Federal Funding Story Archives - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

Grassroots Movement In Morgantown Coalesces In Opposition To Federal Cuts

Hundreds of people in Morgantown are finding hope as they organize in opposition to federal cuts.

Since his inauguration, Pres. Donald Trump has empowered Elon Musk and others to make swift and often drastic slashes to federal staffing and funding. These actions have left federal workers and entire communities reeling and uncertain of their futures.

Back in January, about 30 friends and neighbors got together to talk about their options in the face of the then-recently announced federal funding freeze and impending job cuts.

As the group continued to meet, the size of the meetings each Saturday kept growing. Just a month later, the group’s numbers have swelled to more than 300 attendants at their March 1 meeting.

“There has been just an incredible outpouring of energy and, frankly, anger among West Virginians about the actions of this administration, and a real desire to take action,” Clare said.

Clare is one of the group’s organizers and has worked for the federal government for close to 15 years within the US Department of Health and Human Services. Like several of the people West Virginia Public Broadcasting spoke to for this story, Clare asked to only be identified by her first name, for fear of reprisal or targeting in future rounds of firing.

She said things have been stressful since cuts started happening and with now-weekly requests to justify her position to Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, also known as DOGE. With reductions in force looming over their heads as soon as this week, Clare said colleagues have openly cried in meetings. But she has been enlivened by the groundswell that has become Mountaineers Indivisible.

“Instead of just feeling scared and angry, I can come together with my fellow citizens to take action to do the right thing and to try to stand up for and protect our fundamental democratic institutions,” Clare said.

Mountaineers Indivisible are calling on West Virginia’s Congressional delegation to oppose the Trump administration’s broad-reaching cuts to federal programs. On Feb. 20 they led a demonstration in front of Sen. Shelley Moore Capito’s Morgantown office. In early February Capito told reporters that she was “pretty comfortable with the direction” Musk’s cuts were taking at the time and that she would need to wait and see.

Clare said members of the Senator’s staff were not willing to meet, but the group is determined to keep up public pressure.

“We think that democracy requires vigilant protection and active participation from all citizens, and right now, what that looks like is standing up and pressuring our democratically representative leaders here in West Virginia to stop this,” she said. “Call on the Trump administration to give a pink slip to Elon Musk and stop decimating the federal workforce, and then, more broadly, stop threatening our fundamental democratic institutions.”

Things have moved fast for the group, so fast they have yet to affiliate with the national progressive grassroots movement Indivisible that inspired their name.

Mountaineers Indivisible only just elected leadership at their Saturday March 1 meeting, where they also tentatively broke their hundreds of new members into more manageable working groups.

One of those new members is Teri, who also asked to only be identified by her first name. She is not a federal worker, but her husband is, and she said they are terrified that he is going to lose his job.

“All of our plans for our future are being put on hold right now because we don’t know how long he’s going to have a job,” Teri sai. “We don’t know how long he’s going to have benefits. I’m just so angry.”

Teri said she feels disappointed that elected officials have in her words rolled over for the president, but is hopeful that her anger can be used for good and not for bad.

“I want the country to be able to see that West Virginia isn’t just conservative Republicans who are wanting to rubber stamp things that Trump is doing, that we have voices. We need our voices heard.”

Del. Evan Hansen, D-Monongalia, was present at Saturday’s meeting. He said he was proud that so much of his constituency had turned out to stand up for West Virginians, the Constitution and the rule of law.

“It’s important for me to be here just as a citizen, but I think people also need to know that their elected officials hear them and agree with them and are going to fight for them,” he said.

Hansen said he is hearing from people in his district about the effects they are already seeing from the cuts, and said they will soon be felt in the state Capitol as well.

“A lot of West Virginians are losing their jobs: federal workers, federal contractors and others that have been doing work based on federal grants,” he said. “It’s going to make our job as state legislature even more difficult. There will be even greater demands on the state budget, and that’s at a time when, after 10 years of Republican rule, we have $400 million deficit and talks of additional cuts. I’m not sure how the majority party is going to address this, but it’s it’s going to compound our challenges.”

