Senator Collins Questions Sec. McMahon on Funding for Rural Schools, TRIO

Q&A on Proposed Consolidation of Education Grants

Click HERE to watch and HERE to download video of this exchange.

Q&A on TRIO Programs

Click HERE to watch and HERE to download video of this exchange.

Washington, D.C. - At a hearing to review the Fiscal Year (FY) 2027 budget request for the Department of Education, U.S. Senator Susan Collins, Chair of the Appropriations Committee, pressed Secretary Linda McMahon on how the Department of Education's proposed consolidation of K-12 programs into one block grant could impact the Rural Education Achievement Program (REAP).

Sen. Collins also reiterated her opposition to cutting funding for TRIO as proposed in both this and last year's President's Budget Requests. With 11 other Senators, Sen. Collins sent a letter to Sec. McMahon earlier in April urging the Administration to reconsider its TRIO Talent Search and Educational Opportunity Centers grant competitions, which the senators called both a "dramatic shift in mission" and redirection of funding.

Q&A on Proposed Consolidation of Education Grants

Senator Collins: Madam Secretary, the Administration is proposing to consolidate important K-12 education programs into one big block grant, the Make Education Great Again Grant. Many of these programs are extremely important to our students, including the Rural Education Achievement Program that I authored more than two decades ago to help rural school districts overcome the unique challenges that they face.

For one, small, rural schools don't have grant writers to apply for grants, and they lack those resources. REAP helps schools by giving them additional funding and flexibility. Eliminating REAP as a separate program puts schools in rural states at a real disadvantage. From my perspective, consolidating 18 programs funded previously at $6.5 billion into one grant program funded at only $2 billion will undermine the goals of helping our K-12 schools.

Protecting rural schools and rural communities has always been one of my top priorities, so it's critical that we evaluate the impact that the Administration's proposal would have on rural schools. How would providing much less funding, going from $6.5 billion to $2 billion, and consolidating all of these programs help rural schools?

Sec. McMahon: Thank you, Senator, very much for your question, and I know your passion for rural schools throughout Maine.

One of the points that you made, about a lot of rural schools don't have grant writers and can't bring in those resources that other states might have, or other cities might have, is part of the program of this consolidation, because there are a lot of states who never participated in any of the grant funding. Under this proposal, with consolidation, all states will participate in a formulaic distribution of this consolidated grant. While I acknowledge it is not as much money coming into a lot of the different programs, our assessment of many of these programs have been that they have lost their efficacy, and they're really not returning, giving the returns that we had hoped to see for our rural schools.

So, I really believe that in this consolidation effort, we have the opportunity for many more schools to take advantage of dollars, and to be spent in the areas where they need them. Governors, local, school boards, superintendents of these states can take a look at these dollars that are coming in. If they need to be spent more in rural areas, they can direct that funding to rural areas. If they have adequate school funds in their city or less rural areas, then they'll have the opportunity to take that money and put it where they need it. So, the goal is to provide more dollars to be spent where governors, and state superintendents, and even parents participating in local school boards see the need for these dollars to be spent.

Senator Collins: Well, I hope we can work further around this. The Rural Education Achievement Program has been enormously successful, and I'm worried it's going to be lost in the consolidation.

Q&A on TRIO Programs

Senator Collins: You and I have discussed many times my passion for the TRIO Program, which has changed the lives of countless first-generation and low-income students in Maine and across the country. Three of my own staff members are TRIO alums and likely would not have attended college without TRIO. So, I want to go on record that I oppose the Administration's proposal to, once again, eliminate a program that enjoys robust support and has made such a difference in the lives of children.

I do want to ask you about a specific part of TRIO. Along with 11 of my colleagues, I recently sent you a letter that expresses concerns about the recently published applications for the TRIO Talent Search and Educational Opportunity Centers grant competitions. The grant structure outlined in the applications reflects a dramatic shift in the mission, and it would redirect funds from the core purpose of the Talent Search and EOC programs.

Now, I'm a very strong supporter of apprenticeship programs and other workforce training programs, but that's not what--TRIO is designed for higher education. Ultimately, that leads to workforce improvements and opportunities, but it's designed to promote college awareness, preparation, and completion for low-income and first-generation students. So, in my judgment, the partnership that the Department of Education has entered into with the Department of Labor negatively affects these competitions, and current grantees in my state, like the University of Maine and the University of Maine at Presque Isle, are going to be hurt by the change in focus.

Why alter congressional intent for the Education Opportunity Centers and the Talent Search grant competitions? And my second related question is, were the new criteria written by the Department of Labor staff, rather than the Department of Education?

Sec. McMahon: Well, in very limited time I have, the Department of Labor did not write these criteria, and I understand your passion for TRIO, and we have had many talks about this. I think what we are looking at at the Department of Education is looking at TRIO differently, giving it some opportunity to be reformed, because under TRIO's own metrics, it has not achieved its own goals.

And as we look at it across the country, we looked at, okay, how can TRIO then be reformed if, in fact, we could provide a different kind of opportunity for higher education? Would it necessarily have to be a college degree? Or could there be students who would want to proceed after high school into apprenticeship programs or a skilled workforce? So, this latest is kind of, if you will, an experiment with TRIO, to look at it to see if it has different results.

I think in this bidding process, it was worth taking an opportunity of reform to show that there might be alternatives to higher education other than college, given that we do have a lack of our skilled workforce in the country. So, I appreciate your commitment to TRIO. I want you to know that we are spending about $2.1 million doing research for the programs to see how the efficacy of them can be improved. By their own admission and their own self-reported data, they're not meeting their own goals.

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