Already in the grip of a financial crisis, San Francisco’s public schools face yet another potential financial blow — this time directed at its most vulnerable students.
Education officials, teachers and experts worry that San Francisco’s school district stands to lose tens of millions of dollars in federal funding under the incoming Trump administration. The concern stems from the former and future president’s announcement in October that “closing up the Department of Education in Washington D.C.” will be an early goal.
While the threat remains theoretical, and skeptics say dismantling the Department of Education will prove difficult, Trump campaigned in part on hostility towards progressive school policies. Federal funding for public schools is largely directed, by law, to assisting low-income and special needs students.
Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation's prescription for how Trump can “dismantle the deep state,” and viewed by many policy experts as a blueprint for the incoming administration, suggests ending funding for public schools within a decade, according to Carol Kocivar, a former ombudsperson for special education at SFUSD.
“I think that doing away with the Department of Education, and doing away with federal support, particularly for our poor children, and our special needs children, will be a disaster,” Kocivar said. “It's a threat, particularly to a whole generation of young, low-income, special needs kids.”
While federal dollars comprise a small percentage of school districts’ total funding, “it's a very important percentage for these children,” she said.
The loss would be particularly painful for San Francisco, due to the millions of dollars, hundreds of teachers, and many programs SFUSD already must cut to fix its preexisting budget crisis.
Federal funding amounts to about five percent of SFUSD’s budget, which would be about $65 million in the $1.3 billion operating budget for 2024-2025 that SFUSD approved this summer. Approximately 70 percent comes from the state of California, and local funding comprises 25 percent of the budget. For fiscal year 2024 to 2025, California received a total of $7.8 billion in federal funding for public schools, according to the state’s Department of Education.
Earlier this month, California State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond reacted to Trump’s comments about the Department of Education by arguing that federal funding for public schools is protected by federal law, including the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which protects children with disabilities and guarantees they get a free and appropriate public education. But Thurmond also said his agency will prepare for cuts to the funds, and propose legislation to “backfill” any gaps.
Federal funding is “material” to SFUSD’s budget, said Debby Lu, an Education Policy Consultant at the San Francisco Parent Coalition. The vast majority of SFUSD's federal dollars are allocated to its “restricted” general fund, Lu said. That money is earmarked for specific programs, primarily to support disabled and low-income students, and cannot be redirected towards other “unrestricted” expenses such as employee salaries or benefits, according to SFUSD.
The reaction to President-elect Trump’s threat to dissolve the Department of Education and what that might entail for San Francisco is most poignant in the city’s classrooms.
One teacher who works with special needs kids at a San Francisco public school described the assistance her students require, including speech and language pathology support, speech services, occupational and physical therapy, and adapted physical education — “all sorts of different services that come in,” the teacher said (she requested anonymity because she’s not authorized to speak for the district). Some students require more assistance, such as a nurse to assist them in the classroom. Much of the public school funding for such services comes from the federal government.
Trump has blithely suggested that his administration will send “all education, and education work and needs back to the states.” But doing away with the federal role in public education also means doing away with the legal requirements and protections that come with federal funding, the teacher said.
“If you take away these protections, then it takes away the requirement for, or the money even, to supply the students with disabilities with those supports,” the teacher said. A cash-strapped state or district might decide it can’t afford the requirements of special needs students, and conclude that it’s “not going to provide speech and language support anymore in classrooms,” she said.
The teacher also addressed how federal funding cuts might affect the hopes she has for her students’ futures. After all, much of the federal government’s funding for education takes the form of Pell grants, which help students in financial need pay for college. Cutting that funding would mean “potentially harming the forward movement of underrepresented students, and low social-economic students to even access college,” the teacher told Gazetteer. “All these students who qualify to go to these amazing universities are not going to be able to afford it.”
“Disabilities are one thing,” she said. “But it’s going to affect everybody that wants to move on, and go into higher education, if they're needing some support financially from the government.”
