Illinois regains access to $77M in federal education funds following
judge’s order
[May 08, 2025]
By Peter Hancock
A federal judge in New York issued a preliminary order Tuesday blocking
the Trump administration from cutting off states’ access to hundreds of
millions of dollars in pandemic relief funds for public schools,
including more than $77 million for Illinois.
U.S. District Judge Edgardo Ramos, of the Southern District of New York,
issued a preliminary injunction blocking enforcement of an order that
Education Secretary Linda McMahon issued on Friday, March 28. That order
reversed earlier decisions to grant the states additional time to spend
funds they had been allocated.
The effect of McMahon’s order was to immediately cut off access to funds
that states said they had already committed to spend but not yet made
the actual expenditures.
Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul joined a coalition of 17 states in
suing the federal government to block McMahon’s order.
“The Trump administration’s shortsighted and illegal decision to attempt
to rescind already-appropriated education funding would hurt vulnerable
students the most and could wreak havoc on the budgets of school
districts throughout Illinois and the nation,” Raoul said in a statement
Tuesday.
The lawsuit over pandemic-related education money is one of more than a
dozen multistate suits Raoul has joined, in combination with other
Democratic state attorneys general, challenging actions Trump has taken
since being sworn in for a second term Jan. 20.
In 2020 and 2021, Congress passed several relief and economic stimulus
packages totaling trillions of dollars to help individuals, businesses
and state and local governments deal with the financial consequences of
the pandemic. For schools, that included costs associated with preparing
for the safe return to in-person learning, addressing the learning loss
students suffered during the extended period of school closures, and
addressing some of the unique needs of homeless children that were
exacerbated by the pandemic.
According to the complaint, Illinois was awarded just over $5 billion in
“education stabilization” funds under the American Rescue Plan Act, or
ARPA, which was enacted in March 2021. Of that, $77.2 million remained
obligated but not yet spent as of the end of March 2025.
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Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul is pictured in a file photo.
He was part of a lawsuit securing a temporary injunction to stop the
Trump administration from cutting off more than $77 million in
education funds to the state. (Capitol News Illinois file photo)
Those funds had been earmarked for such things as teacher mentoring,
statewide instructional coaching, new principal mentoring, trauma
response initiatives, the creation of social-emotional learning hubs and
contracts for technology infrastructure upgrades, according to the
complaint.
Under ARPA, those funds were intended to cover expenses incurred through
Sept. 30, 2023. Subsequent legislation gave states an additional year,
to Sept. 30, 2024, to “obligate” their funds. And under agency
regulations, they had another 120 days beyond that to draw down the
funds, although they were also given the option of requesting further
extensions.
In January 2025, Illinois requested, and later received, permission to
extend its deadline for drawing down the remainder of its funds to March
28, 2026. Other states involved in the lawsuit also received extensions.
But on Friday, March 28, 2025, the Department of Education issued a memo
rescinding those extensions, effectively cutting off the states’ access
to any unspent funds.
“Extending deadlines for COVID-related grants, which are in fact
taxpayer funds, years after the COVID pandemic ended is not consistent
with the Department’s priorities and thus not a worthwhile exercise of
its discretion,” McMahon said in a memo to state education agency heads.
The injunction means the Department of Education cannot enforce the
order, at least while the case is still being litigated or until the
court issues a different order.
Capitol News Illinois is
a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government
coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily
by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick
Foundation. |
