Teacher layoffs, bigger classes: Potential federal education cuts could hit GOP’s base hardest

By Majlie de Puy Kamp, Casey Tolan, Yahya Abou-Ghazala and Kyung Lah, CNN

Pineville, Kentucky (CNN) — When the coal mines closed in Bell County, Kentucky, a community that once powered the nation was left forgotten, with few well-paying jobs or prospects. Many of its residents now live in poverty among empty storefronts and the stunning vistas of the Appalachian Mountains.

It’s the sort of place where President-elect Donald Trump’s “America First” message resonated – but also where some of his proposed policies could hit hardest, especially his promise to eliminate the Department of Education and slash federal funds to public schools.

Bell County’s school district typically receives 10% of its budget from federal dollars, though it has been higher in recent years due to Covid-19 relief funds. Even a slight reduction in those dollars could have devastating effects for students and their families, said Tom Gambrel, the district’s superintendent. It would mean teacher layoffs, bigger classroom sizes and less attention for their most vulnerable students.

A CNN analysis found that all of the 15 states that relied most heavily on federal support for their public schools in 2022 voted for Trump, while all but two of the 15 states that received the least federal dollars as a percentage of their overall revenue voted for Vice President Kamala Harris.

Gambrel, like most of Bell County, said he cast his ballot for Trump in November with his students in mind. “I don’t think that anyone in our county wants to cut our school funding. And I don’t think that anyone voted for that,” he said. Gambrel said he believes his vote won’t harm his students and hopes that Trump’s plans to cut federal education funding won’t come to pass.

If it does, he said, it would be “catastrophic.”

The schools in Bell County provide a lifeline to families in more ways than one. The district is one of the biggest employers in town and is one of the only places where parents can find after-school care. The schools are where kids come to stay warm and where they eat most of their meals. All of Gambrel’s students qualify for free breakfast and lunch and some go hungry if they don’t come to school.

“I would be confident in saying that when they leave on Friday, they might not eat again until Monday,” he said, explaining his schools try to send home backpacks with food for struggling families to bridge the weekend days.

Trump has not shared many details of his proposals, and some have suggested that even if the Department of Education is shut down, the federal funds it dispenses to local schools could be distributed by other agencies. In November, Trump tapped wrestling magnate Linda McMahon to lead the Education Department.

But critics warn that Republicans have long proposed slashing federal education spending: In 2023 House Republicans faced heavy pushback when they proposed an 80% cut to Title I, a program that largely pays teacher salaries in low-income and underserved communities. Last year, they proposed a 25% cut to the same program. With a majority in both the House and Senate in the next administration, Republican-led policies are more likely to succeed – a daunting prospect for rural schools like those in Bell County.

Gambrel said about 10% of his teachers are funded through Title I and Title II, another federal program, and losing that federal support would have significant implications.

“It certainly wouldn’t allow us to have an adequate number of teachers in classrooms every day,” he said.

‘Stabbing their base right in the heart’

While Trump’s plans for education during his second term lack specifics, many experts look to Project 2025 for more guidance. The more than 900-page “conservative promise” commissioned by the Heritage Foundation lays out a blueprint for the next Republican president to shape all corners of American society, including education.

Project 2025’s education proposals include expanding school choice and turning federal funding, such as Title I and IDEA – which supports students with disabilities – into no-strings-attached block grants to states. Experts warn that could end up redirecting funds away from the marginalized communities they were intended for.

“You notice a trend here: A lot of these proposals are impacting the most vulnerable students,” said Weadé James, senior director of education policy at the Center for American Progress, a liberal public policy research and advocacy group.

No-strings-attached block grants remove federal oversight on how the funds are spent, allowing states to spend money that is now specifically intended for low-income or special needs students however they want, she explained. Uncertainty about how the funds would be distributed has created fear it would hurt the most vulnerable populations.

“This is really just a pattern of making things worse for those who are already at the margins. And that’s concerning,” James said.

An analysis by the Center for American Progress found that phasing out Title I funding – as described in Project 2025 – would eliminate nearly six percent of teachers nationwide, worsening the existing national teacher shortage and affecting the country’s most vulnerable student groups.

The hardest-hit areas in that scenario would be those that overwhelmingly voted Republican in the last election.

Though Trump distanced himself from Project 2025 on the campaign trail, one of his first decisions as president-elect was to tap Tom Homan, a Project 2025 author and the architect of Trump’s controversial family-separation policy in his first administration, as “border czar.” He also nominated key Project 2025 author, Russell Vought, to lead the Office of Management and Budget, in addition to about a half-dozen other high-profile jobs he’s given to people involved in the plan.

At least 140 people who worked in the first Trump administration had a hand in Project 2025, according to a CNN review, including more than half of the people listed as authors, editors and contributors.

A spokesman for Trump did not respond to CNN’s request for comment for this story.

