The Math They Don't Want You to Do

claire@brightminds-ai.com (Claire Smizer-Muldoon) — Wed, 11 Feb 2026 19:32:04 GMT

Federal funding cuts aren’t a budget story. They’re a values story - and the numbers tell you exactly whose kids get left behind.

Let's walk through some math.

Not the kind that kids are doing in classrooms - not 'new math', 'old math', girl math, dog math.

Politician math.

The kind that we're seeing in board meetings, when a CFO is trying to explain why the district needs to cut the reading specialist and the counselor in the same year.

The proposed FY2026 federal education budget cuts over $6 billion from K-12 public education.

Not one program.

Not one state.

Across the board.

And the way those cuts land isn’t random. It’s patterned. It’s predictable. And if you look closely enough, it’s by design.

What $6 Billion in Cuts Looks Like

Numbers this large tend to lose their meaning. So let me break it down into what actually disappears.

Migrant Education: $1.3 billion, gone.

English Language Acquisition: gone.

Title I funding to high-poverty schools: $4.7 billion cut, gone.

Eighteen grant programs - programs that fund everything from gifted education to after-school programs - consolidated from $6.5 billion down to $2 billion, a 60% reduction. Gone.

Community Schools grants: $168 million, gone.

These aren’t abstractions. The Education Law Center’s analysis lets you look up what your specific district loses. The Learning Policy Institute identified $5 billion in formula funding alone hanging in the balance between White House and Senate proposals. And New America’s district-level analysis shows the average district would lose over $600,000 - roughly $212 per student.

But averages lie. Because the cuts don’t land evenly.

The Part That Should Make You Stop Scrolling

Districts serving the most students of color would lose nearly double the funding of majority-white districts.

That’s not conjecture. That’s what the data shows when you disaggregate who federal dollars actually reach. In Pennsylvania alone, districts serving the most students of color receive $1,732 less per student - nearly 9% less - in state and local revenue than districts serving the fewest. And the districts with the largest adequacy gaps? They serve 64% students of color, compared to 22–30% in adequately funded districts.

Pennsylvania isn’t an outlier. It’s a case study in a national pattern. Nationally, Hispanic students face the largest gap - more than $1,000 less per pupil; Black students receive roughly $400 less. And most of that inequity exists between states, which means federal dollars are one of the only mechanisms that even attempts to correct it.

When you cut the federal share, you don’t cut it from everyone equally. You cut it from the kids who were already underfunded. From the districts already stretching every dollar. From the communities whose local tax base was never going to make up the difference.

“Local Control” = “Your Problem Now”

“Local control.”

It’s one of those phrases that sounds empowering until you look at what it’s actually asking communities to do.

The federal government provides roughly 11% of K-12 funding nationally. That’s not a lot - until you realize where that 11% goes. It flows disproportionately to the districts that need it most: high-poverty schools, English learners, students with disabilities, rural communities that can’t generate the same property tax base as their suburban neighbors.

When you cut that 11%, you don’t cut it evenly.

You cut it from the kids who were already underfunded. From the districts already stretching every dollar. From the communities that “local control” was never designed to protect - because they were never the ones with the resources to control anything locally.

This is the part of the conversation that gets skipped. We debate philosophy while districts are doing math. And the math doesn’t work.

Consider this: 37% of Black students attend high-poverty schools, compared to 7% of white students. When we talk about “local control,” we’re asking those communities - the ones with the fewest resources - to absorb the biggest losses. That’s not empowerment. That’s abandonment with better branding.

The Quiet Part

I don’t think most people who use the phrase “local control” mean harm. But intent doesn’t change impact. And the impact right now is that the most vulnerable communities in our education system are being told to figure it out with less.

I’m not sharing this to spark outrage. I’m sharing it because the people making decisions in districts right now - superintendents, CFOs, school board members - deserve to see the full picture. And too many conversations about “innovation” in education skip right past the part where the floor is being pulled out.

You can’t build on a foundation someone is actively dismantling.

And if we’re serious about “local control,” we should start by being honest about what we’re asking local communities to control: less. With less. For the kids who already had the least.

Leadership means resourcing the things you claim to value.

- BrightMinds Founding Team

Sources:

New America - Federal K-12 cuts analysis: https://www.newamerica.org/education-policy/edcentral/disability-idea-and-the-impact-of-federal-cuts/

Education Law Center - FY2026 budget impact by district: https://edlawcenter.org/trump-2-0-how-will-proposed-fy26-budget-cuts-affect-your-school-district/

Learning Policy Institute - $5B in formula funding: https://learningpolicyinstitute.org/blog/5-billion-federal-k-12-formula-funding-hangs-balance-between-white-house-and-senate-proposals

Education Week - Community Schools terminations: https://www.edweek.org/policy-politics/a-gut-punch-what-trumps-new-168-million-cut-means-for-community-schools/2025/12

EdTrust - Pennsylvania funding disparities: https://stateofeducationfunding.org/state/pennsylvania/

NCES - Federal share of K-12 funding: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cma

Brookings - Education after one year of Trump administration: https://www.brookings.edu/articles/brown-center-scholars-reflect-on-education-after-1-year-of-the-trump-administration/

Word in Black - Title I and Black students: https://wordinblack.com/2025/02/title-i-funding-in-limbo-whats-at-stake-for-black-students/