On Monday, June 30, 2025, the same day the 2025-26 budget was presented by the Berkeley Unified School District Superintendent’s Budget Advisory Committee and approved by the California Board of Education, the United States Department of Education announced that it would be withholding nearly seven billion dollars in congressionally approved federal education funding. The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) told Newsweek that the federal grants were frozen in order to ensure that their usage aligned with President Donald Trump’s priorities. The OMB spokesperson said, “Many of these grant programs have been grossly misused to subsidize a radical leftwing agenda.”
Federal government funding generally makes up two percent of the BUSD budget. In the 2025-26 school year, the district was expected to receive over four hundred thousand dollars.
“It makes no sense for a society or democracy to cut funds that would be going towards its own future,” said Mike Chang, Vice President of the Berkeley Unified School District School Board. Chang explained that programs vital to the American public education system were threatened, including migrant education, English Language Acquisition grants, and student support and academic achievement grants.
“We were hopeful that this was going to be a temporary threat and that the funds were going to be restored, because there was outcry all over the country from states and school districts that were relying on federal funding, and had already made their budgets for the coming school year based on the promise of this federal funding,” Jen Corn, BUSD School Board director, said. California had over nine hundred million dollars withheld during the period of impoundment. Impounding funds is when a president withholds funds that have been previously approved by Congress. On Tuesday, June 3, 2025, President Trump submitted 22 proposed rescissions to Congress.
The impoundment of funds was lifted in late July, 2025. “The act of withholding public school funds that were previously approved through legislative process at the U.S. Congress is a dangerous precedent that politicizes even statutorily required programs and services and can very rapidly destabilize California’s public K-12 school system that so many of us rely on,” Chang said.