As the group grows, they are trying to capitalize on their momentum. On Tuesday, they held a rally in front of the Monongalia County Courthouse to “Give Musk a Pink Slip” and let federal workers affected by cuts speak.

Tim Buckman works at the Louis A. Johnson Veterans’ Administration Medical Center in Clarksburg. He told the crowd that he has seen firsthand the impact of DOGE cuts to workers and funding.

“They lowered all our government credit card limits to $1,” Buckman said. “They’re still open, but you can’t buy anything. That means for the buses for the disabled veterans to get back and forth to the hospital, can’t buy gas. If it snows, can’t blow the parking lot. We need critical things to keep the place running.”

Buckman said he works in the medical center’s boiler plant, which provides heating and cooling for the West Virginia Veterans Nursing Facility, as well as sterilization and humidity control capacity for the hospital. He warned that if a critical component fails, the center cannot purchase a replacement.

“That’s someone’s critical surgery. That could be life or death,” Buckman said. “Guess what? They die.”

Former state delegate Barbara Fleischauer came with a lengthy list a friend had compiled of local effects of the federal cuts.

“These are the numbers: 80 plus fired at the Parkersburg Bureau of Public Debt, 20 plus at NETL, the National Energy Technology Lab, Department of Energy,” she said. “Morgantown Veterans Administration included 10 probationary employees, four of them 100% service disabled veterans. NIOSH, there are three critical programs that are going to be affected.”

Fleischauer’s list also includes 10 inspectors at the Mine Health and Safety Administration that took deferred resignation, as well as 27 probationary employees subject to termination.

“Most of those jobs that were lost were mine inspectors or expert mine safety trainers,” she said.

Two miners have died in West Virginia already this year.

“We want our federal representatives to stand up for us,” Fleischauer said. “The people need to be a check if Congress won’t be.”

Protestors like retired teacher Ray Wilson say they are appalled by Musk’s access to their personal information and the real-world effects of cuts to departments like Veterans’ Affairs.

“When you cut all the projects that help the poorest to get tax breaks to the biggest billionaires in the country, that’s wrong,” he said.

Wilson said the country was built on protest, and he wants to tell the President and Congress enough is enough. He fears a greater, more existential threat to American democracy if the Trump administration is left unchecked.

“We have a president, he doesn’t want to be president now,” Wilson said. “He wants to be a dictator. And if we can’t get some of this stopped, the 2026 election will not occur.”

Mountaineers Indivisible plans to continue meeting Saturdays and conducting more actions to pressure elected leaders to oppose the Trump administration’s cuts.

Federal Cuts Could Affect Local Schools, Including Low Income And Disabled Students, Says Budget Expert

The Trump administration is looking to slash at least $1 trillion in federal spending across dozens of departments.

Kelly Allen, executive director of the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy, spoke with Chris Schulz about what cuts to the Department of Education would mean for local schools.

Just one month after his inauguration, the Trump administration has cut thousands of workers across the federal government. The Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, headed by Elon Musk, is looking to slash at least $1 trillion in federal spending across dozens of departments.

Kelly Allen, executive director of the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy, spoke with Chris Schulz about what cuts to the Department of Education would mean for local schools.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Schulz: Tell me a little bit about the federal money that comes into the state.

Allen: Schools in West Virginia, I believe like schools all over the country, are generally funded by government at three levels. So the bulk of it, about 80% I believe, comes from state and local government funding. So at the local level, property taxes are a major source of funding for education. And then at the state level, there’s something called the state school aid funding formula that kind of balances out and provides a significant chunk of state level funding for public education.

