Trump admin cancels Wake, UNC school mental health grants amid national DEI crackdown :: WRAL.com

The Trump administration has canceled millions of dollars in grants to provide more mental health services to students in Wake County and rural North Carolina schools, as well as other schools across the nation.

The U.S. Department of Education told WRAL News that grants were not continued for K-12 schools and universities across the country because some applicants listed diversity goals in hiring and diversity training in their applications. It’s unclear what the administration objected to in the Wake County Public School System’s application, and it’s unclear how many other grants in North Carolina have been canceled.

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill won’t receive the nearly $1 million it was expecting to in 2026 and 2027 for its program that sought to train more mental health professionals to work in rural schools.

“The Department has undertaken a review of grants and determined that the grant specified above provides funding for programs that reflect the prior Administration’s priorities and policy preferences and conflict with those of the current Administration,” an April 29 letter from the U.S. Department of Education to the district states. The letter, signed by department senior adviser Murray Bessette, says the district’s program violates or conflicts with any one of four federal policies or laws but doesn’t state which one.

In a statement to WRAL, Madi Biedermann, a U.S. Department of Education spokeswoman, said, “We owe it to American families to ensure that tax-payer dollars are supporting evidence-based practices that are truly focused on improving students’ mental health.”

Schools can keep their funding for this year, except “unobligated funds,” but their grants won’t be renewed for the final years of their cycle.

The Wake County Public School System received $14.1 million that leaders planned to use over five years to hire 24 mental health professionals and three staff trained to responded to crises to work in some schools. The district received $2.3 million for its first year this year. So far, officials had only laid the groundwork for the program and starting the hiring process for next school year. It would have expanded the district’s school-based mental health program, which is in 106 of the district’s 199 schools.

The district is looking into its options, and the letter to the district states that the district can ask for the decision to be reconsidered.

“The Wake County Public School System remains committed to supporting the well-being and success of every student,” a district statement says. “While we continuously seek innovative and research-backed solutions to serve our school communities, recent developments at the federal level have impacted our ability to move forward with one such initiative.”

In a note to the school board in April 2024, as the district prepared to apply for the grant, district officials noted that the Biden administration encouraged applicants to form plans for how they would recruit or retain qualified professionals from diverse backgrounds. In a brief summary of Wake’s program on the U.S. Department of Education’s website, the department lists Wake’s goal to field “diverse candidates” and notes that the school system would commit to the federal grant program’s priority to increase the number of credentialed providers “who are from diverse backgrounds or communities” that reflect the students the school serves.

The summary of UNC-Chapel Hill’s program on the department’s website doesn’t mention diversity. The program hoped to “reduce and mitigate the inequities of mental health and economic disparities among low income and rural students,” according to the summary.

A university spokesperson told WRAL News that the grant program would be funded through Dec. 31, 2025, per communication from the federal education department. The university is still evaluating how to respond to the announcement.

For years, schools in North Carolina and beyond have been expanding students’ access to mental health services, as data show rising depression, anxiety and suicide ideation among young people.

Since President Donald Trump’s inauguration about 100 days ago, the administration has tried to get rid of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, which officials argue are discriminatory. The administration canceled hundreds of millions of dollars in teacher training grants earlier this year because of diversity initiatives in some of the grants.

Many state education and school leaders have countered that diversity, equity and inclusion programs comply with federal civil rights laws. Many schools have long sought to diversify their workforces, which are disproportionately white by a wide margin.

Since 2022, millions of dollars from the federal grant programs in question have come into the state and to school systems and universities across the country via the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act passed by Congress and signed into law by former President Joe Biden.

That bill provided $1 billion, equally split into two existing grant programs. One of the grants was focused on hiring more well-qualified mental health staff in schools, and the other was focused on training mental health service providers to work in schools.

On Thursday, the department told WRAL News they were canceling $1 billion in grants, but it wasn’t immediately clear what all that encompassed. Some of the $1 billion in the bill has already been spent, and the department also told WRAL that they were halting grants “in cases that awards were not advancing Administration priorities.” Additionally, the grant programs predate the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, and it’s unclear how much funding they received separately from that legislation.

Since 2022, the hiring grant has funded efforts in Wake, Guilford, Surry and Iredell-Statesville school systems, as well as the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction. The training grant has funded efforts in Cumberland County Schools, at DPI and at North Carolina State University, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

The university grants were intended to help the schools train providers to work in Johnston, Halifax and Alamance-Burlington school systems, as well as rural schools.