “I was very upset, because I love my job, I love my students, and a lot of it is about them.”

Hebbronville, in far South Texas, is home to about 4,300 mostly Hispanic Texans, one-third of whom live the poverty line. The town has no H-E-B or Walmart. The local health clinic is often busy. The town has a few day care centers, but they can get pricey.

For the average Texas family, child care is financially out of reach. The sits at $10,706 a year — or $892 each month. That’s more than one-fourth of the average cost for in-state tuition at a four-year public college, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Access to no-cost options, like the Hebbronville after-school program, has on student attendance, behavior and learning, have found over the years. Such programs also keep families from having to choose between leaving their children unattended or taking time off work to stay home.

“That has a direct impact on future economic prospects for that entire family,” said Jenna Courtney, CEO of the Texas Partnership for Out of School Time, a youth advocacy organization.

Mendez, the 44-year-old Hebbronville mother with two daughters, commutes about an hour to and from Laredo every weekday to make it to her job as a nurse. She goes in at 9 a.m. and gets out at 5 p.m. Her husband operates heavy equipment and has an unpredictable work schedule.

The after-school program “gives me enough time to get to town to pick them up,” she said. But with the district planning to shutter operations, Mendez needed to find care providers who could look after her children until 6-6:30 p.m., when she gets home. She pays about $1,000 a month for that service during the summer when the school program is out of session. It would likely cost her another $800 per month during the academic year.

“That’s a big chunk of our money,” Mendez said.

Without the program, she would need to find a second job.

“We’ll do what we gotta do,” she added. “But I don’t understand.”

Hibbitts, the 57-year-old from Throckmorton, recently joined a federally funded program that would allow her to support students in her rural hometown between Abilene and Wichita Falls. It places aspiring full-time teachers in classrooms under the supervision of more seasoned teachers and provides financial assistance for their education and living expenses.

In exchange, the district gets to retain educators familiar with the community and eager to teach.

Based on her own experience as a Throckmorton student in the 1970s, Hibbitts knows the monumental role teachers can play in a child’s life.

“They were almost like your second mother,” she said.

Texas has the of any state in the country. Of its roughly 5.5 million students, attend class on a rural campus. Those schools often have to educate their students with less: Less access to the internet and technology, less staffing, and less money to pay and retain teachers.

Texas lawmakers have acknowledged that rural teachers often do not make as much as their urban and suburban counterparts, and that many have left the profession because of a lack of support. Public schools over time have also grown more reliant on hiring unlicensed educators, a trend playing out in the rural parts of Texas.

In response, state officials recently aimed at raising teacher pay, particularly in rural schools, and enhancing teacher preparation programs.

During her first year in the Throckmorton program, Hibbitts learned how to incorporate state learning standards into lesson plans. She learned how to keep students engaged. She helped a child who struggled academically and acted out at the beginning of the school year become a “model student” who thrived in reading by the year’s end.

Then, one Sunday afternoon in April, her superintendent called her.

The Trump administration had abruptly cut the federal dollars that helped schools fund educator preparation initiatives like the one she was participating in. It would affect about 30 people across 11 rural districts in Texas.

Hibbitts was one of them.

In Hebbronville, Mendez and Peña each had to confront their own harsh realities. Mendez would have to search for child care in a community with few affordable options. Peña, the after-school program coordinator, would have to find a new job.

In Austin, Martin and Blankenship had trouble picturing life without the Boys and Girls Club.

Club leaders began preparing a memo to notify parents about the funding uncertainty and what it could mean for their kids. Nothing had come of the , and efforts seeking the release of the frozen funds. The Texas kids who spoke with congressional lawmakers and staff at the U.S. Capitol hadn’t heard anything either. When the administration would make a decision about the funds was anyone’s guess.

Trump responded on a Friday.

After weeks of uncertainty, his administration that it would .

When Blankenship got the news, he sprinted out of his room in excitement and told his mom. The moment was just as surreal for Martin.

“Knowing that it could have been me, my story, or any other club kids’ story,” Martin said, “it made me happy. But it was like, ‘Dang. I was a part — we were a part of that.’”

Peña, the Hebbronville Elementary program coordinator, was relieved. The mood in her group chat with people from the district’s after-school programs was “pretty ecstatic.” They all cried. Getting the funds meant they no longer had to look for new jobs, and parents like Mendez wouldn’t have to go searching for a place to take care of their kids after school.

Hibbitts, meanwhile, wasn’t immediately able to bask in the good news, as it did not restore the federal funds for her district’s teacher preparation program. But in early August, her supervisor notified her that the program was officially back up and running for the 2025-26 school year. The news cleared the way for the 57-year-old to graduate at the end of the year and to start teaching full time by the next.

“This has been life changing for somebody of my age, to be able to step up and to step into the world of education,” Hibbitts said. “I’m finishing my dream. And as my kids like to say, ‘Mom, you’re going to be 58 years old walking the stage.’”

Still, she recognizes that so much uncertainty around federal funding means there is no guarantee others will get the same chance.

Uncertainty is what Peña also keeps coming back to.

“It just gets me upset with the administration, because, why? What was the purpose of the freeze? Why did you do that? You’re hurting people, not just adults, but children,” Peña said. “It’s like in a divorce, you don’t want to put the children in the middle. If something were to happen between parents, you never put children in the middle. And by doing that, you put children in the middle.”

This article originally appeared in ,  a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

Having pledged to get rid of the U.S. Department of Education and get “woke” out of public schools, Donald Trump is returning to office. The coming year could start to reveal what these promises mean for American schools that face significant challenges, including looming building closures, stagnant student learning, and big questions about the very purpose of education.

