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The small 900-student Lake County School District in the Colorado mountains may have to cut its after-school programming. A popular dual language program in the 3,500-student Fort Morgan district could take a funding hit. And stipends for paraprofessionals training to become teachers in the 90,000-student Denver Public Schools may be at risk.
All of those programs are funded with federal dollars that were expected to arrive this week but didn’t. In total, Colorado hasn’t received about $70 million in federal education funds after the Trump administration refused to release billions in K-12 dollars on July 1.
The U.S. Department of Education told state officials that it is withholding the money to ensure it’s spent according to the president’s priorities, a spokesperson for the Colorado Department of Education said. The uncertainty is causing concern among school officials who may have to gut programs for some of their most vulnerable students if the money doesn’t show up.
“The idea of not fully serving my kids and families absolutely wrenches my heart, and I just want people to understand that we’re going to do everything we can do to minimize disruptions,” said Kate Bartlett, the Lake County superintendent.
“But I’ve got to be real,” she said. “I think it’s going to be a disruptive period.”
The estimate that Colorado could be short $70 million in federal funds for the 2025-26 school year comes from the Colorado Department of Education and is based on funding levels from 2024-25, which were expected to hold steady. The $70 million includes:
- About $11.2 million to support multilingual learners and immigrant students. This federal funding is distributed to Colorado’s 179 school districts based on each district’s count of students learning English as a second language. Districts use the money to hire and train bilingual teachers and buy textbooks and other materials.
- About $7.2 million to support migrant students. This money is not for the influx of new immigrants from South America that Colorado experienced over the past few years. Rather, it is meant to support the children of farmworkers. It’s distributed to districts based on student counts and used to pay for health screenings, summer programs, and mental health support for migrant students who experience frequent moves.
- About $26 million to recruit, retain, and train teachers and reduce class sizes. Districts use this funding in a variety of ways, including by offering incentives to teachers who work in high-needs schools or teach hard-to-staff subjects.
- About $13 million for before- and after-school programs, summer programs, tutoring, clubs, and other enrichment activities, primarily for students from low-income families.
The Trump administration is withholding a total of nearly $7 billion in federal funding for K-12 schools. The funds were approved by Congress earlier this year, and states and school districts were relying on the money for this upcoming school year.
Melissa Gibson, executive director of the Colorado Association of School Executives, called the withholding “unconscionable.” She said her organization has been fielding phone calls from Colorado superintendents worried about how they’ll fill the gaps and how they’ll break the news to their teachers, families, and students if they can’t.
“This is going to force some really painful decisions,” Gibson said.
Two-thirds of Lake County’s after-school programming is funded by nearly $400,000 in federal money that is now being withheld, Bartlett said. The programming is both popular and crucial: Most students use it because their parents commute long distances to work, she said. Students stay after school to build robots, learn to play the bagpipes, and get homework help. Most programs are free and feed students an after-school snack and a to-go dinner.
As one of the many Colorado districts on a four-day school week, Lake County also runs programs on Fridays when there is no school.
Bartlett said the withholding of federal funds will have a ripple effect.
“Of course it impacts kids,” she said, “but then it impacts families and the broader economy. If suddenly your kid is not in a safe and fun place until 6 o’clock at night but instead they are done at 3:45, it puts a lot of pressure on families and ultimately, the economy.”
Denver Public Schools, Colorado’s largest district, stands to lose about $10 million if the federal funds continue to be withheld, said Chuck Carpenter, the district’s chief of finance.
That money is earmarked for teacher training, multilingual learners, and after-school programs. If the funding doesn’t come through, the district will have to make cuts, Carpenter said.
“This is a defunding of programming for 5- to 18-year-olds,” he said. “We’re taking money we were giving to children and saying this isn’t important anymore.”
In a joint statement, Denver Public Schools Superintendent Alex Marrero and Denver school board president Carrie Olson called the move “a dangerous overreach of federal authority.”
“For our Latino, Black, and multilingual learners — and all students served in historically underfunded districts — this delay threatens core programming,” Marrero and Olson said. “It weakens our national commitment to equity and public trust in government.”
Rob Sanders, the superintendent of Morgan County School District Re-3 in Fort Morgan, said his district is waiting on about $285,000 in federal education funds. In addition to offsetting costs in its popular dual language program, Sanders said his district uses the money to pay for instructional coaches and paraprofessionals.
“We already passed our budgets,” Sanders said. “We’ve already offered positions to people, they’ve already accepted, and now we’re looking at a shortfall of $285,000.
“I do believe at some point that they’ll release the funds,” he said of the federal government. “It’s all about sowing chaos, and I don’t think that chaos is good.”
Melanie Asmar is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Colorado. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.
