BY DAVID MAMARIL HOROWITZ

david.horowitz@bgdailynews.com

This was published as a two-part story in the Nov. 30 and Dec. 2 editions of the Daily News.

Meals for children at school. Supports for students with disabilities. Staffing and resources at schools with many children from low-income families.

The U.S. largely funds these and other supports for PK-12 public school students. Across numerous school districts, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) reimburses a substantial portion of student meals. Separately, the U.S. Department of Education provides about 12% of education funding for elementary and secondary public schools in the commonwealth, according to the Kentucky Department of Education (USDOE).

“Maintaining this (USDOE) funding, regardless of any federal reorganization, is critical to Kentucky,” KDE Director of Communications Jennifer Ginn said.

Outside of meals, the greatest federal allocation for districts goes toward Title I, Part A funding, which provides academic support for students at schools with at least a certain percentage of children from low-income families, according to a 2023-24 KDE federal allocations chart. The second-greatest subsidizes special education via the Individuals with Disabilities Act (IDEA).

Other federal grants subsidize supports for a broad spectrum of students — from neglected, delinquent or at-risk children, to students whose primary language isn’t English.

These allocations and meal reimbursements make up the overwhelming majority of recurring federal funds for school districts, according to Chris McIntyre and Shaunna Cornwell, the heads of finance at the Warren County and Bowling Green school districts, respectively. KDE corroborated that federal funding for public schools “mainly” comprises these two sources. 

With many Republicans calling to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education, speculation aplenty surrounds how Donald Trump’s second presidency may impact PK-12 education. Heightening clarity when looking ahead entails bettering comprehension about what can change, and how, particularly concerning federal dollars.

The presidential administration has substantial discretion over the allocation of federal dollars, according to Western Kentucky University political science Professor Jeff Budziak and Department Chair Scott Lasley. This largely stems from a president’s selection of secretaries for his 15 executive departments, such as the USDOE and the USDA, they said separately.

Neither a president nor their secretaries can unilaterally appropriate budgets because Congress holds that authority. However, a presidential administration has varying degrees of authority over how to implement a statute that authorizes federal spending, where the authority depends on the statute, Budziak and Lasley said.

“The real fights are in these kinds of weedy details, statute by statute,” Budziak said.

The executive branch prevents a president from dividing his attention among executive departments equally, according to Budziak and Lasley. The less attention the president directs toward a department, the more agency his cabinet secretary wields, the two said.

Generally speaking, the Secretary of Education holds “quite a bit of discretion” to make decisions about how funds can be allocated, Budziak said and Lasley corroborated.

Instructional supports

Title I, Part A allocated $253.6 million statewide last year, with $2.1 million and $6.3 million to Bowling Green and Warren County schools, respectively, according to the allocations chart.

Districts allocate these funds toward qualifying schools to improve academic achievement, KDE states. Some schools operate a targeted assistance program for children who academically are failing or have the highest risk of failing, while schools where at least 40% of students are from low-income families may use the funds for programs schoolwide, according to KDE.

Schools assess needs and allocate these funds for a wide range of academic supports, from staffing to professional development, according to Darlene Porter, director of instructional programs at the Bowling Green Independent School District (BGISD).

For example, Glasgow Independent Schools (GIS) received $1.1 million from Title I, Part A last school year, according to the allocation chart. This pays three to four of the approximate, average 26-27 certified core instructors per school — additional staff to reduce class sizes and offer additional courses, GIS Superintendent Chad Muhlenkamp said.

“You could imagine a world where maybe the executive branch can’t change what the appropriation for Title I funds are, but you could imagine a world where they can direct those funds to achieve different goals,” Budziak said. “I’m not suggesting that this is what’s going to happen: But you can imagine world where the Trump administration says, ‘We want to enhance education about American history — that maybe they think that K-12 schools are doing a poor job of teaching American history because it’s too critical of the founding fathers or racism or whatever else.’

“And you can imagine a world where they say, ‘We want these Title funds to be used for teachers who emphasize the important role that America plays in the world.’ You can imagine a secretary trying to drive something like that in that direction.”

While a court may counter by deeming a statute too limiting, Budziak said, he could see that type of action from a presidential administration.

At Warren County Public Schools (WCPS), approximately 30% of discretionary funding at the school level, on average, comes from Title I, Part A grants, WCPS’s McIntyre said. That percentage excludes certified and classified staff allocated via the district’s staffing formula.

At the city school district, approximately 82% of all Title I funding is allocated by principals to their respective schools for supplemental instructional supports, BGISD’s Shaunna Cornwell said. The district allocates the other 18%, which goes toward preschools, extended school services, professional development and other programming districtwide, she added.

