The AFT and the Brighton Park Neighborhood Council (BPNC) in Chicago filed a lawsuit on December 29, 2025 challenging the U.S. Department of Education’s (DOE) abrupt and unlawful decision to terminate millions of dollars in funding for Full-Service Community Schools. The unexpected cuts come in the middle of approved, multi-year projects.
Despite strong performance by grantees and clear congressional direction, the DOE cut off funding without notice, without lawful justification, and without following required procedures. As a result, more than $60 million in unused, congressionally appropriated funds designated to support students, families, and communities in vulnerable situations expired on December 31, 2025.
Community Schools provide wraparound services—including social, health, nutrition, and mental health support, and family resources—particularly in high-poverty and rural areas. They are a proven turn-around intervention that have helped students and communities throughout the nation. For decades, congressionally-appropriated funding for multi-year grants based on a school’s performance has been approved by the federal government. The complaint alleges that the DOE, under the Trump administration, has abandoned that established process and replaced it with newly created policy preferences that were never adopted through lawful rulemaking.
The plaintiffs argue that the DOE’s actions violate the Administrative Procedure Act, federal education law, and Congress’s direction to the agency to use the funds it appropriated to fund community schools.
“The Department of Education is not Linda McMahon’s personal plaything where she gets to decide what legally mandated functions stay or go or whether spending is allocated or not—and yet she repeatedly acts like it,” said AFT President Randi Weingarten. “From cutting summer school and after school programs last June, to deep Medicaid and SNAP cuts, to now gutting community school grants in the middle of a school year, her actions are only hurting young people and increasing stress and anxiety for hundreds of thousands of families.”
Skye Perryman, President and CEO of Democracy Forward, which is representing the plaintiffs said “President Trump’s assault on public education in America has consistently been swiftly and decisively rebuffed in communities and courts across the country. We are again heading to court –this time during the holiday season–to protect students, families, educators, and communities from the cruelty and lawlessness of this administration…the U.S. Department of Education cannot ignore the law, override Congress, and pull the rug out from under schools and programs that rely on congressionally-approved funding, and we are going to court to secure a ruling to prevent these harms.”
The case is Brighton Park Neighborhood Council et al. v. McMahon et al.