TRSU began preparing for Trump budget cuts, funds freezes late last year

Editor’s Note: This is the first in a series of articles detailing the impact of the Trump administration’s actions on our communities. Because of fast moving directives from Washington, expect situations to be fluid.  If you would like to share your story, please email cprairie@chestertelegraph.org.

By Cynthia Prairie
©2025 Telegraph Publishing LLC

How will the Trump administration’s immigration roundups, budget freezes and cuts and agency layoffs impact Two Rivers Supervisory Union and its five schools? It may be too soon to tell with some of them – after all President Trump has been in office for just three weeks. But the “move fast and break things” ethos is certainly part of his actions.

Trump has had his eye on dismantling the Congress-established Department of Education, which is headed by a Cabinet level appointee, and the process of canceling millions of dollars of contracts has begun.

In an interview last week, TRSU Superintendent Layne Millington said that whatever happens in Washington will only begin to affect next year’s 2025-26 budget. “We’re trying to predict the future, and don’t know what’s going to happen.” However, he said, “The worry is the potential impact on students, especially the students that need the support the most.”

“I know the biggest worry is that the federal funding would go away, specifically the Title funds that support our neediest students,” including students “not achieving at the level of their peers, students on subsidized school lunch” and those whose second language is English, among others.

Millington called Title funding “big,” adding that, “It’s typically almost 10 percent of district budgets in Vermont. Some of that money is (currently) in the state’s hand and, if it is, it won’t be clawed back. At least that’s our best guess.” Title funding refers to federal monies, established in 1965, to be allotted to districts that are meant to supplement state funding for education.

Neither the state nor local educators have been sitting on their hands waiting for something to happen. Millington explained that following the November 2024 election, the state’s superintendents were briefed by the Vermont Superintendents Association about “what might be coming down the pike.” At that time, they were told that at the federal level the cuts being discussed were those for non-English language student and social emotional programs.

And even before Trump was sworn in, Millington and the Green Mountain Unified School District board got down to work on a budget.

One focus was on programs for disadvantaged students, including free and reduced school lunch and those addressing social emotional problems. Millington said that he has seen a “ramp up of behaviors – typically violent” among students. Social emotional learning, he said, is directed toward those students, ” to get them connected with the emotional state they are in, and how to calm themselves. That takes up a lot of time.”

So it was decided that the board would build funds into the budget for next year to cover those cuts. “We added that contingency to the budget proposal. The thought is that hopefully those cuts don’t come through and it becomes a surplus rolled over to the next year.” That surplus, he said, could then be used to reduce taxpayers’ burden or it could be put into a building maintenance reserve fund.

So what does this mean in real dollars and real students?

“The biggest loss that we are concerned about,” Millington said, is a total of $750,000 in the Title 1 funds for struggling and/or disadvantaged students, which includes the lunch program, and Title 2 funds, which is for teacher support, coaching and professional development.

As an example of the impact, back in October of 2024, the financial threshold that families have to be under to qualify for the free and reduced lunch program was raised.  For the Ludlow-Mount Holly District, which is made up of Ludlow Elementary and Mt. Holly Elementary, the loss was about $250,000 for the lunch program, which would have covered 22 children. (Because of the holiday, the numbers could not be confirmed by publishing deadline. We will update if necessary.)

Millington said that during the VSA briefing, attendees also were told of a bill sitting in the U.S. House just waiting for the new administration to enter office. That bill apparently would:

• cut Title 1 funds by 25 percent;
• eliminate Title 2 funding completely;
• eliminate Title 3 funding for English language learners; and
• level fund the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.
• It would also reduce by 70 percent school-based mental health grants.

What kind of reaction have the White House/DOGE actions gotten from locals? Millington said it’s been “remarkably quiet from our teachers and parents. They don’t mention it in our recent listening sessions.” Millington says that parents sometimes bring it up, but that’s rare. “People are concerned about taxes to fund education,” he added.

And what about the migrant/roundup issue? Educators across the country have been concerned that officials with Immigration and Customs Enforcement will come into their schools to arrest undocumented students. Most likely it will have little effect on our local school communities, since we have a small migrant population.

Even so, on Jan. 31, Zoie Saunders, Vermont’s acting Secretary of Education, issued a three-page memorandum advising schools that:

1. “Public schools may not deny access to students based on immigration status.
2. “Schools have no legal obligation to collect information related to a student’s or their family’s legal citizenship or immigration classification (i.e., their legal right to remain in this country).”
3. Previous guidance from Homeland Security restricted federal immigration enforcement on or around school grounds or school buses. On Jan. 21, this was rescinded, “which could result in increased immigration enforcement in or around schools or other places where children gather.” Saunders’ memo, however, points out that “there is no legal requirement that generally entitles federal immigration authorities to enter the physical grounds of a school building. As such, schools can prevent entry by federal immigration authorities to the school building in an enforcement capacity unless … authorities have a valid judicial criminal warrant or judicial order.” Her memo emphasizes that “an ‘administrative warrant’ or ‘immigration detainer’ is not judicially issued and does not carry the legal authority of a judicial warrant.”

You can read the entire memo here.