KENTUCKY (FOX 56) — As the Trump administration continues to tighten the belt on spending, previously awarded grants are no longer guaranteed. In 2023, the Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence was awarded $47 million from the Department of Education over 5 years to pay for positions and programs to build up community schools. Now the remainder of that money is at risk of being cancelled.
“To cut these programs now mid-year, would be shortsighted in cutting off the impact that we’re having,” Prichard’s president and CEO Brigitte Blom told FOX 56 News. “Think about mental health, tutoring capacity, health care, dental services that the school district can utilize in collaboration to support student needs. This is all about removing nonacademic barriers to success so that our teachers can do what they’ve been trained to do, and that’s high-quality teaching and learning.”
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Blom said teachers are having to address unmet needs among students far more frequently, and that takes away from overall learning. She said the grant investment is showing results; for example, she explained that in Georgetown a tutoring collaboration between the college and elementary schools is showing a 100% math score improvement among participants. She said other communities have seen improvements in chronic absenteeism or reading proficiency, and it’s momentum she stressed shouldn’t be disrupted.
“We’re on the heels of years of disruption from Covid. This is creating the next kind of ripple effect of disruption. And we haven’t even gotten through recovering from the Covid years yet,” Blom said.
The remainder of the grant could be cancelled under current Department of Education leadership; for central Kentucky, it’s about $4.5 million on the table. The Prichard Committee has been told the grant’s status is under review, and due to the billions in grant money already cancelled by the Trump administration so far, Blom has serious concern.
“We’re looking at the next few weeks. So the federal fiscal year ends the end of September, and the new federal fiscal year begins in October,” she said.
Blom is appealing to Kentucky’s state and federally elected leaders to get in the Department of Education’s ear that it’s a worthwhile investment, pointing to research showing the $4.5 million in spending could return as much as $30 million dollars to the region in lifetime earnings.
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“And we hope they utilize that influence to make it well known that this investment by the federal government is proving promising for the state of Kentucky. And we need it to continue,” she said.
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