State spending on public ed is a really big chunk of the overall state general revenue budget, I think it’s about $1.8 billion. And then the other 20% or so comes from federal funding. And federal funding that is enacted by Congress and routed through the US Department of Education plays three major roles that we can talk about a little bit more, but it’s more targeted to specific programs or specific higher need populations.

We actually put an analysis out earlier this week highlighting how West Virginia is more reliant than most states on federal funding. So that’s going to encompass a lot of areas, not just education. But if you look at not just the state’s general revenue budget – which is what the legislature will be enacting in a couple of months – but if you look at that total budget that encompasses everything, we get just over 50% of our budget from federal funds, and the national average for states is about a third. So because of a lot of factors, we’re more reliant than most states on federal funding, which is why this conversation is really important.

For K-12 education, this is not an exhaustive list, but I think the three largest sources of K-12 funding that come in to our schools, again enacted through Congress, but routed through the U.S. Department of Education into our states, are the Every Student Succeeds Act, ESSA funding, which is for Title I and Title II. Title I goes specifically to low income students, low income districts. There’s also IDEA funds, which are the Individuals with Disabilities and Education Act, so specifically for students with special needs, and then the National School Lunch Program, which is also really important in West Virginia, a state that has high levels of food insecurity. And combined, those three funding sources are expected to bring in over $600 million to West Virginia in fiscal year 2025 which is the current fiscal year that we’re in. That’s a really big number. So just to put that in perspective a little bit, it’s about $2,500 per pupil in the public school system.

Schulz: What can the Trump administration do – without the intervention of Congress – to the Department of Education?

Allen: As of this conversation, we don’t yet know what is in the executive order. We do know, and have mentioned a couple of times, that these big funding sources that flow into our state and into our school districts have been appropriated by Congress. They are distributed by the U.S. Department of Education, but Congress has appropriated them, so presumably an executive order could not override Congress’s wishes for these dollars to go into states and into school districts.

I also believe that the Department of Education was created by Congress, so again, an executive order alone could not dismantle an agency so long as checks and balances remain in place. But I do think that the White House could reduce staff in the Department of Education. We are seeing evidence already that programs that have been appropriated by Congress dollars are being disrupted. There are reports of Head Start dollars not getting to places, and other disruptions and programs and federal funds that Congress did appropriate.

So there’s some short term impacts, certainly, but I think the impetus behind abolishing or dismantling the U.S. Department of Education and other things that we’re hearing, a lot of it is to reduce spending. We know that there’s a big tax package that was passed back in 2017 that enacted big tax cuts for corporations, the wealthy, and some for regular Americans, is expiring at the end of this year and would cost trillions of dollars to extend. So a lot of the proposals that we’re hearing, whether they’re cuts to Medicaid, cuts to safety nets, cuts to the Department of Education, are being floated, at least in part to offset the extension of tax cuts. Just getting rid of the Department of Education personnel doesn’t get you much savings. That’s not the big bulk of it.

The big bulk of it is the dollars that are appropriated by Congress and coming into the states. So it seems to me that those dollars are at risk if there is really an interest in reducing federal spending. And again, we don’t know what’s in the executive order yet, but Project 2025 does seem to be driving a lot of the executive orders and a lot of the decision making that’s been coming out. And in Project 2025 these specific programs: Title I, IDEA, National School Lunch Program, there are proposals within them to wind them down, which essentially means shifting the cost of providing those services onto the state, or dismantling those services entirely.

Schulz: I know that one of the talking points, which I believe is found in Project 2025, is shifting a lot of this funding from its current structure of Congressional appropriation to a block grant system. Do you have any understanding of how that would work and how it might impact West Virginia?

Allen: Generally, when programs become block grants, they shrink over time. My most familiarity is in programs like TANF, which is Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, CHIP the Children’s Health Insurance Program. Those are big programs that transitioned from a program that grew with the cost of the program to a block grant that was just essentially frozen.

