Department of Education is terminating 168 million dollars in grants for full service community schools across 11 states.

Those are schools that partner with community groups to provide a range of services for students and their families.

About 18 million dollars of that funding goes to Illinois schools where it supports a variety of programs in underserved communities.

A department spokesperson says the decision aligns with the Trump administration's quote, rejection of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.

Joining us to talk about how the loss of funding is impacting Illinois schools are Susan Stanton, executive Director of Act now, Illinois, an organization providing after school programs to schools across the state and via zoom, Patrick Brosnan, executive director of the Brighton Park Neighborhood Council, a community organization serving Chicago's southwest Side.

Thanks to you both for joining us.

So Susan Act now, you the Illinois organization that applies for this grant and then disperses it to organizations like Patrick's and Tell us about the full service community school model and what that grant money gets used for.

Yeah.

The full service community school model is in a re-imagining of how we do education.

>> It understands that when students walk into a school building, they face many obstacles that prevent school day learning.

If you are going into school and you're hungry or your parents are unemployed or you don't have clean clothes or access to hygiene products.

It's going to be really hard to focus in math class.

Well, community schools do is they look at the local problems and what individual students and families need and they bring in partnerships to try to mitigate those issues so that way students are set up for success in their education and hopefully long-term in life.

These programs are uplifting, not only students but communities as a whole.

>> Patrick, some of the Brighton Park neighborhood councils funding comes from act.

Now you will use that money to administer programming at curing Metro High School on Chicago's Southwest Side.

Talk about some of the programming that you will implement there.

>> It is an enormous amount of programming that we Curie.

We have programming that happens during school and after school and English language, learning programming tutoring program mean?

>> A CT prep program mean?

mentoring program mean where we hire for mercury students as college mentors to come back to the school in support at-risk students, all sorts of civic leadership.

Programming.

We also have a very robust you know, said a pair of programs that include robotics fitness and English language Learning program, the ESL Program E G D programming.

Their STEM programming for students.

We have over 500 students security that is enrolled that are enrolled in programming right now at Uri and over 200 parents and community members of this is a huge loss for for the southwest side.

>> Susan, since the grant cuts were announced, Illinois schools have reported 277 staff layoffs, discontinuation of 708 student and family support programs.

What has the fallout been like for the families in the schools that benefit from the funding?

>> It's been devastating ad.

We got this news right before the holidays.

Schools had no time to pivot to make alternative plans as to what they were going to do with their staff or they were going to tell students some students left on winter break and they came back and their teachers or their clinicians were just gone without any explanation.

No opportunity say goodbye.

Parents were scrambling on the first day.

Back from break to figure out what am I gonna do with my child after school?

I need to work These very real impacts in the moment.

I'm schools can't really maintain staff without a guarantee of long-term funding.

So we are seeing services have been shut down and they don't continue to get worse every single day to we get a long-term resolution.

Did you ever receive any of reasoning or explanation from the Trump administration about why these grants have been cut?

We still don't have very definitive reasons as to what what happened am the grants were terminated without any sighting.

Any specific activities we participated in or or what we would have violated.

And so we're still trying to ascertain that ourselves.

Patrick Department of Education officials said diversity, equity and inclusion policies are behind these cuts in funding, writing, quote.

>> Many of these programs use overt race preferences or perpetuate divisive concepts and stereotypes which no student should be exposed to.

What is your response to that?

Do you see this, Patrick, as you moved see this move, as you know, further crackdown that the administration has done on Non dei initiatives and programming.

>> I mean, it is so hard to respond to that claim.

I know that we applied for this program with Curie High School with Chicago, Public Schools.

The Department of Education approved the program plan that we put in place and all the partners throughout the state of Illinois.

And we were in full compliance with everything that we set out to do Kerry you know, it's a it's a huge neighborhood school on the southwest side.

It serves Latino students.

It serves black students.

It serves Asian students.

It serves white students.

>> Every student, a curious eligible for these programs.

Obviously we have some programs that are more that are specifically tailored for students struggling academically.

Are students that have, you know, other social emotional issues are or want or need some additional services.

But every students eligible for these programs.

So we just don't understand.

You know what the administration is is saying when when makes its claim.

>> Now each of you you're part of 2 separate lawsuits over this issue.

Susan, tell us about the act now lawsuit and what you're all hoping to achieve.

>> Yeah.

So act now filed in federal court and we asked for a temporary restraining order against the government's actions that was unfortunately denied.

But as it was, the department had stepped in and said they were willing to negotiate and reexamined the grand.

We still don't have a resolution to to that.

And we're still considering what would further legal action look like?

Or, you know, is there an opportunity to work with the department to figure this And so in our lawsuit, what we were trying to to claim was that you need to say to a grant activity or just some sort of deficiency in our performance in order to cancel a grant.

And you can't just do that without a lack of clarity.

So we're really focusing on the grants process and procedure.

>> Patrick, tell us a little bit about the Brighton Park Neighborhood Council.

You all teamed up with the American Federation of Teachers in your own lawsuit.

What do you all working towards?

very similar goal?

We I mean, essentially Congress appropriated this funding and then re appropriate of this funding and, >> you know, the fact that they are not complying with the grants as they were executed appropriated.

I mean, this is the issue.

And so we want we believe that that.

>> cancellation or termination, the grant was done unlawfully.

And so we are we are petitioning the court to reinstate these this funding.

>> Patrick, what happens in the meantime, what if these funds don't material materialize?

Is there another way to fund this work?

>> I mean, right now, you know this, this we've been partnered with Curie for for years and ride a different ways.

We are, you know.

We are going to make sure to continue to partner, committed to Curie.

We want to make sure that we're able to continue as many services and supports as we can.

We're working Chicago public schools to try identify some additional funding if that's possible.

But but, you know, this is that, you know, there are not a lot of resources right and we need our grants are so important.

>> All right, Patrick, thank you so much.

That's where