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California joined the seven Democratic-led states that sued the Trump administration on Thursday, seeking to stop the hundreds of millions of dollars in cuts, calling for cuts to teacher training programs designed to not only educate people with disabilities and students learning English, but also increase instructors in the field of STEM that are directly needed.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Massachusetts, is zero in two Obama-era grants created to address teacher shortages in rural and urban areas, encouraging university students studying science, technology, engineering and mathematics to take on the job of teaching in K-12 education.
Department of Education cuts reached around $148 million in California and $122 million in other states that sued: Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Illinois, Wisconsin and Colorado. Nationally, the total loss of funds was $600 million. Republican-led states have not filed a lawsuit. Three groups of teachers filed another complaint this week in Maryland federal court.
In Southern California, nearly 600 university students are participating in the current cohort, studying to become teachers under the grant and assigned to the required school districts.
“It’s not just a policy change. A. Dee Williams, a California State University educator professor who works with trainees as head of the Urban Teacher Residency Program in Los Angeles, said:
A spokesman for the Ministry of Education declined to comment after contacting her by email, as the lawsuit is pending.
When announcing the grant cuts on February 17, the Ministry of Education said the program would use taxpayer funds to “train teachers and educational institutions on inappropriate and unnecessary divisive ideologies.” “We cited critical racial theory, diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). Social justice activities; “anti-racism”; and leadership on white privilege and white hegemony. ”
President Trump has pledged that schools and universities will “heart-heartedly” remove them and use federal funds as leverage. He also intends to dismantle the Ministry of Education, calling it a “big fraudulent job” that permeated “radicals, enthusiasts, Marxists” who misused taxpayer dollars.
The lawsuit on Thursday alleges that cancelling teacher training grants has led to “immediate and irreparable harm” that “disrupted the teachers’ workforce pipeline, increased reliance on unachievable educators, and destabilized the local school system.”
The University of California and California State University, the pipeline to Education Forces will lose most of the $56 million multi-grants if federal judges don’t block the cuts. The other $92 million funds allocated to California will go to private universities and other nonprofit education groups, which are also at risk.
“Universities must look to layoffs, reduced time for university staff, and cut funding for aspiring teachers,” Atty, California. General Rob Bonta said he has announced the state lawsuit.
“Without these programs, affected rural and urban schools must rely on exemptions from long-term alternatives, emergency-qualified teachers and exempt teachers. This could harm the quality of instruction and lead to an increase in the number of students who are not meeting national standards,” the lawsuit states.
The state also alleges that the Trump administration violated the Administrative Procedures Act, which regulates the production of administrative branch rules, approved funds and avoided Congress that governs federal budgets.
Atty, California. General Rob Bonta announces the lawsuit against the Trump administration over budget cuts for the Teacher Training Fund at a press conference held in Los Angeles on March 6, 2025.
(Juliana Yamada/Los Angeles Times)
“Sectoral action appears to encompass the “policy goal” of ending disadvantageous but legitimate efforts to promote diversity, equity and inclusion. It states the purpose that Congress has explicitly directed to implement in the creation of these programs,” the lawsuit states. The program adds that “general education teachers are mandatory by law to ensure that they are trained to provide guidance to a diverse population, including children with disabilities, students with limited English skills, and children from low-income families.
The lawsuit points out that many of the grants supported an increase in racial diversity in education, some of which were approved under the first Trump administration. Bonta challenged the department’s anti-DEI characterization at a press conference Thursday.
He accused them of “engaging in culture wars with these buzzwords, cultivate a political foundation and create political cover for blatantly illegal actions.”
The cuts came last month amid wiping federal spending on the Department of Education and other government agencies and programs since Trump took office. Trump runs his main cost cutter, Elon Musk, so-called government efficiency, not a federal agency. Doge recommends significant cuts in federal programs, many of which have been met with issues of LGBTQ+ or diversity, and has encountered many lawsuits.
Among the cancelled programs are a $7.5 million grant from California State University, which trains and certifies 276 teachers over five years, working at Need or high-poverty schools in the Los Angeles Unified and Pasadena Unified School District. Under this program, teachers will focus on collaboration with students with disabilities and on STEM subjects and bilingual education.
Other cancellations include a $8 million program at UCLA, which will train at least 314 middle school principals and mathematics, English, science and social science teachers, serving approximately 15,000 students in the Los Angeles County School District.
“Ending these education grants will pack a pipeline of passionate, qualified and talented teachers. [and keep them] From entering our classroom,” Bonta said. “Aspiring teachers, crushing individuals who feel called to do this job… It will leave teachers out of school, away from children who deserve any investment in education in the future.”
The National Institute for Learning Policy says there is a shortage of around 400,000 teachers, including tens of thousands of positions in California. Inadequate pay and long-term occupations have struggled to attract new workers or keep people in because burnout is a major problem. Ineptly wealthy rural schools and districts also face hurdles in recruiting and maintaining workers.
Shireen Pavri, vice-president of CSU’s educator and leadership program, said she was “devastated” by the cut.
The decision “elicited academic and financial support from currently registered students… and it would negatively affect the infrastructure we carefully built,” said Publi, who joined Bonta with colleagues and students at the event Thursday.
At Cal State LA, Williams has worked closely with grant-funded trainees as the lead researcher for the Los Angeles Urban Teacher Residency Program. The program, which lasts more than a year, will work with “teacher residents” focused on STEM, and will be placed in the school with mentors to receive hands-on training.
“They were running,” he said, as student teachers got permanent jobs in their classrooms. “They know what they’re doing. They’re confident, they’re supported, and that’s why they succeed.”
Jonathan Ze, a California state educator at Woodrow Wilson High School who teaches chemistry, said the Trump administration’s decision “is likely to prevent people like me from becoming teachers.”
Sze, who studied to become a pharmacist, has switched in recent years to focus on teaching science. The Cal State LA grant helped teachers in 10th and 11th grade classroom education and payroll payments. By August, he hopes to be qualified to teach himself.
Sze said he didn’t think the changes would affect his training as he received the grant before his cancellation last month. “But this program and programs like this need to continue to support the next generation of teachers.”
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