Approximately $3.6 billion in delayed funding for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, or LIHEAP, was released Friday to states and tribes, according to the National Energy Assistance Directors Association.The federal funding for LIHEAP, which helps millions of low-income households pay to heat and cool their homes, has been held up during the beginning of the cold-weather season because of the federal government shutdown, which ended Nov. 12.“This release of LIHEAP funding is essential and long overdue,” Mark Wolfe, executive director of NEADA, said in a statement. “Families can finally begin receiving the support they need to keep the heat on as winter begins.”States typically receive their allocations at the beginning of November.The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the assistance program, has not yet issued a formal public announcement about the resumption of the funding. After the federal shutdown ended, HHS said one of its agencies would “work swiftly to administer annual awards,” blaming the delay on congressional Democrats.Wolfe said state agencies told his organization they’ve received award letters from HHS, enabling them to begin distributing assistance to households.A message was left seeking comment with HHS.On Monday, a bipartisan group of U.S. House members sent a letter to HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. urging him to release the LIHEAP funds by Nov. 30. Given the heating season has already started in many parts of the U.S., they said “there is no time to waste,” especially for households that use home heating oil or propane. Those fuels typically aren’t affected by state moratoriums on utility shutoffs during the winter months.Roughly 68% of LIHEAP households also receive SNAP food benefits. Wolfe said delays in both programs during the shutdown “put many households in an even more precarious situation than usual.” While Friday’s funding release is welcome news, he said the need for assistance “remains enormous,” especially given rising energy prices. He noted that arrearages remain near record highs.
HARTFORD, Conn. —
Approximately $3.6 billion in delayed funding for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, or LIHEAP, was released Friday to states and tribes, according to the National Energy Assistance Directors Association.
The federal funding for LIHEAP, which helps millions of low-income households pay to heat and cool their homes, has been held up during the beginning of the cold-weather season because of the federal government shutdown, which ended Nov. 12.
“This release of LIHEAP funding is essential and long overdue,” Mark Wolfe, executive director of NEADA, said in a statement. “Families can finally begin receiving the support they need to keep the heat on as winter begins.”
States typically receive their allocations at the beginning of November.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the assistance program, has not yet issued a formal public announcement about the resumption of the funding. After the federal shutdown ended, HHS said one of its agencies would “work swiftly to administer annual awards,” blaming the delay on congressional Democrats.
Wolfe said state agencies told his organization they’ve received award letters from HHS, enabling them to begin distributing assistance to households.
A message was left seeking comment with HHS.
On Monday, a bipartisan group of U.S. House members sent a letter to HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. urging him to release the LIHEAP funds by Nov. 30. Given the heating season has already started in many parts of the U.S., they said “there is no time to waste,” especially for households that use home heating oil or propane. Those fuels typically aren’t affected by state moratoriums on utility shutoffs during the winter months.
Roughly 68% of LIHEAP households also receive SNAP food benefits. Wolfe said delays in both programs during the shutdown “put many households in an even more precarious situation than usual.” While Friday’s funding release is welcome news, he said the need for assistance “remains enormous,” especially given rising energy prices. He noted that arrearages remain near record highs.
California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta sued the Trump Administration Tuesday seeking to stop a federal policy change that advocates say could force 170,000 formerly homeless Americans back on the streets or into shelters.
The lawsuit focuses on a federal program known as Continuum of Care that sends money to local governments and nonprofits to fight homelessness.
This month, the Trump Administration announced it was drastically cutting the amount of money the program will pay for rental subsidies in permanent housing and shifting those dollars to temporary housing and services instead.
With subsidies for permanent housing reduced, advocates say 170,000 people could return to homelessness. Locally, the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority has warned 5,000 L.A. County households, containing 6,800 people, could be at risk of losing their homes, which would erase the small decline in homelessness reported this year.
“This [federal] program has proven to be effective at getting Americans off the streets, yet the Trump Administration is now attempting to illegally slash its funding,” Bonta said in a statement.
HUD did not immediately respond to a request for comment. This month, the department said its policy change “restores accountability to homelessness programs and promotes self-sufficiency among vulnerable Americans” in part by redirecting most money to transitional housing and supportive services that it sees as more effective than permanent housing.
Bonta filed the lawsuit along with 19 state attorneys general and two governors.
The lawsuit alleges the HUD policy change violated the law in several ways, including that the department failed to properly notice the change and that the new restrictions on funding violate the separation of powers because they were not imposed by Congress.
In addition to capping the amount of funds that can be spent on permanent housing, HUD is requiring more total homeless dollars be subject to competitive bidding.
Bonta‘s office said the new rules also “eliminate funding to applicants that acknowledge the existence of transgender and gender-diverse people” and make it harder for cities and counties to get funding if they don’t “enforce certain policies this Administration favors, like bans on public camping.”
