The five largest U.S. public school districts stand to lose more than $5 billion in federal funds per year if they refuse to comply with President Donald Trump’s executive order barring progressive ideologies such as diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs in schools.
Under a Jan. 29 executive order from Trump, districts face federal funding cuts for maintaining personnel, training, or instructional functions centered on providing special or separate treatment to any employees or students based on race or gender.
The order, which cites federal civil rights laws, also prohibits curricula that suggest that the United States and its public institutions are inherently racist.
The Department of Education funds special education functions for K–12 schools and provides financial assistance to schools with large low-income student populations, while the Department of Agriculture covers free and reduced school meal programs.
New York City has the nation’s largest public school district, with about 900,000 students, followed by Los Angeles with about 500,000 students. The districts serving Chicago, Miami, and Las Vegas all exceed 300,000 students, according to their respective district websites.
New York City Public Schools, which in 2022 required administrators to reinterview for their jobs through the district Office of Diversity Equity and Inclusion, received $2.2 billion in federal grants this year, according to the district website.
In the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), $860 million comes from the federal government for the 2024–2025 academic year, the district budget states.
The LAUSD policy in November 2024 reaffirmed that it “stands in unity with all of the students, families, and staff in our school communities and embraces Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion throughout the District.”
This year, the LAUSD will spend $135 million on a Black Student Achievement Plan aimed at “eliminating educational disparities that have historically inhibited black students’ success in school systems nationwide,” according to its website and budget.
The plan will “remain until parity and beyond is achieved,” according to the district.
Parents Defending Education (PDE), a parents group, filed a complaint in 2023 with the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights alleging that the Black Student Achievement Plan excludes students of other races and violates the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
In response, LAUSD removed race as a determining factor for the program’s eligibility by adding a line to the document stating that district resources are available to all students regardless of race, color, and national origin. The complaint was then dismissed.
United Teachers Los Angeles, the union that represents teachers in the LAUSD, criticized the district for “caving to the pressure of a national conservative parent group.”
LAUSD spokesman Britt Vaughan previously told The Epoch Times that the plan complies with the district’s nondiscrimination policy.
“Los Angeles Unified is committed to addressing the achievement gap that has historically impacted black students,” Vaughan wrote in a previous email response.
In the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) district, which received $1.7 billion in federal aid last year, the Board of Education passed an emergency resolution 10 days after the presidential election.
“Whereas, the 2024 presidential election may have caused fear, concern, confusion, sadness, anger, or anxiety in CPS staff, students, and their families. CPS is committed to ensuring students have access to a high-quality, well-rounded, rigorous, and joyful education,” the resolution states.
“To achieve this, CPS continuously works to ensure that students see themselves reflected in the curriculum by incorporating LGBT, disabled, black, Indigenous, Latinx, Asian, and other historical figures into its lessons.
“CPS also follows the State of Illinois’s mandate to teach LGBT history in its public schools.”
CPS officials declined a request for comment.
Florida’s Miami-Dade school district, which will receive more than $13 million in federal aid this year, maintains an online guide for affirming diversity of sexual orientation and gender identity.
The guide provides some examples of preferred terminology, such as “school facilities” instead of “bathrooms” or “locker rooms.” Staff are also advised to avoid saying “trans” or “transgender” and instead “people who deep down know they are transgender” or “people who deep down feel they are a gender different than the one assigned to them at birth.”
The guide also encourages families who support that policy to build alliances with communities of color, to note any pushback to that school policy on social media, and to ask media outlets to advocate for their cause.
“Education reporters for major newspapers, local news reporters for smaller newspapers, and public affairs producers for radio stations are the reporters who will most likely be interested in efforts to create more welcoming and affirming school climates,” the guide reads.
Clark County Public Schools in the Las Vegas metro area, which will get at least $2 million in federal aid this year, requires its employees to complete annual training to “understand their own cultural identity, biases, and experiences of privilege and marginalization,” according to the district website.
Smaller districts are at risk as well.
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Cambridge Public School District in Massachusetts, which affirms an unwavering commitment to critical race theory (CRT), transgender ideology, and DEI initiatives, received about $4.75 million in federal grants this year, according to its 2025 budget. Its per-student allocation is about $38,000.
The district, near Boston, has a $268 million spending plan for the current school year that includes $1.74 million for 11 full-time employees in its equity, inclusion, and belonging office.
“Equity and Access: Our commitment to dismantling structures of white privilege, elevating underrepresented voices, and eliminating bias,” the introductory screen on the district website reads.