Often block grants stop growing with inflation, stop growing with need, and just freeze, which means that their value erodes over time. And if you look at a program like TANF, it is able to serve far, far fewer people than it once was, because that block grant figure has stayed static, which means with inflation, over time, they’re able to serve fewer and fewer families. So block granting programs is generally maybe a more sneaky way to cut them, because maybe this year the funding doesn’t shrink, but over time, it really erodes the value.

And of course, at the state level, the state has to eat rising costs. Right? When teacher pay goes up, when the cost of providing services goes up, when gas goes up, somebody has to eat that rising costs. And if the federal government no longer adjusts with the cost of providing things and shifts to a block grant, that shifts a lot of the costs onto the state and local governments.

Schulz: Early education is getting more and more attention in recent years. What is the impact of federal funding on early education?

Allen: In fiscal year 2025 West Virginia is expected to receive about $77 million in Head Start funding. Another piece of early childhood education that comes from the federal government is the Child Care and Development block grant, which is really important in funding child care centers and providers and child care assistance that goes to families who qualify for help. Both of those are congressionally approved federal funding sources that we’ve heard – specifically about Head Start – about disruptions, despite Congress not changing their funding allocations or or withdrawing their prioritization for that.

In at least the case of the Child Care Assistance Program, we get a significant amount of what we spend towards child care in the state from the feds. The state does have to kick in something, there’s something called a maintenance of effort. So there’s a percentage that the state has to provide that also helps fund childcare. It’s significantly smaller, and it’s actually shrunk in recent years, and the state is spending less than any of our neighbors on the state share of childcare. And in fact, we’ve heard so much attention on childcare in recent years in the state legislature that childcare providers are saying they need more money to stay open, families are saying they need more help to afford the cost of childcare. So that’s another thing that could have a really deep impact on families in West Virginia if that were unwound.

There was also an executive order that came out from the White House related to school choice that instructed, I believe, the Secretary of the Department of Education to find ways that federal K-12 education funding sources could go to private schools, which currently are not able to receive those funds. And it also named the Child Care and Development Block Grant funds, which are underfunded right now in West Virginia and not serving the full need, could potentially be diverted to voucher and school choice programs. So in a lot of cases, yeah, we’re talking about the potential of diverting or reducing resources that are already insufficient to serve the Early Childhood population in West Virginia.

Schulz: There’s now a growing voice of dissent that says that we don’t need this, or even we don’t want this. So why has the country invested in this system for so long? What benefit does this provide to the public?

Allen: Public education is one of the foundational, agreed upon roles of government. I think it’s one of a few areas that we’ve long agreed across the political spectrum that is an important role of government. In fact, the West Virginia State Constitution guarantees a fundamental right to a free and thorough public education. And I would guess most state constitutions guarantee that as well, and it’s important for kids, for our future workforce, for our economy.

Morally and societally in West Virginia, it’s how we make sure kids get two meals a day and have touch points with safe adults and learn and meet these curriculum standards that the state has established to make sure that they are set up for a bright future. That’s not a very research based answer, but historically and even in our state constitutions, we’ve affirmed that this is really an important role of government, to make sure that kids have a baseline education that sets them up for success later in life.

I do have another thought, I guess, about what the White House can actually do to the U.S. Department of Ed that maybe we haven’t covered yet, aside from disrupting the federal funding. My understanding, and I do think it’s really important to say, is that the federal Department of Education does not do curriculum oversight in states. We’ve talked about the fact that there’s a desire to cut federal spending. But alongside that, I think there’s an ideological discussion about the role of the government in schools and the role of federal government in school. So I think that’s another argument for abolishing the U.S. Department of Education, is sending decision-making back to the states, but the U.S. Department of Education does not dictate curriculum.

