Sackets Harbor Central School District, a 430-student school district on the shores of Lake Ontario in upstate New York, relies on technology coordinator Rick Bice for internet connectivity.
“We couldn’t function as an organization without him,” Superintendent Jennifer Gaffney said. “So much of what our students, teachers and administrative staff do revolves around the use of technology and data systems, and he is at the root of all of that.”
But now, Gaffney doesn’t know how long she can rely on federal funds to pay her salary. The Rural Education Outcomes Program is one of 17 funding sources the Trump administration wants to include in the $2 billion block grant. Congress approved $220 million for REAP this year, but the president’s plan would leave governors and state superintendents to decide whether to give additional funding to localities.
Monty Mayer, superintendent of Belva Public Schools in North Dakota, about 20 miles southeast of Minot, used the $14,000 he received from the program this year to pay teaching assistants to help students who are falling behind.
“The money put into block grants will be swallowed up by the larger schools because their needs are much greater than ours,” he says. That would leave “small rural schools trying to find answers in a variety of places without a clear picture of where those resources will come from.”
Education Secretary Linda McMahon faced several questions from both Democrats and Republicans about the program’s future during her testimony before the Senate Appropriations Committee in late April. She suggested that REAP is underutilized.
“A lot of rural schools don’t have grant writers, so they can’t deploy resources that other states or other cities might have,” she says. “Many states did not participate in any subsidies.”
Under the combined program, all states would receive a portion of the block grant and officials would decide “how to spend this money in the states with the greatest need, even in rural areas,” he said.
Officials with years of experience in rural education say that’s not how REAP works. Steven Johnson, superintendent of the Fort Ransom Public School District, which operates one elementary school in southeastern North Dakota, said the state or school district will not write grant proposals to raise funds. Districts eligible for funding based on size and location will receive an invitation to apply. And most people do, Johnson said.
“Lack of capacity or grant-writing ability is rarely the problem. Rather, what we see is the opposite,” he said. “Local governments rely on REAP because it is simple, straightforward, and does not require extensive administrative capabilities.”
Abigail Swisher, who previously worked on the REAP program for the department, said areas are struggling to apply for large, competitive grant programs.
“Applying for competitive federal grants is time-consuming and complex, and large school districts employ grant writers who have the expertise and time to spare,” she said. “That’s exactly why we have the REAP program. This program was designed by Congress to fill that gap.”
There were also efforts to help rural areas access other programs, but those were ended by the new administration, she said.
“Inspection and Reporting Standards”
School districts eligible for the Small Rural School Outcomes Grant, one of the two REAP programs, have fewer than 600 students and are located in areas defined by the state as rural. Other schools, with 20 percent of students living below the poverty line, qualify for the Rural Low-Income Schools Program, and some students qualify for both. This year, 17,873 people were eligible for one or both programs.
Kerstin Beisler, assistant secretary for elementary and secondary education, reminded local governments last week that there is significant leeway to use federal funds for programs such as tutoring and after-school programs.
But Johnson said flexibility was “one of the original core concepts behind REAP.” For example, his district didn’t have enough poor students to qualify for Title I funding, but under current law it could use federal funds to provide students with tutoring in reading and math.
Congress created REAP as part of No Child Left Behind, a 2001 federal accountability law that set strict expectations for school improvement, and reauthorized the program as part of the Every Student Succeeds Act. Despite their smaller size, rural districts were not exempt from NCLB obligations, Johnson said.
“Small rural schools were expected to meet the same testing and reporting standards as larger schools, but often lacked the staffing and resources to do so,” he said.
A 2023 report from AASA, the School Superintendents Association, found that school districts most commonly used the funds for technology, followed by staff training, compensation and expanding programs such as STEM and the arts for students. When Johnson asked other administrators around the country, some of the ways the funds could be used include anti-bullying, special education support and helping students graduate.
“Local areas are building their budgets from many smaller sources,” said Margaret Buckton, a school finance consultant in Iowa. REAP “is not a large amount, but when combined with other smaller grants, it can make a big difference.”
Questions about “effectiveness”
McMahon questioned whether the program would have a positive impact during an exchange with Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, who has made rural schools a priority.
“Many of these programs have lost their effectiveness and are not really coming back, but they are still providing the benefits that we expect for rural schools,” McMahon said.
The Department of Education did not respond to questions about what data McMahon was referring to when he said the program was not effective. But National Rural Education Association Executive Director Melissa Sadolph said the department is primarily looking at compliance issues rather than the impact on students because school districts can use the funds in a variety of ways.
“There is no single, consistent student outcome metric that applies across grantees,” she said. “The program has not been the subject of a comprehensive federal evaluation in nearly a decade, so sweeping claims about effectiveness are difficult to substantiate from the data.”
That 2018 report primarily outlined challenges facing local schools, such as transportation and teacher recruitment, and what departments were doing to support them.
The department is also tracking whether districts are complying with the rules for using the funds.
For example, a 2023 oversight report for Custer County, Colorado, found accounting errors caused by employees entering data using handwritten notes. The same issue arose in Indiana’s Attica Unified School Corporation in 2022. The department’s website does not list any reports conducted since McMahon took office.
The administration proposed a similar block grant proposal last year, but Congress ultimately rejected it. The spending process is likely to last several months, and it is unclear whether lawmakers will be more generous this year.
But for a region like Sacketts Harbor, which was home to an important naval base during the War of 1812, continued uncertainty over federal funding is “unsettling,” Superintendent Gaffney said.
The district’s annual Patriot Pride Day, in which students fan out throughout the historic city, performs service projects like gardening and tombstone polishing, and is popular with local residents. The school board asked voters to approve a nearly 8% tax increase, which was approved. But the district remains under “significant financial pressure” due to the increase in English language learners and students with disabilities, Gaffney said.
“That’s why every dollar matters to us, including REAP funds,” she said. “These resources are essential to maintaining programs, services, and opportunities for our students.”
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