Revolut Ltd. garnered a $75 billion valuation in its latest share sale after months of courting investors, a steep increase from the $45 billion price tag it received last year. The round was led by Coatue, Greenoaks, Dragoneer and Fidelity Management & Research Company, according to a statement. Nvidia Corp.’s venture capital arm NVentures, Andreessen […]
The Trump administration’s dismantling of the U.S. Department of Education this week provides a rare opportunity to rethink our current top-down approach to school governance.
We should jump on it. It’s not sexy to talk about governance, but we can’t fix K-12 education until we do so, no matter how we feel about the latest changes.
Since the Department of Education opened in 1980, we’ve doubled per-pupil spending, and now spend about twice as much per student as does the average country in the European Union. Yet despite that funding — and the reforms, reports and technologies introduced over the past 45 years — U.S. students consistently underperform on international benchmarks. And people are opting out: 22 percent of U.S. district students are now chronically absent, while record numbers of families are opting out of those schools, choosing charters, private schools and homeschooling.
Most federal and state reform approaches have been focused on curricular standards and have accomplished little. The many billions spent on the Common Core standards coincided with — or triggered — a 13-year decline in academic performance. The underlying principles of the standards movement — that every student should learn the same things at the same time, that we know what those things are and that they don’t change over time — have made our schools even less compelling while narrowing instruction to what gets tested.
We need to address the real problem: how federal, state and district rules combine to create a dense fog of regulations and directives that often conflict or constrain one another. Educators are losing a rigged game: It’s not that they’re doing the wrong things, it’s that governance makes them unresponsive, bureaucratic, ineffective and paralyzed — can you name an industry that spends less on research and development?
Fixing governance won’t be simple, but it shouldn’t take more than 13 years to do it: three years to design a better system of state governance and 10 more to thoroughly test and debug it.
I would start by bringing together experts from a variety of disciplines, ideally at a new “Center for K-12 Governance” at a university’s school of education or school of public policy, and give them three years to think through a comprehensive set of state laws and regulations to manage schools.
The center would convene experts from inside and outside of education, in small groups focused on topics including labor, funding, data, evaluation, transportation, construction, athletics, counseling, technology, curricula and connections to higher education and the workforce. Its frameworks would address various educational and funding alternatives currently in use, including independent, charter and parochial schools, home schooling and Education Savings Accounts, all of which speak to the role of parents in making choices about their children’s education.
Each group would start with the questions and not the answers, and there are hundreds of really interesting questions to be considered: What are the various goals of our K-12 schools and how do we authentically measure schools against them? What choices do we give parents, and what information might help them make the right decisions for their kids? How do we allow for new approaches to attract, support and pay great teachers and administrators? How does money follow each student? What data do we collect and how do we use it?
After careful consideration, the center would hand its proposed statutes to a governor committed to running a long-term pilot to fully test the model. He or she would create a small alternative department of education, which would oversee a few hundred volunteer schools matched to a control group of similar schools running under the state’s legacy regime; both groups would include schools with a range of demographic and performance profiles. The two systems could run side by side for up to a decade.
Each year, the state would assess the two departments’ performance against metrics like graduation and college-completion rates, teacher retention, income trajectories, civic participation, student and parent satisfaction, and, yes, NAEP scores. Under intense scrutiny by interested parties, both groups would be free to tweak their playbooks and evaluate solutions against a range of real-world outcomes. Once definitive longitudinal data comes in, the state would shutter one department and move the governance of its schools over to the other, perhaps launching a new test with an even better system.
This all may seem like a lot of work, but it’s a patient approach to a root problem. Schools remain the nation’s most local public square; they determine income mobility, civic health and democratic resilience. If we fail to rewire the system now to support them properly, we guarantee their continued decline, to the detriment of students and society. Instead of celebrating students, teachers and principals who succeed despite the odds, we should address why we made those odds so steep.
That’s why we should use this moment to draft and test something audacious, and give the next Supreme Court a happier education case to decide: how to retire a legacy system that finally lost a fair fight.
John Katzman has founded and run three large ed tech companies: The Princeton Review, 2U and Noodle. He has worked closely with many large school districts and has served on the boards of NAPCS and NAIS.
This story about fixing K-12 education was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’sweekly newsletter.
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DENVER — With Colorado’s population of older adults projected to surge nearly 30% by 2035, advocates gathered Friday at the State Capitol to discuss the biggest problems facing the fastest growing demographic in our state.
The rally came as the Colorado Fiscal Institute released its latest “Cost of Aging in Colorado” report, which warns of rising demand — and inadequate funding — for programs like home-delivered meals, transportation and in-home care. In 2023, more than 50,000 older Coloradans relied on such services, most of which are funded through state and federal dollars.
