Anxiety and confusion.
Those are the emotions Northern Kentucky nonprofit and education leaders are feeling after President Donald Trump’s budget office announced an order Monday freezing spending on federal grants, which a federal judge then blocked until Feb. 3, only for the administration to rescind the the order Wednesday.
The memo sent from Trump’s budget office on Jan. 27 had organizations across the country and locally wondering what’s next – and feeling a bit of whiplash amid the uncertainty.
The now-rescinded federal spending freeze could have affected local governments, schools and nonprofits.
LINK nky spoke to Learning Grove Vice President of Advocacy Mike Hammons after the freeze was blocked but before the Trump administration announced it was rescinding the order. The confusion, he said, is palpable across the nonprofit community.
He said employees and families alike were worried about the potential affects of the freeze for Learning Grove, which develops and supports learning experiences to empower children, youth and families in Northern Kentucky and Cincinnati.
“We’ve tried to let them know that we’re trying to find out everything we can about it,” Hammons said.
The memo Trump’s office released Monday called on federal agencies to temporarily pause all activities related to obligation or disbursement of all federal financial assistance, “and other relevant agency activities that may be implicated by the executive orders, including, but not limited to, financial assistance for foreign aid, nongovernmental organizations, DEI, woke gender ideology, and the green new deal.”
Whether or not local agencies would be considered to fall within the order to pause funding caused confusion and uncertainty across the region.
Even now, after the order was rescinded, those feelings aren’t going away.
“It’s all still a moving target,” Hammons said. “The executive order was late on Monday. We reviewed it during the night. Folks across the country did during the night and early morning. Tried to get more clarity, and it took a while to get some of that clarity, but it’s still there’s still a lot that’s unknown.”
EducateNKY Vice President Tom Haggard said a federal funding freeze would have affected school programs like free and reduced lunch, Title 1 services for economically disadvantaged students (this pays for things like teachers and materials for the classroom), and IDEA-B funds used to identify and provide free public education to students with disabilities who are eligible for special education and services.
“I just think right now, the hard part is just the confusion,” Haggard said. “If we’re able to get more clarity from the administration, it’ll be helpful only because schools, and especially schools who are serving some of our most at-risk students, do rely quite heavily on federal funding.”
The districts that EducateNKY is partnering with — Ludlow, Covington, Newport, Southgate, Bellevue, and Dayton — receive Title-1 funding to support teachers and learning resources, which Haggard said wouldn’t be possible without that budget.
He said all school districts in Kentucky have to have tentative budgets on the books by the end of January. Then, they’re going into budget planning seasons, with formal budgets due by the end of May. Haggard said the uncertainty is causing a lot of anxiety right now.
“I think just the kind of breakneck pace of all this and conflicting guidance, everyone kind of feels like they’re stuck in quicksand, they’re not sure where to go,” Haggard said.
One of the programs that Learning Grove offers that was called into question by that executive order is the Head Start preschool education program. Learning Grove offers the Early Head Start program in NKY and the Head Start Program in Cincinnati. Across the country, Head Start serves nearly 800,000 low-income children from birth to age 5 and their families.
Learning Grove has 32 Early Head Start-funded children enrolled across Northern Kentucky and 153 families on the waitlist. The program’s funding comes from federal and state funding along with some donor money.
Part of the confusion came from the federal Head Start portal going down on Tuesday, though Hammons said that after receiving clarification from the state, they understand Head Start would not be impacted even if the order is reinstated. But what happens down the road?
Hammons said they don’t know.
“It would have a significant impact,” he said. “We have been enrolling more and more children in Head Start, Early Head Start, over the last few years because we have availability and the high quality of our centers, high quality of our staff, so it’s become an important part of our total operations.”
Other programs that could have been at risk are the subsidy for low-income working parents that the federal government and state provide. The subsidy helps cover the cost of childcare and is available for parents who are working or in school. Hammons said Learning Grove has been concerned about how that resource might be impacted, but said as of now, state officials have said it won’t be.
Another source of funding that could have been impacted is Learning Grove’s food program. Hammons said they contract with the state and the United States Department of Agriculture for nutritious meals for children. He said they don’t know how funding would have been affected by that.
FIESTA NKY President/CEO Theresa Cruz said that while the nonprofit does not receive federal funding, it could be affected if its partners had to cut programs due to a federal funding freeze.
“I haven’t seen any of that yet,” Cruz said. “It’s just that everything changes every day. You don’t even know what to do. You can’t make a move because it might change tomorrow.”
FIESTA NKY is a nonprofit that fills service gaps for NKY’s Hispanic and Latino communities. Cruz said it doesn’t matter whether you’re an immigrant or you have a nonprofit, everything is up in the air.
“It’s between uncertainty and chaos, and that’s where everybody’s living right now,” she said.
Hammons said that Learning Grove believes it will be able to continue to serve its families with little impact from the federal spending freeze, should it be reinstated. Hammons said it could not operate effectively if it only depended on federal partnerships.
“Our donors in Northern Kentucky have been very supportive, and only because of their support have we been able to serve low-income families with high-quality care and career coaching and the other family support that we offer,” he said. “It wouldn’t work with just government funding that can come and go.”
