School districts across the country felt some relief Friday afternoon when the U.S. Department of Education deemed its review of frozen federal funds was complete. The department announced it would begin releasing money to local districts next week after facing a lawsuit and bipartisan pressure.
Pinellas County school board chair Laura Hine credited the power of community input for the reversal.
“The unanimous interest from across our community in the funding of their schools — including our elected officials — was powerful and yielded results,” she said.
The night before, Pinellas County school leaders urged community members to rally for the release of those funds.
They presented what was at stake with an initial$9 million in funding being withheld from them by the U.S. Department of Education.
District Superintendent Kevin Hendrick said a little under $1 million had been recently released before Thursday for after-school and summer enrichment, and the state also released around $2 million in unspent rollover funds from the previous year. The district had around $1 million budgeted for unexpected expenses in the categories the funds are tied to. The Juvenile Welfare Board also stepped in to provide $600,000 toward mental health care services.
The fate of the remaining $5 million caused uncertainty for the coming school year.
Though the district said no employee would lose their job, 13 English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) positions could have been eliminated and those employees would be reassigned. Four human resource positions were slated to be reassigned. Funding for professional development, new teacher mentoring and adult literacy and workforce education also faced cuts.
“The board unanimously believes that program reviews for compliance is completely reasonable,” Hendrick said Thursday. “What we argue is that the timing of this review is not reasonable. To do so the day before a fiscal year begins, when we’ve hired 47 people off of these grants into positions, is not a reasonable expectation.”
Community members had a chance to ask school officials questions about what comes next. Some asked if they could expect to not receive the funds at all.
“Could they be repurposed?” Hendrick said. “They could. Could they be never given out? They could. Might they be given out tonight? Maybe. But we don’t know.”
The abrupt halt in funding would have impacted teachers who rely on federal grants for professional development, classroom support and other benefits.
Former Pinellas County teacher Kristi Carroll is among the many educators who did not have an education degree when they began their teaching career. Professional development programs like the Transition to Teaching program she participated in are at risk of going away.
“(The program) was really, really helpful in becoming a teacher, because I was a history major, which helped me a lot when I was teaching history, but I needed to learn how to teach,” she said. “I was able to give my students what they needed, but I needed to learn the skill of being a teacher, because it is a skill.”
Sharon Johnson-Levy, school counselor for Bear Creek Elementary School in St. Petersburg, has been involved in the school system since 2010. Johnson-Levy said she believed it would be just the first of many cutbacks to the education system.
“Teachers have really taken a blow over the last few years,” she said. “There’s been a lot of support that has been lost way before this. And so there comes a breaking point where some one hero can keep things going, but how far does it go before things start to kind of not work?”
At the meeting representatives for both U.S. Reps. Anna Paulina Luna and Kathy Castor expressed support and urged attendees to write letters to their lawmakers.
Danielle Shipp, who attended the town hall and has children in both charter and public schools in Pinellas, said she hopes more parents get involved.
“I just want to make sure our children’s education stays consistent, no matter the administration, whether it’s Democrat, Republican, independent,” she said.
Whitney Fox, whose first child is entering school in fall, said she thought the funding freeze was just the beginning and believed the federal government would bring more of Project 2025, a Republican policy blueprint from the Heritage Foundation, into fruition.
“This is just the beginning,” she said. “There is a plan that has been laid out very clearly. This should not be a surprise to anyone that this is happening. There are more cuts coming to public education. We should be incredibly alarmed. What will we do when the cuts continue to come?”
Hine, the Pinellas school board chair, encouraged the community to stay involved, even after the funds are released.
“Florida’s legislative session is around the corner,” she said. “Let the folks who make the funding decisions for our schools know that this matters to you — that these are your tax dollars, you believe in your schools and you want them funded.”
To read this article as it was originally published, visit https://www.tampabay.com/news/education/2025/07/25/pinellas-school-leaders-rally-community-over-federal-funding-cuts/