In fact, if they did, you probably wouldn’t see such wildly different educational outcomes depending on what state you’re in. But that’s not to say that the federal dollars don’t have strings attached. The U.S. Department of Education plays a really important role in reporting, requiring states to report, and that gives us an apples to apples, solid comparison of states, solid data. That’s really, really important. We’ve had a lot of attention around the NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress) scores in the last couple of weeks. That’s apples to apples comparisons of education systems across the U.S., and we know that data is being disrupted in federal agencies, already being taken offline, and that’s a really important resource that the U.S. Department of Education provides.

The other piece of it is conditions that school districts and states have to meet in order to receive that federal funding. One thing that’s coming to mind right now is the Office of Civil Rights within the U.S. Department of Education, and I know that’s been a resource for issues when there have been allegations of discrimination in schools, and I think the state NAACP chapter has worked with them. So I think the Department of Ed does provide these really important guardrails and protections around civil rights, around discrimination and around reporting that presumably could be disrupted without an act of Congress, but are really important guardrails in the States.

Schulz: I just wonder if anybody has made the argument as to how the public market would be able to provide the same service.

Allen: There are certainly areas where the free market doesn’t work, market failures. I’m remembering one reason, which is that – maybe this was about early childhood education more specifically – but that a family can’t bear the cost of public education or early childhood education alone, because the value doesn’t only redound to them. There’s all these broader societal benefits of young people being educated, of children having a place to go that’s safe while their (parents) are at work every day. So the cost of providing childcare and providing public education is born across society, because the benefit doesn’t only go to the family, it goes to the broader society, which is one of the reasons. Also there’s productivity arguments. You can’t, you know, automate education. You can’t replace teachers with machinery yet. So you can’t get the productivity gains that you get in a factory with widgets or whatever.

Schulz: Is there anything else I haven’t given you a chance to discuss, or something you want to highlight?

Allen: I think it speaks to the importance of the federal role in public education, which is that for education, a lot of the benefit is long term, but at the state level, and in West Virginia, in most every state, lawmakers have to enact a balanced budget. They can’t deficit spend. So it’s really hard to talk to state lawmakers about the benefits that you’re going to see in something 10 years from now, because they have to balance a budget this year. And the federal government, for better or worse, is able to deficit spend. And that has been really important in times of economic downturns. We saw it during the pandemic, with the ESSER (Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief) funding.

Generally in a recession or an economic downturn, the state revenues go down, just like household revenues go down. Tax revenues go down, but that’s just when you need more resources. That’s just when more people need Medicaid, or more people need the services of SNAP or public education. So I think the federal government’s role in education is also really important in providing a steady resource and in fact, an ability to increase resources right at the moment when resources are the least. And a really good example of that was through the ESSER funding.

We were able to actually increase our spending on public education during a time of economic downturn when otherwise we wouldn’t have been able to. I’ve seen a lot of arguments about whether that spending was successful and resulted in recovering a lot of the pandemic losses, and I think in West Virginia, it definitely did have a positive impact. But I think that’s really important too, the federal government just has that steadying ability to increase resources during times of downturn or extra need that states, just generally and West Virginia specifically, do not have the capacity to provide.

Senate President Discusses Legislative Priorities And How Federal Cuts Could Affect Local Schools, This West Virginia Morning

On this West Virginia Morning, new Senate President Randy Smith discusses his legislative priorities, and a look at what cuts to the U.S. Department of Education could mean for local schools.

On this West Virginia Morning, new Senate President Randy Smith, R-Preston, spoke with news director Eric Douglas for The Legislature Today on Tuesday. They discussed Smith’s legislative priorities, including economic development and broadband issues.

And amidst the cuts being made to federal programs, Kelly Allen, executive director of the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy, spoke with Chris Schulz about what cuts to the Department of Education would mean for local schools.

West Virginia Morning is a production of West Virginia Public Broadcasting, which is solely responsible for its content.

Support for our news bureaus comes from Shepherd University and Marshall University School of Journalism and Mass Communications.

Maria Young produced this episode.