“We’re going to have a billion-dollar shortfall in ’25, probably about a billion-dollar shortfall in ’26, and they’re [state lawmakers] going to have to look at the biggest line items on their budget, including Medicaid,” said Emily Peterson, executive director of PACE Programs.
Peterson said the financial uncertainty is rippling through senior communities, leaving many hesitant to make life changes — even for the better — out of fear they could lose benefits.
“One of the things that hurts me the most is when a senior tells me, ‘I’m afraid to make a change, even if it’s a change for the better because of uncertainty. They’re not sure if their government benefit will be there next year,’” Peterson said.
Colorado receives $22 million annually in federal funding for older adult programs, but advocates say that amount falls far short of meeting the growing need.
Colorado Fiscal Institue
Since 2021, Colorado has received $22 million in federal funding. Advocates say it is not keeping up with demand and cost of care.
“There’s no way [funding] is keeping up,” Peterson said. “It’s going to call on a lot of private individuals, foundations, businesses even to help with some of that, because the government’s never going to be able to keep up with it.”
Advocates like Peterson and Steve Olguin, executive director of Bright Leaf Inc., say collaboration among agencies is key.
“If we are doing our own thing, I mean, we’re never going to be able to make things happen,” Olguin said. “If we’re not all together and we’re trying to make this push, I don’t think anything’s going to get done.”
Peterson agreed, emphasizing that “relationships are everything” when it comes to creating trusted spaces for seniors. “Let’s not leave our vulnerable seniors in the shadows when they have earned the right to live in the sunshine,” she said.
The state has unveiled a plan this year to address aging-related challenges. Advocates hope it will lead to urgent, meaningful changes.
“This might be the opportunity to make it work. I can’t really say, but I do know that more and more people are getting engaged,” said Bob Bocker, founder and president of AgeWise Colorado. “It’s really important for people to pay attention to what’s going on and notice your neighbors.”
As Colorado’s senior population grows, advocates say visibility will be critical.
“Once you have gray hair, you often become invisible,” Peterson said. “Raising the visibility is key.”
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Denver7 | Your Voice: Get in touch with Colin Riley
Denver7’s Colin Riley is a multimedia journalist who tells stories impacting all of Colorado’s communities, but specializes in reporting on transportation and our state’s population of older adults. If you’d like to get in touch with Colin, fill out the form below to send him an email.
WASHINGTON, DC – The longest federal government shutdown in the U.S. history is finally over.
On Wednesday night, the House of Representatives passed a funding measure to end the shutdown, on a vote of 222 to 209, and President Donald Trump signed it into the law a short time later.
Before the House vote, Republicans and Democrats blamed each other for the prolonged standoff.
“They admitted they were using the American people as leverage in this political game,” Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson said. “They knew it would cause pain and they did it anyway. The whole exercise was pointless. It was wrong and it was cruel.”
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries claimed the bill doesn’t help Americans struggling with high costs.
“The longest shutdown in American history would rather do that than provide healthcare that’s affordable to working-class Americans, middle-class American, and hard-working American taxpayers,” said Jeffries.
(AP) – The Supreme Court on Tuesday extended an order blocking full SNAP payments, amid signals that the government shutdown could soon end and food aid payments resume.
The order keeps in place at least for a few more days a chaotic situation. People who depend on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program to feed their families in some states have received their full monthly allocations, while others have received nothing.
The Senate has approved a bill to end the shutdown and the House of Representatives could vote on it as early as Wednesday. Reopening the government would restart the program that helps 42 million Americans buy groceries, but it’s not clear how quickly full payments would resume.
The justices chose what is effectively the path of least resistance, anticipating the shutdown will end soon while avoiding any substantive legal ruling about whether lower court orders to keep full payments flowing during the shutdown are correct.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.
It’s up to the U.S. Supreme Court and Congress to decide when full payments will resume under the SNAP food aid program that helps 1 in 8 Americans buy groceries, as some wonder how they will feed their families without government assistance.
The Supreme Court is expected to rule Tuesday on a request from President Donald Trump’s administration to keep blocking states from providing full Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, arguing the money might be needed elsewhere.
The legal wrangling could be moot if the U.S. House adopts and Trump signs legislation to quickly end the federal government shutdown.
The seesawing rulings mean that beneficiaries in some states have received their full monthly allocations while in others they have received nothing. Some states have issued partial payments.
How quickly SNAP benefits could reach recipients if the government reopens or the Supreme Court orders full payments would vary by state. But states and advocates say that it’s easier to make full payments quickly than partial ones.
