Schools have 10 days to comply with Trump anti-DEI policy or face losing federal funds
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- A new memo from the U.S. Department of Education demands that state and school districts certify that they have complied with an order to end diversity efforts.
- The Trump administration is taking another step to make good on its threat to end federal funding for school districts and states that don’t comply with his executive orders.
The Trump administration has ratcheted up pressure on K-12 schools in California and across the nation to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion practices by giving districts and states a deadline of 10 days to certify their compliance or risk losing all federal funding.
Although federal funding for education is challenging to calculate and arrives through multiple channels, some tallies put the figure at $16.3 billion per year in California — including money for school meals, students with disabilities and early education Head Start programs. The Los Angeles Unified School District has estimated that it receives about $1.26 billion a year.
Trump and his appointees have repeatedly threatened state and local officials with federal funding cuts if they don’t abide by his executive orders and by his administration’s legal interpretations.
The Thursday memo follows a Feb. 14 letter in which the U.S. Department of Education told all K-12 school districts and higher education institutions to end the consideration of race in “admissions, hiring, promotion, compensation, financial aid, scholarships, prizes, administrative support, discipline, housing, graduation ceremonies, and all other aspects of student, academic, and campus life.”
The February letter laid out a new federal anti-discrimination enforcement policy, threatening to pull federal dollars from schools that do not fall in line. Since then, many colleges and universities in California and throughout the country have eliminated diversity efforts, typically referred to as DEI, scrubbing references from their websites.
The Thursday memo takes the threats to funding one step further: demanding that education leaders sign a document saying they have eliminated DEI programming.
“Federal financial assistance is a privilege, not a right,” Craig Trainor, acting assistant secretary for civil rights, said in a statement. He said many schools have flouted their legal obligations, “including by using DEI programs to discriminate against one group of Americans to favor another.”
Schools are on alert after the Department of Education said it would cut federal funding unless they abolished diversity, equity and inclusion programs, potentially including culturally themed campus housing and graduation ceremonies.
On Thursday morning, various state and local officials said they were assessing the memo. A spokesperson for the California Department of Education provided a preliminary reaction.
“While we are continuing to review this morning’s letter, it appears to be yet another attempt to impose a national ideology on local schools by threatening to withhold vital resources for students,” said Elizabeth Sanders. “Regardless of this or any letter, we hold firm that basic needs of our nation’s children must not become bargaining chips.”
Another comment came from Tanya Ortiz Franklin, an elected board member of the L.A. Unified School District.
“Instead of wasting the time ... collecting signatures, the federal government should be focused on maintaining and executing the level of support our most vulnerable students require from the country that will soon depend on their educated leadership,” Franklin said.
Chino Valley Unified School District board president Sonja Shaw said she supported the thrust of the memo.
Trump ups ante to force California to abandon gender identity law against “forced outing” in schools, threatening school lunch funding for students from low-income families.
“The Trump administration’s directive is a critical step in reining in the excessive politicization of our schools,” Shaw said. “We need to get back to the basics of education — teaching kids how to read, write, and think critically, rather than pushing divisive ideologies. This is about protecting the future of our children by ensuring their education isn’t hijacked by political agendas that don’t belong in the classroom.”
The certification directs state and school leaders to sign a “reminder of legal obligations” acknowledging their federal money is conditioned on compliance with federal civil rights laws.
The certification compliance form included several pages of legal analysis in support of the administration’s demands, which are based, in large part, on the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to ban affirmative action in college admissions through a lawsuit brought against Harvard University.
Trainor quoted Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who said: “Eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it.”
Trainor added that, “No student should be denied opportunities or treated differently because of his or her race. We hope all State and Local Education Agencies agree and certify their compliance with this legal and constitutional principle.”
According to the administration’s legal analysis, schools and states that use DEI practices can face a loss of federal money, including grants and contracts, and also can be held liable under the False Claims Act, meaning that an agency could be sanctioned with financial penalties beyond the loss of federal funding.
California mandates student gender-identity privacy. Trump administration says schools must keep nothing from parents and opens probe. Billions of dollars could be at risk.
The legal analysis specifically mentions Title I funding as being at risk, which sends billions of dollars a year to America’s schools to help offset the effects of poverty in the education of students.
California receives about $2.1 billion in Title I funds, L.A. Unified about $460 million.
The department ordered state education offices to sign the certification and collect certifications from school systems.
The move raises questions, including: What happens if a school district agrees to comply but the state of California does not?
“It’s very likely that the Trump administration will set up funding directly to compliant districts,” said Lance Christensen, president of California Policy Partners, which describes itself as a free-market business association.
Christensen is supportive of groups that have filed complaints alleging that California education agencies are violating anti-discrimination laws.
“The real question is how badly California is out of compliance with federal law,” Christensen said. “School districts in the state should be very concerned.”
This threat to California’s federal education funding extends to other policies advanced by the Trump administration. The administration already has issued similar threats over policies related to transgender students and sex education curriculum.
Federal officials last week launched an investigation of the California Department of Education for allegedly withholding from parents information about changes to their child’s gender identity, once again with billions of dollars potentially at stake.
Federal officials contend that the California law violates a federal law that guarantees parents’ access to their child’s school records. The federal law, they say, takes precedence.
State officials responded that the California law does not violate federal statutes because it does not affect the right of parents to request and receive records.
The secretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture lent her support to the enforcement action — threatening in a warning letter to Gov. Gavin Newsom that she would withhold from California funds under her control.
The Agriculture Department funds research and the venerable 4-H youth development program, but its core school-related contribution is paying for food to feed children from low-income families while they are at school. The annual total of USDA school-related food aid for California is more than $3 billion a year.
The Trump administration also is reviewing the curriculum of a sex education program in California for “medical accuracy” and “age appropriateness,” a move that has raised concerns from LGBTQ+ advocates who are worried about what they see as the potential censorship of comprehensive sexual-health information.
Associated Press staff writer Collin Binkley and Times staff writer Jaweed Kaleem contributed to this report.
