East Providence school officials are grappling with the potential loss of around $500,000 in federal funding stemming from the sudden freeze of $6.8 billion in Congressionally-approved funds by the Trump Administration on June 30.

The money, which translated to around $29 million in funds frozen for school districts across Rhode Island, affects Title II, Title III, and Title IV initiatives in East Providence, including professional development for teachers, instructional efforts for multi-lingual learners (MLLs), as well as afterschool programming and academic enrichment programs often specifically aimed at impoverished students and families.

According to assistant superintendent Lisa Benedetti-Ramzi, the district learned of the funding freeze the same way that the state’s education commissioner did; abruptly, and without any further information about when the funding might become available again, if ever.

“I worked on all the Title grants and it was due July 1st,” Benedetti-Ramzi said on Monday. “You're up late at night making sure all the Ts are crossed and the Is are dotted. And then on July 1st they tell you, ‘Yeah, no. We're not doing it.’ Okay. There goes days and days of peoples’ work to be able to get the application in.”

Aside from being irked at the timing of the funding pause, Benedetti-Ramzi explained how the freeze impacted East Providence schools as the district heads into its FY26 budget workshops (they held their first workshop on Monday, July 7, where the funding freeze was discussed).

She said that the district is at risk of losing around $300,000 in Title II funding (professional development); $175,000 for Title IV (which funds a variety of initiatives including access and exposure to technology and promoting safe and healthy schools); and $30,000 for Title III (multi-language learners initiatives).

“What does it mean for us? These Titles, obviously they’re supplemental in nature, but they offer significant support to our students and teachers,” Benedetti-Ramzi said. “We're going to try to prioritize as best as we possibly can, and if we have to absorb this into the local budget, that means that we're not going to have other services that we have to give to kids. So everything has got to come down to an impact to children. Do you prioritize our student learning? Do we prioritize our staff learning? Do you find highly qualified teachers get better results?”

The large potential cut to professional development, she said, would have a downstream effect on student learning.

“You’ve got to stay current in your work, right?” Benedetti-Ramzi said. “So much is always changing in education. So many new concepts and fine-tuning the skills. The research shows that the better equipped a teacher is, the better success the student has. Everybody gets training in their job. This is taking that training away.”

While Benedetti-Ramzi said the potential loss of funding won’t jeopardize any existing positions for the moment, it does put into limbo the district’s original intentions of hiring a coordinator this year to carry out various Title IV initiatives.

“Now that’s on hold,” she said.

Politically motivated?
Educational officials found out about the funding freeze originally in a brief emailing that stated:

“Given the change in Administrations, the Department is reviewing the FY 2025 funding for the [Title I-C, II-A, III-A, IV-A, IV-B] grant program(s), and decisions have not yet been made concerning submissions and awards for this upcoming academic year. Accordingly, the Department will not be issuing Grant Award Notifications obligating funds for these programs on July 1 prior to completing that review. The Department remains committed to ensuring taxpayer resources are spent in accordance with the President’s priorities and the Department’s statutory responsibilities.”

According to a report from the Rhode Island Current, a spokesperson for the White House Office of Management and Budget replied in an email that the freeze was initiated because some districts in the country had allegedly used federal funding from those categories to “subsidize a radical left-wing agenda,” including initiatives like providing scholarships and learning programs for undocumented immigrants, and funding a seminar about “queer resistance in the arts.”

For School Committee Chair David Luiz, the situation has placed an added burden to an already tight budget season.

“It’s very concerning,” he said. “It certainly puts some unexpected pressure on us because we still want to be able to provide that funding. It’s the preliminary stages, but these are services that are important, so having to make up for that funding is a cause for concern and certainly something the school committee is going to look into.”

Luiz said that at the moment, East Providence has no more information than anybody else on what happens next, and that it appeared to be politically motivated considering the types of programming that is being held up by the decision.

“We are unfortunately in just a holding pattern and taking a wait and see approach,” he said. “Speaking for myself, it certainly gives the impression of being targeted.”

Benedetti-Ramzi said that it would be “disappointing” if politics indeed played a role in the decision.

“I don't subscribe to anybody's political agenda,” she said. “I come in, and I do the best that I can to for the students of the district that I work in, and the teachers and trying to serve them to the best of our ability. A lot of times, unfortunately, that kind of work takes money.”

She added that if the move was actually about trying to be more efficient with federal dollars, there was a better way to go about it.

“If money's tight, that's fine. If you want to phase it in, phase it in. But doing it now?” she said. “You can't say, ‘Oh, here's $500,000 and all of a sudden, nope, you don't have it anymore.’ People have budgeted, people have planned. You tip everything upside down and something has to give.”

RI leads nationwide lawsuit
On Monday, Attorney General Peter Neronha’s office announced that they had co-led a lawsuit regarding the funding freeze, which was joined by 24 total states and the District of Columbia. The suit claims that the Trump Administration had no legal authority to block funding that was already approved by both the U.S. House and Senate and signed by Trump himself.

“Each and every time this Administration unlawfully withholds critical federal funding, they know that what they are doing is unconstitutional, and yet they ignore the law anyway,” Neronha stated in the release announcing the suit. “This time, the President is taking aim at the growth and enrichment of our young people by freezing essential funding, approved by Congress, for a wide range of important educational programs, leaving the Rhode Island Department of Education and similar agencies across the country to scramble.”

In East Providence, where the fiscal year begins on Nov. 1, there is a little more time to spare before the district would begin spending budgeted money that could be among the frozen funds.

“Can we make changes as it goes along? Absolutely we can,” Benedetti-Ramzi said. “If they release funds in a different order or we find out later, we're in a much better situation, I suppose, than our neighboring districts who have probably already started to spend these dollars.”

Boys & Girls Club avoids cancellation of summer programs
Boys & Girls Clubs across the country, which offer programming to families for free or at drastically subsidized pricing thanks often in large part to federal funding, also found themselves staring down an impossible situation when they realized money would not be available to continue offering summer programming that had already been planned and is currently being implemented at camps and within school buildings throughout the nation.

For the East Providence Girls & Boys Club, the funding freeze meant the sudden inaccessibility of Title IV funding that bankrolls The 21st Century Community Learning Centers (21st CCLC) program.

“Overall, the 21st CCLC program funds our work at four school-based sites in East Providence: East Providence High School, both Riverside and Martin Middle Schools, and Hennessey Elementary School,” explained East Providence Boys & Girls Club President, Erin Gilliatt. “More than 875 students a year participate in these programs, which are completely free and are designed to help support academic and social emotional goals for students after school.”

Gilliatt said that around 100 students participate daily across the different programs offered through the club at each school.

Upon hearing the news about the funding freeze, Gilliatt said they reached out to the Rhode Island Department of Education to talk about how the programming could be funded through the summer.

“Our organization, like all 21st CCLC sites in Rhode Island, worked with RIDE to resubmit a summer-only budget for our programs so that we didn’t have to cancel those programs that families were counting on, and they will run through August 15th,” she said.