NC schools lose tens of millions in teacher grants after Trump administration DEI cuts
The Trump administration has abruptly cut off tens of millions of dollars in federal grants that North Carolina public schools have been using to recruit and retain teachers.
On Monday, the U.S. Department of Education announced it had terminated more than $600 million in federal grants that it said were being used to train teachers in “divisive ideologies.” The impact is being especially felt in North Carolina, where educators said it will hurt efforts to recruit teachers to work in high-needs schools.
Now some teachers who are being paid out of the grant money are at risk of losing their jobs. Hundreds of current and aspiring teachers face losing thousands of dollars in promised bonuses and stipends.
Grant recipients have 30 days to appeal the termination of their grants.
“According to the termination letter, the stated reason for this decision is that the program includes diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives,” Wake County said in a statement. “Our attorneys are reviewing the termination decision and our options for response.
“This grant was designed to strengthen teacher recruitment and retention, reduce vacancies, and improve hiring processes. There was no evidence of fraud, waste, or abuse, and the program was operating as intended, delivering measurable results for our schools and students.”
The Innovation Project plans to appeal the loss of grant funding used to help 79 rural schools fill teaching positions in its “Reimagining Teaching Talent Project.”
“Every child in this state wherever they are deserves great teachers and our teachers deserve to be treated with respect,” Sharon Contreras, executive director of the Raleigh-based Innovation Project, said in an interview with The News & Observer. “This has shown that we are not honoring the principle of ensuring every child has a great teacher.”
Which grants are being cut in NC public schools?
The cuts will impact public schools all across North Carolina:
▪ A $21.5 million grant over three years for Montgomery County Schools to hire a more diverse teacher workforce and identify master teachers.
▪ A $21.5 million grant over three years for The Innovation Project to help support teachers in eight school districts: Asheboro, Edgecombe County, Elizabeth City-Pasquotank, Lexington, Mount Airy, Scotland County, Vance County and Warren County.
▪ A $11.8 million grant over three years for Wake County’s Project LEADERS program to recruit and retain teachers at 24 high-needs schools.
▪ A $9.8 million grant over five years for High Point University to recruit and train teachers to work in three high-needs school districts: Alamance-Burlington Schools, Vance County Schools and Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools.
▪ An $8 million grant over five years for High Point University to recruit and train teachers to work in four high-needs school districts: Caswell and Montgomery counties, Lexington City Schools and Thomasville City Schools.
▪ A $7.7 million grant over three years for Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools’ Opportunity Culture Teacher Leadership Pathways Program. The program pays “highly effective” teachers up to $18,250 extra a year to stay in the classroom while taking on additional leadership roles in their school.
▪ A $4.9 million grant over five years for East Carolina University to help recruit and train teachers to work in six school districts: Greene, Lenoir County, Tyrrell, Perquimans and Washington counties and Elizabeth City-Pasquotank.
▪ A $5.2 million grant over five years for Winston-Salem State University to train aspiring teachers to work in high-needs Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools in the Winston-Salem TEACH program.
▪ Two grants totaling $4.4 million over five years for UNC-Charlotte to recruit diverse aspiring teachers to work in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools.
▪ A $2.4 million grant over five years for UNC-Chapel Hill to recruit and train teachers for the Diverse and Resilient Educators Advised through Mentorship (DREAM) program to work in high-needs Durham schools.
The terminated grants represent more than $90 million in federal funds. It’s unclear, though, how much of the grant money has not been spent yet.
“The impact of losing these grants in North Carolina is significant and disparate,” Contreras said.
Teacher grants accused of promoting DEI
The Trump administration has ordered the elimination of diversity, equity and inclusion programs and policies in federal agencies and federally-funded education programs. On Feb. 14, the Department of Education gave public schools a 14-day notice to eliminate “DEI programming” or risk loss of federal funding.
The Department of Education cut two of its largest discretionary programs for professional development: the $70 million-a-year Teacher Quality Partnerships program and the $80 million-a-year Supporting Effective Educator Development, or SEED grants, according to Education Week.
In its announcement of the grant cuts, the Department of Education accused the recipients of “using taxpayer funds to train teachers and education agencies on divisive ideologies.”
“Training materials included inappropriate and unnecessary topics such as Critical Race Theory; Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI); social justice activism; ‘anti-racism’; and instruction on white privilege and white supremacy,” the Education Department said in its press release.
The Innovation Project says references to diversity were required to be included in the grant applications by the Biden Administration. But the group says ideas like performance-based pay have long been supported by both Republicans and Democrats.
