As the new school year gets closer, the Niagara Falls City School District continues to grapple with lost and frozen federal funds and their coming impact.
The school district saw $1.2 million worth of federal grants cut by the U.S. Department of Education, which had been used for hiring and training college interns for mental health services in the district.
The cuts were part of about $1 billion in nationwide mental health grants the department announced it would cut this past April. Sixteen state attorneys general, including Letitia James of New York, are suing the Trump administration to get that funding restored.
“We’re going to lose hands on deck,” said Niagara Falls schools Superintendent Mark Laurrie, who was notified in May about the cuts. “We’re not certain as to why they’re happening.”
The district has been in contact with local elected officials about the importance of the funding and their program’s success, but they have no sense yet if that funding will return.
The district was in the third year of two five-year federal grants funding these programs, allowing them to hire 24 college student interns in their last semester of school and training them. There is funding on hand to last through the end of the year.
The eight social workers, eight counselors, and eight school psychologists brought on one at a time have worked across the district, helping students with their mental health issues while getting professional training. Sometimes the district has hired some of the interns once they graduated college; otherwise, they were referred to outside agencies.
Laurrie also told the Buffalo News that the programs resulted in chronic absentee rates improved by 6% while principal’s office visits and long-term suspensions fell by 5%.
“We’re going to continue to support (students) with the staff we currently have,” Laurrie said. The program funding would come out of their school budget while the district looks for other funding sources.
It also had Title II, III, and IV funding worth $897,000 frozen and under review, part of $5.6 billion total in education funding withheld that was already approved by Congress. It did have $828,000 in 21st Century Fund grants for middle school afterschool programs restored.
Laurrie had also previously expressed concerns about the district losing federal funding for its Head Start early education program next year.
This also comes as the district and the University at Buffalo School of Social Work’s Institute on Trauma and Trauma-Informed Care announced this week a collaboration called the Niagara Falls High School Champion Team. They are a group of up to 40 students teaching trauma-informed practices throughout the district this coming fall.
The Buffalo Bills Foundation donated $10,000 in May to the program through a Social Justice Grant to expand the ITTIC program, which initially launched in 2020.