The site states that students of all ages can use chosen names and pronouns that differ from what’s listed on their birth certificates. A course catalog refers to a high school history class focused on how race, gender, and class shaped America’s development.
The district’s human resources diversity dashboard breaks down faculty and staff by race and illustrates goals for hiring more people of color.
There’s also a link where students, parents, or employees in the Cambridge district can anonymously report allegations of bias to the Office of Equity, Inclusion and Belonging’s “Microaggression Working Group.” Complainers are asked to detail their feelings about the incident, list the names of those involved, and suggest how the situation should be remedied.
In the nation’s capital, District of Columbia Public Schools, which require employees to be trained on the impact of racial trauma and white supremacy under the latest “restorative practices guidelines” for student discipline, will get more than $20 million in federal grants this year, according to the district website.
The New York City, Miami-Dade, Clark County, Washington, and Cambridge public school districts did not respond to The Epoch Times’ request for comment by publication time.
Any actions related to the Trump administration’s new policies targeting K–12 schools will likely come through the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, which investigates complaints from students, parents, and school employees, according to Jonathan Butcher, senior research fellow for education policy at The Heritage Foundation.
Butcher estimates that many large school districts spend upward of $75,000 for one-day faculty DEI training sessions that guide establishing “mandatory affinity groups” based on race or ethnicity.
The roots of race-based ideologies in public education, he said, date back to disparity impact theory in the 1960s and 1970s.
President Barack Obama made CRT a public policy.
In the past five years, Butcher said, CRT was promoted against the backdrop of the death of George Floyd, Black Lives Matter protests, and the election of Joe Biden.
“It promotes the idea that race explains any disparities in public and private life,” Butcher told The Epoch Times. “But really, it has become a violation of civil rights.”
Butcher said that, despite the billions of dollars spent on DEI training and administration in corporate America and education, there’s no evidence that it improves attitudes, behavior, or performance in schools or workplaces.
The National Assessment of Educational Progress 2024 Nation’s Report Card, which was released on Jan. 29, indicated that 70 percent of eighth graders in U.S. public schools were not proficient in reading, and 72 percent were not proficient in math.
It also indicated that 40 percent of fourth graders were not at the basic reading level.
Conservative parent groups have pushed back against ideological indoctrination at local school board meetings and congressional hearings in recent years. Some are filing complaints with the Office for Civil Rights and asking for investigations, including PDE.
“Merit has been sacrificed on the altar of equity,” PDE President Nicole Neily told the House Committee on Education and the Workforce during a Feb. 5 hearing on the state of U.S. education.
PDE published a report earlier this month identifying 13 districts across 11 states where K–12 institutions are promoting these ideological frameworks.
The report cites anti-Semitic memorabilia, an equity training that denounced white Christian females, a “Queer All School Year” events calendar, “cisgender privilege” lessons, school play auditions restricted to students of color, a 5th-grade unicorn worksheet for teaching gender as a spectrum, a CRT bingo game that designates military families as having privilege over other groups, and a 10th-grade quiz where the statement “only women can get pregnant” was supposed to be marked false.
Sheri Few, president and founder of U.S. Parents Involved in Education (USPIE)—which began in South Carolina and has expanded to 19 additional states, including California, in less than a decade—said the long-term goals of different parent groups across the nation vary, but most are committed to fighting CRT and gender-affirming policies where schools withhold student information from parents.
“These executive orders put into place are what’s needed until we can get legislators to do away with the Department of Education,” Few told The Epoch Times.
In an Oval Office media briefing earlier this month, Trump said he would work with Congress and teachers’ unions to dismantle the Department of Education to save taxpayers billions of dollars by eliminating bureaucracy, moving its funding streams and functions to other agencies, and leaving decisions about curriculum and instructions to states and local school districts.
Education leaders across the nation who support DEI, CRT, special protections for transgender children, and the legacy functions of the Department of Education are digging in for a fight.
Janai Nelson, president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, said some parent groups “peddle indoctrination by ignorance” and called attacks on DEI an America-last policy.
“We should be leveraging our diversity. It is our greatest strength. We should be leveraging multilingualism,” she told the House Committee on Education and the Workforce on Feb. 5.
“Instead, we are trying to find ways to really narrow the focus of our education and to replace it with conservative, extremist ideology.”
Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association, a teachers’ union, accused Trump of withholding federal funds from schools that teach America’s “whole history.”
“Together with parents and allies, we will continue to organize, advocate, and mobilize so that all students have well-resourced schools that provide an honest, accurate, and inclusive curriculum that prepares them for the future,” she said in a Jan. 29 statement.
Janice Hisle contributed to this report.