The U.S. Department of Education on Thursday announced new allocations for its mental health grants, which it revoked from over 200 original recipients earlier this year.
The new grants total more than $208 million, but are significantly less than the nearly $1 billion in funds pulled from school-based programs and providers earlier this year, according to court documents. The grants were rescinded because of their alleged use to fund diversity, equity and inclusion efforts in providing student mental healthcare services.
The discontinued mental health grants originated in fiscal years 2022, 2023 and 2024. Kelly Vaillancourt Strobach, director of policy and advocacy for the National Association of School Psychologists, told K-12 Dive this summer that the exact number is hard to quantify considering the grants spanned past and future years, including unspent funds.
The new awards will be divvied up among 65 recipients, half of which are rural. The recipients were selected under a new application process and are subject to new requirements. They’ll be required to limit funding to hiring school psychologists rather than also funding school counselors and social workers, who often also provide student mental health supports.
Districts and other recipients are also prohibited from “promoting or endorsing gender ideology, political activism, racial stereotyping, or hostile environments for students of particular races."
“Under the Biden Administration, it was more important to shape the racial and gender identities of mental health providers than it was to focus resources on high-quality, credentialed school psychologists who are best positioned to serve American students when they are at their most vulnerable,” said U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon in a statement Thursday.
At least one rural school district had its funds revoked despite telling the department that it would reconfigure its priorities to fit the department's requirements.
California’s McKinleyville School District, which serves Native American students and wanted to hire mental health providers to reflect its student body, had about $5.9 million in funding revoked, effectively ending the district’s grant awarded under the Biden administration.
The school district’s plans for those federal funds, the department said in a letter to the district, reflected “the prior Administration’s priorities and policy preferences and conflict with those of the current Administration.” Using the money in this way “no longer effectuates the best interest of the Federal Government,” the agency told McKinleyville USD in April.
That district and other entities sued the Trump administration over the withdrawal of the grants, saying such a move could only be made in cases where recipients didn't meet their proposed benchmarks. A court temporarily paused the department's decision in a separate lawsuit brought by 16 states.
Those lawsuits are ongoing.
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