Dive Brief:

• Education Secretary Betsy DeVos made it clear that U.S. Department of Education officials could not mandate formatting rules in grant applications and use them as grounds for dismissal of grant applications in a memo sent to department employees in late April, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education.
• The memo followed previous controversy that some Upward Bound grant awards were being rejected by the department due to minor formatting errors, which stood to endanger college prep programs for many high school students.
• The memo advised that the department should hold back approximately $20 million in the next round of Upward Bound grant awards, with the expectation that it would use this funding to assist applicants who had been rejected due to incorrect formatting on applications.

Dive Insight:

Though the aggrieved applicants took pains to state that there was no indication that the DOE was punishing or trying to reduce Upward Bound grant funding, the situation does indicate the difficult situation federal Republican legislators are in regarding potential future education funding cuts under President Donald Trump. The president's original budget proposed a $9 billion cut to the Education Department.  

The Congressional budget's figure is nowhere near that, but if future cuts begin impacting schools and parents in the form of canceled services, program pullback and staff dismissals, representatives often on the side of reductions in spending may be calling to save their schools' programs. Spending cuts achieved through slashing education spending can be difficult even in conservative legislatures like Kansas, which saw a budget deal fall to pieces earlier this year because the spending reductions rested on a 5% slash to K-12 education. It is still early in the Trump administration, but if the cuts do come, it will be important to note what kind of legislative support will be brought to bear from unlikely sources to save programs.