Two lawsuits are challenging the Trump administration’s decision to abruptly pull a grant that provides schools across Illinois with extra support like after-school programs, food pantries and mental health services.
The lawsuits, both of which were filed in federal court Monday afternoon, ask for an emergency injunction so that students don’t return to school in January to find that these programs have disappeared.
The U.S. Department of Education has not commented publicly about the discontinuations and did not immediately respond to questions about the lawsuit.
ACT Now Illinois got word earlier this month that the Trump administration would discontinue its Community Schools grant at the end of December. The nonprofit, which is responsible for distributing an $18.5 million annual grant, immediately appealed the decision, but learned Monday it was denied.
The ACT Now grant funds programs at 32 schools, including Curie High School and Clinton Elementary School in Chicago, as well as several downstate and in the suburbs. It was supposed to continue for three more years and is one of 19 Community Schools grants pulled across the country.
The Trump administration told ACT Now it was pulling the grant because it concluded the programs no longer served the “best interest of the Federal Government.”
According to one of the lawsuits, the U.S. Department of Education stated that ACT Now had “proposed project activities that conflict with the Department’s policy of prioritizing merit, fairness, and excellence in education,” and pointed to language in its grant application about a focus on equity, racial justice and serving historically marginalized populations.
The nonprofit organization is trying to find ways to keep these programs going without the federal money, but already some school districts and organizations are laying off staff.
ACT Now filed one lawsuit Monday and one of its grantees, the Brighton Park Neighborhood Council, teamed up with the American Federation of Teachers to file a second lawsuit. The national teachers union joined the lawsuit because it has members in many of the affected schools.
ACT Now’s lawsuit focuses on the Department of Education’s alleged failure to go through the correct process for discontinuing a grant. It notes that these grants were already approved and the federal government did not inform the organization before pulling the grant that it was not complying with the law.
“Last-minute decisions to cut funding, particularly when they have nothing to do with performance, don’t just create administrative chaos, they immediately harm the students and families these programs exist to serve,” said Josie Eskow Skinner, a partner at Sligo Law Group, which is representing ACT Now.
The Brighton Park Neighborhood Council and AFT lawsuit says the department can’t change the criteria for the grant midway through the cycle.
Patrick Brosnan, executive director at Brighton Park Neighborhood Council, said the organizations are complying with the grant’s goals, but that they are being targeted for supposedly violating federal civil rights law, which he finds “absurd.” Brosnan’s group runs the Community Schools program for 500 students at Curie.
“It’s depressing that this is being weaponized against us and low-income children on the Southwest Side are suffering as a result of it,” he said.