Will we have a U.S. Department of Education Tuesday?

 As we were warned, the Trump administration is using the federal shutdown as an excuse to issue layoff notices--including a little 'oops' moment at the CDC, which they're now blaming on a coding issue--leading many of us to wonder just how much of the U.S. Department of Education will exist as of Tuesday after the holiday weekend. 

Probable federal government shutdown at midnight

 And while we've been over this a few times, here's Politico on what this means for education. The two big PreK-12 hits are Head Start (in some cases) and federal funding in areas with non-taxed federal land. Again, remember, most of our federal grants are forward funded.

Politico also shared the official "here's what happens in a shutdown" document filed by Secretary McMahon. Page 1 has the number of employees expected to have to continue to work should the federal government shutdown at midnight tonight.

Since a possible federal shutdown is coming

 ...as the federal fiscal year ends October 1 (like me, you may be surprised to learn that is next Wednesday), and Congress is not showing signs it's moving towards a continuing resolution to keep it funded (never mind an actual budget).

As that can be anxiety-inducing to hear, let me suggest you review the post AASA (that's the superintendents) has up on a federal shutdown. The most important and reassuring part?

Most K-12 federal funding is “forward-funded”—funds are provided the following July for the upcoming school year—which means the majority of K-12 federal education funding is not immediately impacted by a government shutdown.

It's short; go give it a read. 

Don't panic on Title I just yet

You may have caught last week that the House Appropriation Committee moved a 26% cut to Title I. Please continue to keep in mind a few things on this: 

1. We are talking here about NEXT school year. Yes, the discussion is on fiscal year '26, but that's FEDERAL fiscal year 2026, which starts October 1. That's money that districts will be using for NEXT school year, in what we at the state and local level will call FY27.
   
   
2. The Senate Appropriation Committee DID NOT cut Title I and the two chambers have to agree on a resolution for it to move forward.
   
   
3. There is, again, a very good chance that this isn't going to be done for October, in any case, and people are already discussing a possible government shutdown again.

This is certainly something to keep an eye on, but we're not in panic mode at this point. 

"not expecting any immediate impact on any of our programs during the short term"

Confirmation today from Chief Financial and Operations Officer Brian Allen that we are okay short term in the shutdown:

In summary, MA DESE indicated that the majority of the federal awards was appropriated last year by the federal government and has been fully authorized the federal cash draw system. The only exceptions are the October 2013 installments for Title I, Title IIA, IDEA, and Perkins awards and Nutrition awards. If there is a delay in receiving the October award letters, there will be a corresponding delay in ESE's ability to increase the current grants to LEAs to the full year amount. USED has announced it is prioritizing the obligation of their October installments and we are hopeful that districts will not experience a disruption of their full 2013-14 school year awards.

With regards to Head Start, their notification indicates that they will continue processing grant drawdown request during the shutdown. Since we have received our grant award for this year prior to the gap in funding, we may continue to draw funds from prior awards during an appropriations lapse.

Therefore, we are not expecting any immediate impact on any of our programs during the short term. If the federal government shutdown is prolonged (several months), this may pose funding challenges in the future. 

What does the government shutdown mean for education?

The short answer is not much for most of us, right away.The longer it goes, the more of an issue it will become, and for federally run programs--Head Start, schools on reservations and military installations or near large amounts of federally-owned land--it gets very serious very quickly.

More detail from ASCD:

1. What’s the bottom line for schools and districts? How would a government shutdown affect daily operations?Most schools and districts are unlikely to feel immediate effects of a shutdown because the advanced funding nature of federal education spending means that states and districts have already received much of their federal funding for the school year. In addition, the vast majority of school funding (about 90 percent) comes from state and local sources. Moreover, the U.S. Department of Education has awarded dozens of competitive grants in the past several days so that it is not held up by a shutdown.
2. Will any education programs be affected in the short-term?Head Start (which provides early childhood education to low-income families) and Impact Aid (which helps fund school districts that cannot fully rely on local tax revenue, such as those on military bases or tribal lands) depend heavily on federal dollars that are not necessarily distributed at the beginning of the school year. Thus, these programs could experience more acute and immediate shutdown consequences. This is especially concerning because Head Start and Impact Aid have already deeply felt the effects of sequestration. More than 50,000 children have lost access to Head Start and many Impact Aid districts have been forced to eliminate positions and programming because of sequestration.

More detail at the above link and at EdWeek's K-12 blog

Impact of government shutdown on local education

There's much speculation swirling over what happens if the federal government shuts down; the NY Times today had a good list. One item that never seems to get mentioned is federal aid to education.
Title I and other aid of its ilk are reimbursements: in other words, the districts spends the money and then asks the federal government for the money so spent. This is done on a monthly basis and we are currently up-to-date on our reimbursements.
Because whatever budget eventually gets passed will have to include money for the time the government was shut down, one assumes (and the best guess right now) is that we would just get our reimbursements late. We'd have an interesting couple of Finance and Operations meetings where we shuffled money from one account to another, to cover what's usually reimbursed by Title I and others, and then shuffled it back to close the books at year end once the reimbursements came in.
Frankly, I'm more concerned about the proposed CUTS to these funds for next year's budget.

UPDATE: Here's the word from D.C. ('though now I'm confused about summer funding...)