Some believe Trump’s rhetoric – including repeated promises to cut federal funding to schools with vaccine mandates – combined with proposals from congressional Republicans and Project 2025 will almost certainly mean cuts to federal education spending; others have gone so far as to prepare for budget cuts.

The Kentucky Association of School Administrators sent out a spreadsheet to all superintendents in the state last month outlining what budget cuts could look like in their districts, in an effort to raise awareness among stakeholders and legislators. Some school districts, such as the one in Floyd County just north of Bell County, stand to lose millions of dollars if the GOP House proposal from last year went into effect. KASA’s projections for Gambrel’s district is a loss of around $600,000.

“It would be easy just to look at this from the perspective of a loss of Title dollars and the impact on the schools, but at the end of the day, we’re harming children and families,” said Rhonda Caldwell, KASA’s CEO.

Still, other experts say fears that Trump’s proposal to end the Department of Education would lead to substantial spending cuts are overblown.

“Getting rid of the Department of Ed does not mean necessarily ending the funding lines that go to states,” said Marguerite Roza, director of the Edunomics Lab, a research center focused on education finance policy at Georgetown University. She noted that the incoming chair of the Senate’s education committee, Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, is a moderate and could block attempts to end the Department of Education or cut Title I and other programs.

Elon Musk, whom Trump has tasked to lead the newly formed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) together with Vivek Ramaswamy, suggested eliminating the Department of Education in a social media post.

In a Time Magazine interview in late November, Trump suggested sending responsibility for schools back to the states, allowing the federal government to “spend half the money on a much better product.”

But state funding for public schools has at times been threatened too. A CNN investigation found that several public schools in Arizona were forced to close after the introduction of a school choice program that diverted taxpayer money from public to private schools. Similar programs have been enacted in more than 28 states.

In November, conservative groups again pushed school choice programs on the ballot in a handful of states, including Kentucky, where every county voted against the proposal. Voters in Colorado and Nebraska also voted down school choice measures in their states.

“If we start putting public money in private schools, they become public schools. I just don’t think that taxpayer money should be distributed to private schools,” said Gambrel, who voted against the measure in Kentucky.

Despite voters’ dismissal of such programs, Trump said expanding school choice would be a top priority for his administration.

“Linda will fight tirelessly to expand ‘Choice’ to every State in America,” Trump said in a statement announcing McMahon as his pick for education secretary at the end of November.

For many parents in rural counties – like most of Kentucky, including Bell County – school choice is a false choice as private schools are few and far between in their communities.

“This is one of these cases where (Republican) policies are stabbing their base right in the heart and will directly impact their kids,” said Will Ragland, vice president of the Center for American Progress.

More than a school

Bell County’s schools aren’t just a place where kids come to learn how to read and write. The schools strive to provide children – a third of whom live in poverty – with anything they need to help remove barriers to their education.

“If they don’t have clean clothes,” said Jennifer Blankenship, principal of the elementary and middle schools, “we have a washer and dryer here and we have offered families to bring their clothes, and we will wash them for them.”

Every school has a family resource center where children can get anything from clothes to toothbrushes and shampoo to school supplies. The center – which is funded in part by state resources and local donations – “is of the utmost importance in our community,” said Blankenship.

When Gambrel – who worked his way up from school custodian to bus driver, coach, teacher, administrator to superintendent of the school district – attended Bell County High School in the 1980s, the school counted around 1,400 students. Today, just over 600 high schoolers walk the beige halls lined with bright blue lockers.

The population decline has a direct impact on funding for the school district, as most state and federal funds are based on the number of students.

But when the money goes away, the “teachers’ jobs don’t stop,” Blankenship said.

The share of Bell County’s revenue made up of federal dollars increased to about 30% in recent years due to Covid-19 relief funds approved by Trump and President Joe Biden. These funds are set to expire in 2025 which will drop the federal contribution to Bell County’s revenue back down to roughly 10%. While that may not seem like a lot, for schools that need to watch every dollar, 10% means either being able to retain, or having to lay off, some teachers.

Federal investment in K-12 education has been decreasing over time, explained Noelle Ellerson Ng, associate executive director of AASA, The School Superintendents Association.

When adjusted for inflation, Ellerson said, the federal government is paying less per high school senior today than it was when those seniors were in kindergarten thirteen years ago.

This means that for years, Gambrel and his staff have had to do more with less.

Most federal programs for public schools are meant to level the playing field for students, providing a monetary boost to communities with high needs but a small tax base due to low incomes, low property values or limited tax revenue from businesses.

In addition to the county’s high poverty rate, a raging opioid crisis has wreaked havoc on families in the community, Gambrel said. On top of that, he added, nearly 20% of students in the district have special needs. “And the supports are not there,” he said.

Gambrel said the looming budget cuts and concern for his students and staff keep him up at night.

“Every time that we get a cut,” he said, “we’re going to have to change something, we’re going to have to provide less for our students.”

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