“WS-TEACH was established to address the critical teacher shortage in Winston-Salem, and this setback will undoubtedly make it harder for our partner organizations to meet the pressing need for quality educators in our community,” Winston-Salem State said in a statement. “It is important to emphasize that this grant was not solely connected to DEI-specific work or research.”
WS-TEACH recently changed its name to drop the word equity from the title. It went from being “Winston-Salem Teachers For Equity, Achievement, Community, & Humanity” to “Working Together to Transform Education in Winston-Salem and Forsyth County.”
Increasing minority educators called DEI
One of the areas being targeted by the Department of Education is how grant recipients said they’ll try to recruit more minority educators to better reflect the demographics of their student populations. Most teachers are white but the majority of public school students are not.
“Many of these grants included teacher and staff recruiting strategies implicitly and explicitly based on race,” the Department of Education said.
The Innovation Project says there is no DEI training or DEI initiatives in its program. The group says all hiring and compensation has been based on performance only.
“There is nothing in the hiring of individuals or promotion of individuals that remotely looks like preferential hiring or racial hiring,” Contreras said. “But we certainly want to tap into all communities.”
Grants helped find teachers for Title I schools
The grants have been used to get more teachers to work in Title I schools. Title I is a federal program that provides additional resources to schools with high concentrations of low-income students.
Title I schools tend to have lower student test scores, higher teacher turnover and less experienced teachers than affluent schools.
“This program is putting the very best teachers, who are typically snatched up by the highest-performing schools, to work in Title I schools.” Kate Allman, executive director of Winston-Salem TEACH, said in an interview with The N&O.
Wake County credits the grant funds with a 40% reduction in the number of vacancies in its high-needs schools. In addition to paying bonuses, it’s allowed Wake to change its human resources hiring process.
“The hiring process was inclusive and reflective of the community’s diversity,” Wake County said in a statement “Of the teachers hired under this grant, 56% were white and 44% were non-white, demonstrating that the program did not exclude any group but instead expanded opportunities for all qualified educators.”
For the first time in her three years at Green Elementary School in Raleigh, Principal Leslie Blake started the school year fully staffed.
“It is my first responsibility to ensure that every student walks in a classroom that is led by a strong, effective teacher. And the grant has been pivotal with the recruitment and retention of teachers at our school.” Blake said in an interview with the N&O.
The reduction in teacher vacancies coincides with academic performance rising and Green no longer being labeled by the state as a low-performing school.
“When we pour and invest into our teachers, we see that result in our students’ achievement,” Blake said.
Grantees ‘looking for a hero’ to save funding
The termination notices said funding was ending the same day the letters were received.
WS-TEACH has gone to social media to try to raise money to replace some of the lost grant funding. The grant helped fund a $ 50,700-a-year stipend to college students who agreed to teach in a Winston-Salem/Forsyth Title I school for at least three years.
“We’re looking for a hero to support the urgent need that we have in to two-to-three weeks,” Allman said.
But Contreras said the only way the Innovation Project can continue the Reimagining Teaching Talent Project is to keep the grant funding.
According to the Innovation Project, the loss of the grant impacts 77 teachers whose jobs are funded by the program, 165 teachers and principals who would have been eligible for bonuses tied to student performance and 16 teachers who received college scholarships.
Wake County hasn’t determined yet if it will still pay the performance and retention bonuses that hundreds of educators were told they’d be eligible to receive.
The grant would have funded a $2,000 performance bonus for teachers, principals and assistant principals at 24 Wake schools if students exceeded growth expectations on state exams this school year. It would also have funded a bonus of $2,500 for principals and $1,500 for teachers and assistant principals who stayed at the schools in the program through Sept. 1, 2026.
But unlike the smaller rural districts that received grant funding, Wake says it’s not using the grant to pay the salaries of teachers.
Rural districts are especially hard hit by grant loss
Small rural districts like Elizabeth City-Pasquotank can’t afford to come up with money on their own to pay the performance bonuses of $1,500 to $7,500, according to Superintendent Keith Parker.
“Our teachers and school leaders have been working under the expectation that their efforts to drive student achievement would be recognized and compensated accordingly,” Parker said in an interview with The N&O. “Now, mid-year, we face difficult decisions about how to support these educators without the resources that were originally awarded in the grant.”
As is, Parker said the district will have to divert money from the rest of its budget to keep the teachers who were funded by the grant.
“We just don’t have in rural areas the large amount of tax base,” Parker said. “There’s less that rural communities can contribute locally. That’s why rural areas rely on federal funding.”
This story was originally published February 21, 2025 at 12:15 PM.