Listen to West Virginia Morning weekdays at 7:43 a.m. on WVPB Radio or subscribe to the podcast and never miss an episode. #WVMorning

GreenPower South Charleston Bus Factory Funds Stuck In Freeze

GreenPower Motor has received millions of dollars in grants from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to build electric buses for school districts nationwide, including some in West Virginia.

A South Charleston electric school bus manufacturer is in limbo with a freeze on federal grants.

GreenPower Motor has received millions of dollars in grants from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to build electric buses for school districts nationwide, including some in West Virginia.

Some of those funds are on hold, though, due to a freeze on federal grants and loans implemented by President Donald Trump.

U.S. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito says she supports the grants and wants to see them resume.

“I believe in the product. I believe in the jobs being created in West Virginia,” she said. “And I believe we should be looking at this as a technology that will help our school systems save money but also keep our students safe as they go to and from school.”

Most of the grants were made available through the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which Capito supported and former President Joe Biden signed.

AML Projects Also On Hold

Funding for some Abandoned Mine Land projects is also on hold due to the Trump administration’s freeze.

Capito said the actions have affected several projects in the Charleston area, but she expects funding to continue soon.

West Virginia is in line to receive hundreds of millions of dollars in the coming years to clean up mine sites for recreational use or economic development.

Such grants, from the Office of Surface Mining, Reclamation and Enforcement, help put displaced coal mine workers back on the job and remove safety risks and environmental hazards from former mine lands.

Multiple federal judges have blocked the administration’s freeze on federal grants and loans.

The $400 Million Projected Deficit: How W.Va. Got Here

During his first week in office, Gov. Patrick Morrisey delivered a picture of the state’s fiscal health in stark contrast to his predecessor’s projections of strength for the state.

“The state will have a projected deficit of approximately $400 million and that number is projected to rise more and more in the out years,” Morrisey said. “This is where we stand on day one.”

For the upcoming fiscal year, West Virginia’s budget is facing a turning point. After years of tax cuts, federal funds for many social services are set to expire – and the legislature will have to adapt to Morrisey’s new budget proposals.

In the time since, Morrisey has made it clear that his office sees these issues as “inherited” and structural from former Gov. Jim Justice – pointing to one-time funds used for large ongoing costs like Medicaid rather than finding consistent funding sources.

“I think it’s coming across as more dire sounding than it is,” Sen. Eric Tarr, R-Putnam, said.

Tarr is the outgoing Senate Finance Chair, having held the seat for three years. He says he has worked to create flat budgets with the legislature.

While Justice ceased providing six-year budget projections during his time in office – a practice Morrisey plans to bring back — Tarr worked with available legislative data to create revenue reports, within a margin of error.

Still, he says Justice’s priorities could diverge from the concrete realities of running the state.

“Governor Justice was a very big, big picture guy on going out and, you know, let’s tackle the biggest mountain we can find,” Tarr said. “And really, sometimes there wasn’t as much a plan for tackling that biggest mountain you could find, but that went at sometimes the sacrifice of having somebody who was who really had an operational knowledge of the agencies.”

While Tarr is cautiously optimistic about Morrisey approach, he says Morrisey’s plans to audit expenditures could still be difficult logistically.

In the meantime, Tarr says he expects job growth through past legislative funds designated to companies like Nucor to propel job growth in the state – but those just come a little later than expected in projections’ margin of error.

And incoming jobs will also mean an incoming demand for social services.

“If you have people who are coming in in order to go to work, they need childcare for their kids, in order to be able to get away from the house to go to work, rather than somebody having childcare and still sitting at home,” Tarr said.

But those services – like health care costs and investments in childcare – have always been in the push and pull of balancing the state budget with years of tax cuts.

Sean O’Leary is a senior policy analyst at the West Virginia Center on Budget & Policy. He says the state’s position with those social services, which often enable and attract workforce participation, is already weakened.

“The risk that you run when you make cuts to the services is that you make the state uncompetitive to our neighbors,” O’Leary said. “When it comes to public services, we already spend less per child on child care. We already spend less per student on (K-12) education. We already spend less on health care and Medicaid. That’s not good for the state.”

