Federal grant funding that helps employ 30 mental health professionals across the La Mesa-Spring Valley School District and six in the Lemon Grove School District will be terminated early by the Trump administration, it was announced this week.
The districts were notified Tuesday in letters from the U.S. Department of Education that their school-based mental health grants will be terminated two years early.
The letters, signed by Murray Bessette with the Department's Office of Planning, Evaluation, and Policy Development, state that the grant "provides funding for programs that reflect the prior administration's priorities and policy preferences and conflict with those of the current administration" and is "inconsistent with, and no longer effectuates, the best interest of the federal government and will not be continued."
The La Mesa-Spring Valley School District grant was for $11 million through 2027, but will end effective this December, resulting in a cut of about $6 million, according to the school district.
Superintendent David Feliciano said the loss of funding that supports employment of social workers and counselors will likely impact a variety of district services that aid students receiving mental health and special education services.
Those services address student mental health crises, behavioral support, social skill development and outreach efforts to help families with housing, food insecurity and other basic needs, according to the district.
"We were shocked to learn that the Trump administration doesn't consider school-based mental health and special education services to be in 'the best interest of the federal government,'" Feliciano said.
Lemon Grove's deputy superintendent, Rebecca Burton, said the funding allowed the district to hire six additional mental health staff. The district was set to receive more than $2.5 million through 2027. Ending the grant in December means a loss of more than $1 million.
The letters to the districts said the programs "violate the letter or purpose of Federal civil rights law; conflict with the Department's policy of prioritizing merit, fairness, and excellence in education; undermine the well-being of the students these programs are intended to help; or constitute an inappropriate use of federal funds."
The Associated Press reported that the grant recipients nationwide received similar notifications on Tuesday, which will result in $1 billion in grant funding canceled.
Madi Biedermann is the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Communications for the U.S. Department of Education. In an email to KPBS, she wrote that grant recipients were using the funds to “implement race-based actions like recruiting quotas.”
Department of Education officials wrote in a notice to members of Congress that it "plans to re-envision and re-compete its mental health program funds to more effectively support students' behavioral health needs."
Both districts said they plan to request that the department reconsider. If they don’t, district leaders said they’ll look for other sources of funding to keep the staff on through at least the end of next school year.
