After flooding in January 2024 ravaged parts of Spring Valley, Bancroft Elementary School was closed for a month and a half. Some families’ homes were inundated. But the school district was able to help.
“We had social workers actually out walking in the communities, talking to families, putting together barbecues at the schools that were impacted,” said David Feliciano, superintendent of La Mesa-Spring Valley School District.
Soon, these social workers’ jobs could be in jeopardy. His district, along with Lemon Grove School District, learned this week that they’re losing millions in federal funding that s student well-being.
The school-based mental health grant — which awarded around $11 million in total to La Mesa-Spring Valley and around $2.7 million in total to Lemon Grove — will end around two years early. La Mesa-Spring Valley will lose around $6 million, and Lemon Grove will lose around $1 million.
Leaders at both K-8 districts said that the cuts will seriously impact the services they have been providing to students, leaving students without access to services such as interventions before special education plans and family resource centers.
The grant losses are among a wide range of funding cuts undertaken by President Donald Trump’s istration, many of which have targeted public education nationwide.
The funding the grants provided allowed the school districts to provide mental health and special education resources to students as youth mental health indicators have trended downwards. Among high school students nationwide, nearly all indicators of poor mental health and suicidal behaviors have declined over the course of a decade, a broad 2023 survey by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found.
“It is the most, I guess, basic of human need-type services that are being provided — which are to provide for the mental health of our students and to provide for students that have special needs,” said Feliciano.
The federal Department of Education confirmed the non-renewal of the grants, which had totaled $1 billion to school districts nationwide.
Trump’s promise that any cuts wouldn’t affect Title I and special education services had given the district some hope that the program would continue. “It’s kind of beyond us how the istration would think that this grant is somehow inconsistent with the goals of the government,” Feliciano said.
The Trump istration and its allies on the right have targeted the mental-health grants broadly for what they say are race-based recruiting quotas.
“These grants are intended to improve American students’ mental health by funding additional mental health professionals in schools and on campuses,” wrote department spokesperson Madi Biedermann. “Instead, under the deeply flawed priorities of the Biden istration, grant recipients used the funding to implement race-based actions like recruiting quotas in ways that have nothing to do with mental health and could hurt the very students the grants are supposed to help.”
But the agency did not explain in its letters to local districts why their funding was being pulled, other than to say it didn’t promote the goals of the istration.
Rebecca Burton, deputy superintendent at Lemon Grove, said the federal government had previously been monitoring a few goals — the key one being to lower the ratios of students to social workers. There was also an optional goal of hiring more diverse staff.
Her district’s goals, meanwhile, were to reduce chronic absenteeism, reduce suspension rates and increase student wellbeing.
The funding helped Lemon Grove hire six more mental health providers, boosting their total from 13 to 19, and expand student access to their services. This year, Burton said, all students were reached directly by staff social workers, who also run family resource centers.
“I can’t emphasize enough how essential they are to meet the needs of our students and our families,” she said. “The majority of our students are low-income, and so they face additional challenges that are important for us to address as a school district.”
Three quarters of her district’s students are considered economically disadvantaged, and more than 60% of those in La Mesa-Spring Valley are.
In La Mesa-Spring Valley, the grant played an even bigger role in funding social worker staffing.
The district’s 30 social workers — all at least mostly funded by the grant — provide mental health for students, as well as wraparound s for their families, Feliciano said.
He said the district would have to start referring mental health crisis out, either to the Rady Children’s Hospital for emergency services or to private counseling.
It can take months for families to get appointments for free services through community-funded clinics, he said. And a family member or student in need could have to wait on county services, which could take a week.
“That system’s already overloaded,” he said. “The whole idea with the school-based mental health (services) was to help with that overloading of those services.”
He said the district also had been able to provide small-group counseling and family wraparound services. It also provided early intervention for pre-special education interventions.
The law requires the district to try all interventions before they qualify students for special education, and if it can’t address their needs, Feliciano worries more will fall behind and need services. “Children need evidence-based interventions early, and we need this staff to do it,” he said.
Both districts plan to appeal the Trump istration’s decision. Barring a reversal, they’re weighing their options.
In La Mesa-Spring Valley, where the cut would take effect in December, the district is trying to at least make up the difference for the fiscal year.
“If we’re not successful in appeal, then we would be trying to make a miracle happen and find some other way to fund it — at least through the remainder of the year,” Feliciano said.
He hopes the district doesn’t need to lay off staff. But even if it needed to, whether it could is unclear.
State law requires districts to issue notice of any layoffs by March 15 — well before they got the letter. But it also allows for summer layoffs in August in cases of fiscal emergency where enrollment is lower than the previous year, he said. During a five-day period then, districts can move to reduce the number of permanent employees.
“We would only utilize this provision if we lost the grant appeal or if we weren’t able to find another funding source for the remainder of the 2025-26 school year,” he said. “Obviously, it’s the last thing we would want to do.”
Lemon Grove hopes to maintain its current staffing through the next school year and expects to know more after the governor’s May budget revise is released. But the cut has thrown a wrench into the district’s budget planning.
At this point, district officials have almost finished preparing their proposed budget for the next fiscal year, Burton said. But the letter they received sets that process back.
“It’s a matter of having to reallocate and review and determine a lot of stuff, and work with all of our people so that they know that we’re here, and not put them in a state of confusion and panic and worry, right?” she said. “That’s the last thing we want for people who are here for our kids.”
