Trump Budget Pushes Big Cuts for Perkins

From our friends at ACTE:
Today, the White House released President Trump’s full budget request to Congress for Fiscal Year (FY) 2018. This document outlines the Administration’s spending priorities for the coming year fiscal year, including federal education and workforce training programs.  The budget proposes drastic cuts in federal support for CTE, including a $168 million cut in the Perkins Basic State Grant! It also proposes to put an additional $20 million in the Perkins National Programs to establish a new grant that would support only certain CTE programs in STEM fields that are able to compete for funds.

The cut would be so deep that it would actually trigger a “hold harmless” provision in the Perkins Act and its “ratable reduction” rule, which means that certain states would see disproportionately larger cuts to their funding allocations before all states are reduced. See the estimated impact of the president’s budget on state allocations here.

Overall, the budget would cut $9 billion (13 percent) in total from the Department of Education and $2.5 billion (21 percent) from the Department of Labor. Many programs supporting students and job seekers would be drastically cut or eliminated under the president’s budget plan, including:

• Adult education would be cut by $96 million.
• Teacher Quality Partnership Grants for teacher education would be eliminated.
• ESSA Title IV grants that can support career guidance programs and other CTE-related initiatives would be eliminated.
• ESSA Title II funds to support effective educators would be eliminated.
• WIOA youth, adult, and dislocated worker state grants would see a combined cut of over $1 billion.

What does this mean for Rhode Island’s Perkins allocation?

Rhode Island
FY 17 Perkins Estimate – $5,496,906
FY 18 Perkins Proposed – $4,670,111
Net Change   $826,795 cut
Difference   -15.0%
Join SkillsUSA Rhode Island as we call on Congress to reject the Trump cuts to education and job training. Take a few minutes to tell our lawmakers on Capitol Hill that we cannot cut our way to a 21st century workforce!