{"id":149804,"date":"2025-10-28T15:44:12","date_gmt":"2025-10-28T15:44:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/149804\/"},"modified":"2025-10-28T15:44:12","modified_gmt":"2025-10-28T15:44:12","slug":"trumps-education-dept-must-restore-mental-health-grants-judge-rules","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/149804\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump’s Education Dept. must restore mental health grants, judge rules"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Trump administration must release millions of dollars in grants meant to address the shortage of mental health workers<\/a> in schools, a federal judge ruled Monday.<\/p>\n

Congress funded the mental health program after the 2022 school shooting in Uvalde, Texas<\/a>. The grants were intended to help schools hire more counselors, psychologists and social workers, with a focus on rural and underserved areas of the country. But President Donald Trump\u2019s administration opposed diversity considerations used to award the grants and told recipients they wouldn\u2019t receive funding past December 2025.<\/p>\n

The preliminary ruling by Kymberly K. Evanson, a U.S. District Court judge in Seattle, applies only to some grantees in the sixteen Democratic-led states that challenged the Education Department\u2019s decision. In Madera County, California, for example, the ruling restores roughly $3.8 million. In Marin County, California, it restores $8 million. The ruling will remain in effect while the case proceeds.<\/p>\n

The Education Department under Democratic President Joe Biden first awarded the grants. Biden\u2019s administration prioritized giving the money to applicants who showed how they would increase the number of counselors from diverse backgrounds or from communities directly served by the school district. <\/p>\n

When Trump took office, his administration opposed aspects of the grant programs that touched on race<\/a>, saying they were harmful to students. In April, his administration said the grants were canceled because they conflicted with the department\u2019s priority of \u201cmerit, fairness, and excellence in education\u201d and weren\u2019t in the federal government\u2019s best interest.<\/p>\n

In her ruling, Evanson called that decision arbitrary and capricious and said the states had made a case for real harm from the grant cuts. In Maine, for example, the grants enabled nine rural school districts to hire 10 new school mental health workers and retain four more \u2014 jobs the state said would be lost if the funding ended. <\/p>\n

\u201cCongress created these programs to address the states\u2019 need for school-based mental health services in their schools, and has repeatedly reaffirmed the need for those services over the years by reauthorizing and increasing appropriations to these programs,\u201d Evanson wrote.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is no evidence the Department considered any relevant data pertaining to the Grants at issue,\u201d she wrote, and the department did not tell grantees why their work didn\u2019t meet the \u201cbest interest\u201d criteria. <\/p>\n

An Education Department spokeswoman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

The Associated Press\u2019 education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP\u2019s standards<\/a> for working with philanthropies, a list<\/a> of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Trump administration must release millions of dollars in grants meant to address the shortage of mental health…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":149805,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[276],"tags":[1374,68532,7544,38396,356,2597,61545,18,3334,135,19,59859,5087,17,10233,11447,39298,20513,88033,24756,167,502,711,8243,13758,968,88034,48464,61366,8244,790,20729,20093,19395,2461,16697,50196,4077,384,35840,62138,2709,6043,88032,10942],"class_list":{"0":"post-149804","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-california","9":"tag-co-state-wire","10":"tag-colorado","11":"tag-connecticut","12":"tag-donald-trump","13":"tag-education","14":"tag-education-funding","15":"tag-eire","16":"tag-general-news","17":"tag-health","18":"tag-ie","19":"tag-il-state-wire","20":"tag-illinois","21":"tag-ireland","22":"tag-joe-biden","23":"tag-maine","24":"tag-maryland","25":"tag-massachusetts","26":"tag-md-state-wire","27":"tag-me-state-wire","28":"tag-mental-health","29":"tag-mentalhealth","30":"tag-michigan","31":"tag-nevada","32":"tag-new-mexico","33":"tag-new-york","34":"tag-nm-state-wire","35":"tag-nv-state-wire","36":"tag-or-state-wire","37":"tag-oregon","38":"tag-politics","39":"tag-race-and-ethnicity","40":"tag-rhode-island","41":"tag-seattle","42":"tag-texas","43":"tag-tx-state-wire","44":"tag-u-s-department-of-education","45":"tag-u-s-news","46":"tag-united-states","47":"tag-united-states-government","48":"tag-wa-state-wire","49":"tag-washington","50":"tag-washington-news","51":"tag-wi-state-wire","52":"tag-wisconsin"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149804","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=149804"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149804\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/149805"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=149804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=149804"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=149804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}