Credit: Alison Yin / EdSource
Top Takeaways
A multi-state lawsuit alleged that the administration’s sweeping cancellation of mental health grants was unlawful.
President Donald Trump accused grant recipients of violating “merit, fairness and excellence in education.”
Unless a final ruling guarantees that funds will be restored to districts, some will lose school social workers.
California school districts were bracing for their mental health grants to be cut at the end of the month, but a recent court ruling could force the Trump administration to temporarily release the remaining funds used for school social workers and counselors.
A court ruling on Dec. 4 rejected the Trump administration’s attempt to stall a preliminary injunction in which a federal judge ordered the U.S. Department of Education to release millions of dollars in grants for school mental health workers.
The ruling is part of an ongoing multi-state lawsuit alleging that the administration’s sweeping cancellation of mental health grants — $168 million for California schools — in April was unlawful and jeopardized services “critical to students’ well-being, safety and academic success” in rural and underserved parts of the country.
The mental health program, which was funded by Congress after the 2022 school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, included grants meant to help schools hire more counselors, psychologists and social workers.
In an April discontinuation letter, the Trump administration accused grant recipients of violating “merit, fairness and excellence in education,” broadly targeting diversity, equity and inclusion in the grant program.
Amanda Mangaser Savage, an attorney at the nonprofit law firm Public Counsel, said the injunction does not issue a final ruling on the legal basis of the cancellation. It issues a temporary release of funds, she said, that is not guaranteed to be permanent or timely enough to retain all mental health worker roles before Dec. 31, the cutoff for funds listed in the cancellation notice.
“So it’s not like someone flips a switch and all of a sudden everybody gets money,” Savage said. “It’s that the Department of Education can’t rely on these unlawful considerations that it relied on to discontinue the grants.”
Injunctive relief applies only to a subset of grantees who had submitted declarations of harm to the court, including McKinleyville Union School District and Northern Humboldt Union High School District in Humboldt County. Represented by Public Counsel, McKinleyville Union also filed its own independent lawsuit in October, seeking a release of nearly $6 million in remaining mental health grant funds, Savage said.
The ruling restores roughly $3.8 million in Madera County in the Central Valley and $8 million in Marin County in the Bay Area.
Jack Bareilles, the grants and evaluation administrator with the Northern Humboldt Union High School District, said the court ruling is a step in the right direction, but that it is not enough to retain the four social workers and project staff, as well as prospective social work interns, he expects to lose, unless a final ruling guarantees restored funds for the district. Northern Humboldt is still expecting to lose more than $6.5 million in grant funds.
“We’re happy that the panel ruled the way they did, but this administration has made a habit out of continuing to appeal all the way up to the Supreme Court,” Bareilles said. “It doesn’t give us any certainty at this moment.”
Unlike in McKinleyville Union’s independent lawsuit, Northern Humboldt and other school districts are not the main plaintiffs in the multi-state lawsuit, which was filed by a coalition of 16 states in June. Bareilles said that he is also uncertain whether the injunction would release funds to all 49 grant recipients, or only those who declared support for the lawsuit, in California. If or when the district does receive its funds, Northern Humboldt would not be able to fully recover its team of school counselors and social workers, he said.
“It will be very hard to regain the momentum,” Bareilles said. “We can’t even rehire in some cases, because we’re in the middle of the school year, and people have already taken other jobs.”
Grant provided funds to hire more counselors
Before the grant, McKinleyville Union had only one school counselor per 850 students. Since then, it has been able to hire five more counselors. If the district does not receive funds in time, the school could lose these workers, as well as a mental health grants administrator.
“And, most problematically, students start to develop relationships with the mental health providers that are in their schools. If all of a sudden those positions are cut, in some ways that’s even more harmful than if you would never start them at all,” Savage said. “Because students believe that they’re going to have this care and then all of a sudden, they don’t.”
Through the grant, Northern Humboldt has provided more than 3,600 additional students with mental health services since 2023 and has helped credential and employ over 25 mental health clinicians in the county. Bareilles is hopeful that the restored funds will allow for the continued training of prospective social workers and school counselors.
“But for our students, there’s hundreds of kids this year who have not had a person to serve them because that person wasn’t there,” Bareilles said. “That’s just the sad nature of this process.”
In Humboldt County, where McKinleyville Union and Northern Humboldt Union are located, more than half of all youths have experienced traumatic events like abuse or homelessness, according to Savage. The county also has the highest number of Native American youth in California who rely on grant funds to receive services like grief intervention and suicide prevention, she said.
“What’s really going on here is the Trump administration is having an ideological disagreement with the Biden administration, and it’s basically throwing these kids under the bus,” Savage said. “It just shows how little they actually care about the mental health of these students.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
This story was edited to clarify that Northern Humboldt and other school districts are not the main plaintiffs in the multi-state lawsuit.