News Brief
Wednesday, October 1, 2025 — 8:11 am
The U.S. Department of Education will relaunch the school- and service-based mental health grant program, excluding a large sum previously allotted to recruit and retain school social workers and counselors.
The revised grants will instead focus $270 million on increasing school psychologists across the country, while also eliminating diversity goals and making universities ineligible for the grant, according to a federal register notice published on Monday.
The notice follows five months after the Trump administration canceled about $1 billion in these mental health grants, including nearly $168 million in grants to California. Nearly all grant recipients in California, including at least seven public universities, had used grant funds to train and employ school social workers and counselors. These recipients will not receive the remainder of their grant funds and will have to reapply under new conditions and scaled-back funds.
The Department of Education now prohibits using funds for “gender ideology, political activism, racial stereotyping or hostile environments for students of particular races,” according to the notice. It also requires grant recipients to increase the number of school psychologists “placed in a practicum or internship” in “high-need” school districts, and begin services through new school psychologists within nine months, without relying on previously established university programs and partnerships.
The DOE also said it will prioritize grant recipients who can “respecialize” existing school-based mental health service providers into the credentialed role of a school psychologist, according to the notice. However, school social workers and counselors — who provide all frontline mental health screenings, referrals, interventions and counseling — cannot transfer credentials or step into the specialty role of a school psychologist, who usually performs psychoeducational assessments within special education.
The Trump administration has repeatedly targeted school social workers and counselors as participants in “radical indoctrination” in K-12. Earlier this year, the administration ordered that school counselors be criminally prosecuted for the “social transition” of transgender students and launched an investigation into counselors protecting LGBTQ students under California law.
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