Office of Rep. Marilyn Strickland press release.
Washington, DC – Today (April 8, 2025), Congresswoman Marilyn Strickland (WA-10) sent a letter with 40 of her colleagues to the Department of Education expressing deep concern for the disbursement of Impact Aid. The letter addresses the impact on school districts and how the program fills funding gaps.
“We demand the immediate reversal of any Executive Orders that would halt the disbursement of Impact Aid funds through the Department of Education,” said the lawmakers.
In the letter, the lawmakers added, ” Students are our nation’s future leaders. It is the federal government’s job to ensure the needs of all students are met so that public education can remain a stable and accessible foundation for everyone to succeed, no matter their background or where they live.”
House members who signed onto the bipartisan letter are: Rep. Yassamin Ansari (AZ-03), Rep. Don Bacon (NE-02), Rep. Julia Brownley (CA-26), Rep. Salud Carbajal (CA-24), Rep. Ed Case (HI-01), Rep. Joe Courtney (CT-02), Rep. Danny Davis (IL-07), Rep. Donald Davis (NC-01), Rep. Suzan DelBene (WA-01), Christopher Deluzio (PA-17), Rep. Sarah Elfreth (MD-03), Rep. Veronica Escobar (TX-16), Rep. Dwight Evans (PA-03), Rep. John Garamendi (CA-08), Rep. Robert Garcia (CA-42), Rep. Josh Gottheimer (NJ-05), Rep. Jared Huffman (CA-02), Rep. Glenn Ivey (MD-04), Rep. Pramila Jayapal (WA-07), Rep. Julie Johnson (TX-32), Rep. Greg Landsman (OH-01), Rep. Rick Larsen (WA-02), Rep. Teresa Leger Fernandez (NM-03), Rep. Mike Levin (CA-49), Rep. Sarah McBride (DE At-Large), Rep. Betty McCollum (MN-04), Rep. Scott Peters (CA-50), Rep. Emily Randall (WA-06), Rep. Jamie Raskin (MD-08), Rep. Patrick Ryan (NY-18), Rep. Bradley Schneider (IL-10), Rep. Kim Schrier (WA-08), Rep. Mikie Sherrill (NJ-11), Rep. Adam Smith (WA-09), Rep. Greg Stanton (AZ-04), Rep. Mark Takano (CA-39), Rep. Rashida Tlaib (MI-12), Rep. Jill Tokuda (HI-02), Rep. Paul Tonko (NY-20), Rep. Lauren Underwood (IL-14), Rep. Juan Vargas (CA-52), and Rep. George Whitesides (CA-27).
You can read the full letter here or below:
The Honorable Linda McMahon
Secretary
United States Department of Education
400 Maryland Avenue, SW
Washington, DC 20202
April 8, 2025
Dear Secretary McMahon,
We write to you with deep concern about how the President’s recent Executive Order to dismantle the Department of Education will affect the disbursement of Impact Aid. As you know, public schools are funded through state and local property taxes. However, in school districts where there is a significant amount of federal land, schools lose funding because federal lands are exempt from paying state and local property taxes.
Recognizing the importance of public education as the foundation of our society and to ensure that all students receive a fair education, the Impact Aid program was signed into law by President Harry Truman in 1950. It is the nation’s oldest K-12 federal education program.
As established by law, funds are appropriated by Congress and administered by the Department of Education. Impact Aid is one of the only major federal education programs that is not forward funded, meaning that funds are used in real time to pay staff and keep schools operating.
Impact Aid is disbursed to over 1,000 school districts across the country, and it reaches nearly 8 million students. School districts that have military installations, Indian Trust and Treaty lands, federal low-rent housing facilities, Veterans Affairs facilities, national parks, and other U.S. government-owned properties located within their bounds miss out on thousands of taxpayer revenue every year, and Impact Aid helps to fill these gaps.
We are seeking clarification on how this program will be affected by the recent mass Reduction in Force (RIF) at the U.S. Department of Education, signed by the President on March 20, 2025. The reality is that the President has no right to eliminate the Department of Education as he is attempting to do without Congressional approval. These major staffing changes and potential disruption in program funding will adversely impact the educational outcomes of all students.
Impact Aid dollars are especially necessary for our nation’s military families. The U.S. maintains at least one military installation in all 50 states. While supplemental Department of Defense Education Activity (DoDEA) Impact Aid is distributed separately, DoDEA relies on data provided by the Federal Impact Aid Program at the Department of Education. For these military-connected school districts, class sizes will rapidly increase, and low-income students and students with disabilities will be stripped of the resources they need to learn if funding is no longer distributed in a timely manner.
As stated in the President’s Executive Order, the intention of dismantling the Department of Education is to “return education authority to the States.” Impact Aid is a prime example of a federal program that skips bureaucratic tape as money is sent directly to school districts for their discretion to target funds wherever needs are the greatest. Ending this program or preventing its implementation directly contradicts the President’s intentions to give local communities and states more flexibility and freedom.
We are also concerned that the Department’s recent RIF saw a near total elimination of staff at the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), which the Impact Aid office relies upon to generate annual Local Contribution Rates (LCR). Without this data, recent progress in paying out final payments in a timely manner could be erased, with final payments possibly delayed by several fiscal years.
We demand the immediate reversal of any Executive Orders that would halt the disbursement of Impact Aid funds through the Department of Education.
Additionally, we request your answer to the following questions:
1. Have Impact Aid staff through the Department of Education been let go? If so, who plans to oversee the Impact Aid program in their absence?
2. Once the Department of Education is no longer operational, will Impact Aid be moved to the jurisdiction of another federal department?
3. School districts currently have to apply for Impact Aid through the Department of Education. If the Department is closed, where will districts send their applications?
4. Where will DoDEA get their data from for the Supplemental Impact Aid Program to eligible Local Education Agencies (LEAs) since they’ve previously relied on the Department of Education for this information?
5. When will FY 2025 funds be made available to the Impact Aid Program Office to disburse directly to eligible school districts?
6. FY 2026 grant applications were submitted with a deadline of January 31, 2025. How will the International Activities Program (IAP) receive the LCR data that NCES provides to determine how much funding school districts will receive?
Students are the future leaders of our nation. It is the federal government’s job to ensure the needs of all students are met so that public education can remain a stable and accessible foundation for everyone to succeed, no matter their background or where they live. We look forward to your prompt response and explanation of how Impact Aid will continue to serve its important mission for students across the country.
Stop the press Federal help required when democrat agenda threatened, same politicians nullify federal law when it doesn’t fit their agenda! Republicans obey the laws, they work and pay taxes, democrats use subjective law enforcement, most work for the government, don’t work and take, this is my opinion!
I grew up in South East Georgia , went to an all Colored school as we were called at the time.
There were only sixteen students in our graduation class of nineteen fifty seven, I experienced so many wrong things in the School System. It was wrong for us all not to have the same chance for equal education, to see there are people seaming to want the offer of education to go backward instead of forward.
To experience being thought of as not working as hard because of where we are from , the color of our skin are who our ancestors were is wrong, my family taught us we always had to work harder and a many of us learned that.
Our school were issued the used books and supplies when the other school were issued new ones.
The past cannot be hidden unless we let it and as an American my younger family members will know what we have had to tolerate and that we matter along with other people of color.
For the people in government to classify all as not workers when the majority could be dedicated servants to our country and the world..