Here are some of the education stories we’re watching in 2025.

What a Trump presidency means for schools

President-elect Donald Trump had some strong words for American schools on the campaign trail. He and “send education back to the states.” He also , an endeavor that presumably would require some bureaucracy to oversee American schools.

With Trump returning to the White House, the big questions are whether he’ll follow through on campaign pledges — and whether American students will feel the difference in their classrooms.

Most observers think actually abolishing the U.S. Department of Education is unlikely. It would require an act of Congress, and there’s probably not enough votes. But the idea does seem to have more traction than in the past, and a bill that would — as envisioned in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 — was recently filed by a GOP senator.

The Trump administration could also cut funding for or eliminate certain programs, and replace career bureaucrats with political appointees, all without getting rid of the department. Civil rights enforcement could also look very different.

Some Republican state leaders have associated with federal compliance. They envision but with fewer requirements around how to spend it.

Trump has also promised to roll back new Title IX regulations that treat discrimination against transgender studnets as a form of sex discrimination. Conservative parent groups and Republican attorneys general have already sued to block the new rules, which LGBTQ advocates saw as . Some conservatives want these cases to still go to the Supreme Court in hopes the court finds gender identity is not protected under laws barring sex discrimination.

Increased immigration enforcement also is . Reports indicate that limited immigration enforcement in schools, hospitals, and churches. . School leaders and advocates are trying to balance the reality that they may not be able to protect all students with the .

School closures are increasing, but not everywhere

Faced with declining student populations, higher staffing costs, and the end of federal pandemic relief money, districts around the country are closing schools — or doing serious fiscal gymnastics to avoid it.

The from 2023 shows school enrollment holding nearly steady from the year before, but still down 2.5% from pre-pandemic levels. Notably, while high school enrollment has stabilized, elementary enrollment is down, suggesting there’s no big rebound on the horizon. The ratings agency for 2025 due to falling enrollment and lower revenues.

Declining birth rates, gentrification, high housing prices, and more families opting for private school and home schooling have all played a role. In many cases, these trends were evident before the pandemic, but school districts used federal COVID relief dollars to shore up budget holes. In some cases they also added staff and raised teacher pay, exacerbating the fiscal crunch to come.

Already, leaders in , , and have voted to close schools. and are making plans to do the same.

The case of P.S. 25 in Brooklyn, New York, . New York City spends $45,420 per child to keep the 52-student school open, yet it struggles to afford art, music, or after-school programming.

But these decisions are often wrenching and . Citing lack of community support, Boston . So did San Francisco — and the . The Chicago school board put a , even as .

With school closures come questions of equity and fairness. In many cities, the schools with the lowest enrollment serve mostly students of color. But keeping those schools open might mean students don’t have the same resources as their peers in other neighborhoods. Some advocates have to give students a shot at a better education. That approach harkens back to education reform policies that have largely fallen out of favor.

Many school districts are also trying to limit layoffs, which could reduce the savings they see from school closures. Districts are also trying to find ways to maintain tutoring and counseling programs they started during the pandemic.

NAEP could add to discouraging post-pandemic scores

Results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, are expected in early 2025. The tests were given in spring 2024 and will provide insight into the state of student learning four years after COVID school closures.

The results are much anticipated after a series of tests, studies, and analyses have painted a conflicting but often discouraging picture of student recovery. Most recently, a major international test showed that , with the declines concentrated among lower performing students. This widening gap between high- and low-performing students was .

Similarly, state and local test results show gaps based on income, race, and ethnicity. A found that students on average had recovered to close to pre-pandemic levels, a surprising outcome, but that analysis also found that academic inequality was growing.

Meanwhile, are showing delays, as are .

The big question going forward is: What are we going to do about the state of student learning?

Statewide efforts to improve math and reading instruction continue to gather steam, but for better or for worse, schools with low test scores don’t face many consequences. The research on aggressive school turnaround efforts is decidedly mixed. Democrats have largely backed away from test-based accountability, and Republicans are more focused on expanding school choice.

How states and Congress could expand school choice

Private school choice has exploded in recent years, with a dozen states now running universal or near-universal voucher or education savings accounts programs that give parents money to send their children to private school or educate them at home.

Trump’s election could give these efforts a boost. He’s promised to expand school choice, and Republicans in Congress are making another push on a federal tax-credit scholarship proposal championed by former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos that could make billions available, including in Democratic states that have been hostile to vouchers and education savings accounts.

At the state level, many anti-voucher Republicans who had teamed up with Democrats to block private school choice lost their primaries as outside money poured into obscure legislative races. Now pro-school choice governors and lawmakers are making new pushes in , , , and elsewhere.

These coalitions could still fracture. A major voucher expansion seemed inevitable in Tennessee this year until disagreements over testing requirements and funding sank the deal. Now to expand them.

The meaning of high school is changing

Education advocates for years focused on getting more students to and through college. We still haven’t solved that problem, but a lot of the shine has come off “college for all.” Student debt concerns loom large, and there are widespread labor shortages in the trades. for , which is also being touted as a way to fight disengagement.

At the same time, states are ditching exit exams. This year Massachusetts voters overturned a requirement that students pass a standardized test to graduate high school, and starting in the 2027-28 school year. New Jersey — one of just six states to still have an exit exam — .

All of this is fueling a conversation about the meaning of high school, one that’s resurfaced periodically since the high school movement in the first half of the 20th century .

That played out in Indiana this year with the . An initial proposal called for to reflect that fewer Indiana students are attending college. To satisfy critics who said work requirements would make it , the state ultimately settled on a diploma that offers multiple pathways.

Other states, such as Colorado, are developing programs that alongside classroom learning.

But .

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.