The pledges that President-elect Donald Trump and his associates have made about closing the U.S. Department of Education and reducing other school funding programs are alarming Maine school officials.
While there will be some limits on his administration’s ability to follow through on all of its pledges and to force changes on Maine schools, it will control more than $100 million that flows to the state every year for a variety of K-to-12 programs, including some that serve the neediest students.
State and municipal funding accounts for the largest share of Maine’s education spending, but any reductions in federal dollars could exacerbate the sometimes heated debates about how to fund local education and nutrition programs while also keeping school buildings in decent shape.
Trump has called for shrinking federal funding to schools that “push Critical Race Theory, gender ideology, or other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content,” and his nominee for the head of Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has a history of making anti-vaccine comments and spreading disinformation about vaccines.
“The U.S. Department of Education plays an important role in helping the Maine Department of Education to provide a fair, equitable, and high-quality education to all children in our state,” said Chloe Teboe, a spokesperson for the state agency. “Eliminating the U.S. DOE would raise serious questions about the distribution of these funds, which serve some of our state’s most vulnerable students and are essential to ensuring consistent access to public education for all.”
While it’s still unclear what Trump — who recently nominated Linda McMahon, a professional wrestling magnate and former head of the Small Business Administration, to lead the Department of Education — would do to Maine schools, here are some of the changes he could bring:
Funding for vulnerable students
Some of the biggest pools of federal education funding that flow to Maine are for programs that support poorer students and those who require special education.
One change that Trump’s associates recommended in their Project 2025 report was the gradual elimination of Title I, a program that uses poverty data to direct more federal aid to school districts based on how many low-income students they serve.
Most Title I money is distributed through “basic grants,” where school districts can determine how to use it to help low-income students. It’s often used for support staff, classroom supplies and other necessities. Project 2025 calls for transferring the funding to another agency, administering it as block grants — which are sums of money with fewer strings attached — and over 10 years, shifting responsibility for it to the states.
While Trump has distanced himself from Project 2025, at least 140 people who worked in his first administration were involved in its development.
Maine is one of the top recipients of Title I funds, on a per low-income student basis, and in 2025, it will receive over $56 million in Title I funding alone, with the largest portions going to Bangor, Portland, Lewiston and RSU 54 in Somerset County. Lewiston schools alone will receive $3.5 million, but smaller districts also receive money — for example, RSU 13 in Rockland will get $736,902.
Without those funds, low-income students and those who need additional help in reading and math would be left further behind, according to Steven Bailey, executive director of the Maine School Management Association. He said while districts in Maine receive the funding based on economic need, they often distribute it based on educational needs.
“If that support was taken away, you’re not making instruction equitable for students, because there are students who need more,” Bailey said. “Everybody doesn’t need 45 minutes of instruction. Somebody may need 90 minutes to be able to help develop their reading skills.”
Shifting burden to local taxpayers
The Mills administration did not offer specifics when asked how it’s preparing for possible cuts to federal education funding.
“The Governor is monitoring the President-elect’s plans, and if the incoming administration advances a specific proposal, the Governor will review and assess its impacts on Maine people, but she strongly hopes the Federal government remains a partner to the State of Maine in educating our children,” Teboe said.
If there were cuts, Maine officials could be forced to either shrink programs or ask the state’s taxpayers to make up the difference, according to Bailey.
He noted that schools are required by federal law to provide enough support for special education. If left with less money, the districts could have to reallocate what they have and cut other programs, including for arts, humanities and extracurriculars.
“If you don’t provide the programs, you’re not providing the kind of education that typically your school community has been able to provide before. So, you know, are you moving forward? Or are you moving backward?” Bailey said.
In lower-income districts, it can already be hard for local taxpayers to agree to increases in their school budgets. For example, locals in the Boothbay-area school district have been fighting the district in court over plans to add much-needed repairs and expansions to the elementary school, which would cost $30 million.
One other change the Trump administration could bring is shifting more education spending to block grants, although it’s less clear how that would impact Maine.
Social policies
While the Trump administration has spoken out against schools that teach their students about controversial racial and gender issues, his administration would not be able to directly force changes on what Maine’s public schools teach, as districts control their own curricula.
But he could exert influence in other ways, such as following through on his pledge to undo a rule implemented by President Joe Biden that expands discrimination protections for LGBTQ students under Title IX. The immediate legal impacts of that could be minimal in Maine, where state law already prohibits discrimination in schools based on sex, gender identity and sexual orientation.
However, it is also possible Trump could cut funding to places that defy his administration’s wishes, resulting in likely legal challenges.
“In cases where state law and federal funding practices conflict, the federal government does typically have the ability to withhold funds,” said Ezekiel Kimball, the interim dean of the College of Education and Human Development at the University of Maine. “Legal challenges often result from these conflicts. In some cases, states have foregone federal funding so as not to accept stipulations incompatible with state law.”
Kimball noted that he was only speaking for himself given his expertise in education, and not on behalf of the University of Maine.
It’s also likely that Trump would have a bully pulpit to rail against many of the issues he has previously raised, shaping public opinion about them.
Vaccine mandates
One other element of Trump’s platform that could have implications for Maine schools is his nomination of Kennedy to head the health department. While the former presidential candidate has said he’s not anti-vaccine and that he won’t attempt to ban vaccines, he has a history of spreading misinformation about them.
Maine requires that — with limited exceptions — public school students have proof of vaccination for diphtheria, measles, meningococcal meningitis, mumps, pertussis, poliomyelitis, tetanus, rubella and varicella.
If the administration attempted to reduce funding for states that require vaccinations, Bailey said that Maine would probably “go down swinging” in an attempt to fight the change.
“Maine right now has some pretty — I would say both effective as well as strong statutes that support both the effectiveness as well as the need for those levels of vaccinations,” Bailey said. “So I think it would meet with quite a bit of resistance and opposition for Maine, if that were to be the case.”
Bailey noted that vaccines prevent students from getting sick and therefore from missing school.
Jules Walkup is a Report for America corps member. Additional support for this reporting is provided by BDN readers.