While the poverty level at BGISD’s Potter Gray isn’t low enough to qualify for Title I, those at BGISD’s other schools are, Cornwell said. She gave rudimentary estimates: At Dishman McGinnis, 15.92% of the instructional budget comes from Title I funds; that figure is 14.42% at Parker-Bennett-Curry, 12.61% at T.C. Cherry, 7.44% at W.R. McNeill, 9.42% at the junior high and 6.84% at the high school.

Special education

IDEA provided $181.5 million in special education funding for students statewide last year, including $4 million for WCPS and $1.1 million for BGISD, according to the allocation chart.

“It could be something as common as speech services, to something as complex as services for a student who’s paralyzed and has a feeding tube — and everything in between,” WCPS’s McIntyre said about special education services funded.

At WCPS, where Superintendent Rob Clayton has said around 15% of the student population receives special education services, IDEA grants account for approximately 20.6% of anticipated special education expenditures for the 2025-26 school year (excluding on-behalf payments, which mainly comprise retirement and health benefits), McIntyre said.

At BGISD, about 22% of special education funding comes from federal funds, Cornwell said.

Meanwhile, at GIS, about 20% of students get a support service through special education, Muhlenkamp said. It received $578,897 from IDEA last school year, according to the allocations chart.

“That’s a huge impact on those students and staff if some of that money’s tweaked or changed because of what’s at stake and what’s available for them,” Muhlenkamp said.

Meals

The USDA reimburses much of students’ breakfasts and lunches at numerous schools and districts across the commonwealth — where 80.21% qualify for free meals and 0.57% for reduced-cost meals out of 678,593 students in the 2023-2024 school year, according to KDE Division of School and Community Nutrition data.

An important mechanism for this is the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP), which allows certain schools and districts to provide students with meals — neither charging them nor requiring their families to apply for free or reduced-price meals.

With the CEP, federal funds subsidize a portion of these meals based on the percentage of students among a student body who qualify for free meals, and local or state funds pay the remainder, according to KDE. This percentage must be 25% for a school or district to qualify for CEP — a requirement that the President Joe Biden administration lowered from 40%.

This exemplifies Budziak’s point — that a presidential administration can, depending on a statute, have substantial authority over its implementation.

“The USDA is going to be the agency that decides who qualifies as low income,” Budziak said. “They might not be able to abandon free and reduced lunch, but they might be able to redefine who qualifies ….”

Last year, city schools got fully reimbursed in federal dollars for 89.65% of its $4.43 meals, BGISD Director of Food Operations Dalla Emerson said; the remaining 10.35% of meals were reimbursed at 42 cents apiece, she said. BGISD’s food service program pays off the remainder as a slim-margins business from revenues such as meals sold to staff and additional food and beverages sold to students, she said.

“Families at the very bottom qualify for resources, families at the very top have resources, but the families in the middle who don’t qualify for anything but are struggling — that’s who we’re fighting for,” Emerson said.

At WCPS, some $13.1 million of $15.5 million of recurring revenue for student meals — about 85% — comes from federal dollars, McIntyre said.

Usually around 68% to 72% of students at GIS qualify for free and reduced-cost meals, Muhlenkamp said — adding that federal reimbursements cover the lion’s share of costs.

GRREC supports

Federal funds also support PK-12 students through the nonprofit Green River Regional Education Cooperative (GRREC), which comprises 49 school districts.

The superintendents compose the cooperative’s board of directors, and their districts pay membership dues that make up a small portion of GRREC’s revenue. In return, GRREC provides supports overwhelmingly funded by the federal government.

Known for educating educators, GRREC writes for grants and, with 80 members, utilizes millions in federal grant dollars to bolster education regionwide. These provide a host of services — from GRREC’s STEM-CS program, which allotted $4 million over five years from a federal Education Innovation and Research grant to bolster student achievement in STEM fields, to its Project ACCESS grant, which is expected to utilize nearly $13.5 million in federal funds to increase the number of school-based mental health counselors from April 2023 to the end of 2027.

Kentucky has assigned 34 of GRREC’s districts to the cooperative for special education services, for which GRECC is getting about $1.6 million in federal funding for July through June 2025.

“If those federal funds were to go away, we would have to rethink how we bring revenue to GRREC in such a way we can continue to hire experienced and professional staff to serve our school districts,” GRREC Executive Director Bart Flener said.

Horowitz reports for the Daily News through a partnership with Report for America.