As for the promise of tax cuts, O’Leary said the state’s strategy for job growth has long been lagging.

“We’ve been down this path before, when we tried this under the Manchin administration by cutting the corporate net income tax, the business franchise tax, the parts of the income tax and the sales tax,” O’Leary said. “At the time, it was called the most pro-growth tax reform in the country, and it was supposed to create jobs. It was supposed to pay for itself. All these things ended up costing in 2015 when they were all fully in effect, cost about $425 million which you adjust for inflation, it’s about the size of the income tax cuts that we’ve recently passed. And since then, West Virginia has lagged the rest of the nation when it comes to job growth.”

And many federal funds, like Medicaid expansion, are no longer in play for the state budget as pandemic-era federal bills have lapsed. This lapse also comes amid questions about what President Donald Trump will preserve as he plans to reassess and cut trillions in federal program funding – Morrisey says almost half of the state’s overall budget currently comes from federal funds.

O’Leary says his analysis sees a need to preserve social programs – while passing legislation that thinks more expansively about the potential for taxes that would not be levied against most West Virginians directly.

“You know, we could keep the current income tax cuts and add new brackets on top, so that no one below $100,000 would would see their taxes increase and would still raise hundreds of millions of dollars,” O’Leary said. “Doing that, you know, almost closes our budget gap.”

The governor releases his annual budget proposal along with his state of the state on the first day of the legislative session. From there, it’s up to the state legislature, including new Senate leadership, to come up with a budget that both chambers can pass and the governor will sign.

Federal Funding Freeze Creates Uncertainty, Concern For Local Educators

It is unclear what local programs will be impacted by the federal funding freeze.

A federal funding freeze has left many scrambling for answers.

The freeze was first outlined in one of President Donald Trump’s inauguration day executive orders. But a White House memorandum released Monday orders federal agencies to temporarily halt “all activities related to obligation or disbursement of all federal financial assistance” starting at 5 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 28.

West Virginia received more than $7 billion in federal funds for fiscal year 2021, the most recent year data is available. According to analysis by the data nonprofit USAFacts, almost 9% of that money – more than $600 million – went to the state’s schools and other educational programs.

Kristie Skidmore, president of the American Federation of Teachers-West Virginia (AFT-WV), said it is unclear how the payment stop will impact workers paid through federal programs ranging from Title I to Head Start.

“I’ve had teachers contacting me today that are paid through federal programs saying ‘How’s this affect me?’ and I just can’t answer their questions,” Skidmore said. “There are still a lot of unknowns, but what we do know is that it is creating some panic, some confusion and chaos in the lives of our working families.”

Initial analysis indicates that programs like Title I, which distributes its funds months ahead of school semesters, would not be immediately affected by the freeze, but Skidmore said the fate of the federally funded school meal programs like the National Free Lunch Program are also unclear at this time.

“We also know that our students are fed with federal funds in our schools, so that’s a concern at this time as well,” she said.

Title I aims to close educational achievement gaps by allocating federal funds to schools with a high percentage of low-income students. More than half of West Virginia schools qualified for Title I funding in the 2021-22 school year, and the state received more than $60 million from the program.

The Head Start program, which provides early education and comprehensive services to children and families in greatest need, provided more than $80 million to West Virginia in fiscal year 2024.

Federal agencies that provide Federal financial assistance now have until Feb. 7 to complete a spreadsheet asking questions such as:

Does this program provide Federal funding to nongovernmental organizations supporting or providing services, either directly or indirectly, to removable or illegal aliens?
Does this program promote gender ideology?
Does this program promote or support in any way abortion or other related activities identified in the Hyde Amendment?
Does this program support any activities that must not be supported based on executive orders issued on or after January 20, 2025 (including executive orders released following the dissemination of this spreadsheet)?