Some education grants in limbo were used for ‘leftwing agenda,’ Trump administration says

The Trump administration has accused states and schools of using federal education subsidies for children of immigrants and low -income students to help finance “a left left program”.

The administration this week has retained more than $ 6 billion for programs after school and summer, teaching English language, literacy of adults and more, saying that it would review the subsidies to ensure that they align with the priorities of President Donald Trump. The freezing has sent schools and summer camp suppliers that rush to determine whether they can still offer programs like day camps this summer or after daycare this fall.

On Wednesday, the management and budget office said that a first exam showed that schools used part of the money to illegally support immigrants from the country or promote LGBTQ +inclusion. The administration said that it had not made any final decision on the overhaul or the release of individual subsidies.

“Many of these grant programs have been roughly used to subsidize a left left radical program,” the management and budget office said in a statement.

He said New York schools used money for teaching English language to illegally promote organizations that defend immigrants from the country. The state of Washington used money to direct immigrants without legal status towards scholarships which, according to the Trump administration, were “intended for American students”. The grant funds were also used for a seminar on “queer resistance in the arts,” said the office.

New York and Washington state officials did not immediately respond to requests for comments.

Defenders of low -income children and immigrants have linked grants to the greatest repression of the Trump administration against immigrants. Two of the five federal programs put on hold were affected by the congress to help support the English skills of students who always learn the language and migrant children who move with their parents to follow agricultural and other jobs.

School districts use $ 890 million intended for English learners in a wide range of ends, the training of assiders of teachers who work with English learners, the management of summer schools designed for them, hiring family links that speak of parents’ mother languages. The 375 million dollars appropriate for the education of migrants are often used to hire dedicated teachers to travel near the place where students live.

By “cherry test”, the administration seeks to confuse all the students who learn English with people who are illegally in the country, said Amaya Garcia, who directs research in education in New America, a group of thinking on the left in Washington, DC

In reality, the majority of English learners in public schools were born in the United States, according to data from the Migration Policy Institute.

“The way they cramps it is that we use this money for undocumented students and families,” said Margarita Machado-Casas, president of the National Association of Bilingual Educators. “It is a distraction. A distraction of what is really happening: that 5.3 million English learners who speak a lot of different languages, not only Spanish, will suffer.”

Even if students lack legal status, states cannot illegally refuse public studies to children in the country under a 1982 Supreme Court decision known as Plyler v. Doe. Conservative politicians in states such as Oklahoma, Texas and Tennessee have exercised policies who wonder if immigrants without legal residence should have the right to public education, which raises the possibility of challenges to this historic decision.

Meanwhile, academic states and districts are always trying to understand what it will mean for their students and their staff if these funds never arrive.

In Oregon, the elimination of subsidies for learners in English and migrant students “would undermine state efforts to increase academic results for multilingual students, promote multilingualism, gaps in close opportunities and provide targeted support to groups of mobile and vulnerable students,” said Liz Merah, spokesperson for the Department of State Education.

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The author of the Associated Press, Collin Binkley, contributed from Washington.

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