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News Brief

July 22, 2025 |  By: Gavin McGough

With funding for school programs being slashed, area schools will have to use local dollars to bridge the gap

St Joe School District

Leah Rainwater - News Press NOW

Earlier this month, the Trump administration shut off roughly 9 billion dollars in funding for schools across the country in order to review the programs supported by the funding. Some of that money has now been released. KXCV's Gavin McGough spoke with local districts and his this report.

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 Late last week under pressure from Republicans in Congress, the department released a portion of the withheld funds for afterschool programs.

However, the majority of funds are still on hold. The South Harrison School District in the Bethany area reports a loss of about $60,000. In Maryville, that number is around 55,000.

These programs were targeted towards English language learning, STEM education, and teacher development. In St. Joseph, the missing funds total nearly a million dollars. According to Robert Hedgecorth, an assistant superintendent at the district. The money would have gone towards supporting teacher recruitment efforts and migrant students.

The district is also missing over a hundred thousand dollars for teaching English as a second language.

" We do have a good population that we do serve there and so that $124,000 we're seeing frozen right now from the federal government, we will have to fund from local dollars."

 Area districts say they're watching the situation, here's Hedgecorth.

 "So it's a fluid situation. We're continuing to monitor it and we hope that in the end that those funds will be released. Now, future fiscal budgets that the federal government passes obviously will depend on what happens there."

 Hedgecorth says the district will not cut these programs, but will find other funds.

" There might be some efficiencies in there that we can find to help streamline that, but we're gonna make sure that our kids have the resources they need to be successful."