Carolyn Vega, a policy analyst at the advocacy group Share Our Strength, also said there could be some technical challenges for states that have issued partial benefits to send out the remaining amount.
An urgent need for beneficiaries In Pennsylvania, full November benefits went out to some people on Friday. But Jim Malliard, 41, of Franklin, said he had not received anything by Monday.
Malliard is a full-time caretaker for his wife, who is blind and has had several strokes this year, and his teenage daughter, who suffered severe medical complications from surgery last year.
That stress has only been compounded by the pause in the $350 monthly SNAP payment he previously received for himself, his wife and daughter. He said he is down to $10 in his account and is relying on what’s left in the pantry — mostly rice and ramen.
“It’s kind of been a lot of late nights, making sure I had everything down to the penny to make sure I was right,” Malliard said. “To say anxiety has been my issue for the past two weeks is putting it mildly.”
The political wrangling in Washington has shocked many Americans, and some have been moved to help.
“I figure that I’ve spent money on dumber stuff than trying to feed other people during a manufactured famine,” said Ashley Oxenford, a teacher who set out a “little food pantry” in her front yard this week for vulnerable neighbors in Carthage, New York.
SNAP has been the center of an intense fight in court The Trump administration chose to cut off SNAP funding after October due to the shutdown. That decision sparked lawsuits and a string of swift and contradictory judicial rulings that deal with government power — and impact food access for some 42 million Americans.
The administration went along with two rulings on Oct. 31 by judges who said the government must provide at least partial funding for SNAP. It eventually said recipients would get up to 65% of their regular benefits. But it balked last week when one of the judges said it must fund the program fully for November, even if that means digging into funds the government said need to be maintained in case of emergencies elsewhere.
The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to pause that order.
An appeals court said Monday that full funding should resume, and that requirement is set to kick in Tuesday night unless the top court takes action again.
Congressional talks about reopening government The U.S. Senate on Monday passed legislation to reopen the federal government with a plan that would include replenishing SNAP funds. Speaker Mike Johnson told members of the House to return to Washington to consider the deal a small group of Senate Democrats made with Republicans.
Trump has not said whether he would sign it if it reaches his desk, but told reporters at the White House on Sunday that it “looks like we’re getting close to the shutdown ending.”
Still, the Trump administration said in a Supreme Court filing Monday that it shouldn’t be up to the courts.
“The answer to this crisis is not for federal courts to reallocate resources without lawful authority,” Solicitor General D. John Sauer said in the papers. “The only way to end this crisis — which the Executive is adamant to end — is for Congress to reopen the government.”
The coalition of cities and nonprofit groups who challenged the SNAP pause said in a court filing Tuesday that the Department of Agriculture, which administers SNAP, is to blame for the confusion.
“The chaos was sown by USDA’s delays and intransigence,” they said, “not by the district court’s efforts to mitigate that chaos and the harm it has inflicted on families who need food.”
BOSTON (AP) — Two federal judges ruled nearly simultaneously on Friday that President Donald Trump’s administration must to continue to fund SNAP, the nation’s biggest food aid program, using contingency funds during the government shutdown.
The rulings came a day before the U.S. Department of Agriculture planned to freeze payments to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program because it said it could no longer keep funding it due to the shutdown.
The program serves about 1 in 8 Americans and is a major piece of the nation’s social safety net. Word in October that it would be a Nov. 1 casualty of the shutdown sent states, food banks and SNAP recipients scrambling to figure out how to secure food. Some states said they would spend their own funds to keep versions of the program going.
The program costs around $8 billion per month nationally.
Democratic state attorneys general or governors from 25 states, as well as the District of Columbia, challenged the plan to pause the program, contending that the administration has a legal obligation to keep it running in their jurisdictions.
The administration said it wasn’t allowed to use a contingency fund with about $5 billion in it for the program, which reversed a USDA plan from before the shutdown that said money would be tapped to keep SNAP running. The Democratic officials argued that not only could that money be used, it must be. They also said a separate fund with around $23 billion is available for the cause.
A federal judge in Rhode Island ruled from a bench that the program must be funded using at least the contingency funds – and asked for an update on progress by Monday.
A Massachusetts-based judge also gave the administration until Monday to say whether it would partially pay for the benefits for November with contingency money or fund them fully with additional funds
It wasn’t immediately clear how quickly the debit cards that beneficiaries use to buy groceries could be reloaded after the ruling. That process often takes one to two weeks.
The rulings are likely to face appeals.
In a hearing in Boston Thursday on a legal challenge filed by the Democratic officials from 25 states, one federal judge seemed skeptical of the administration’s argument that SNAP benefits could be halted.
U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani told lawyers that if the government can’t afford to cover the cost, there’s a process to follow rather than simply suspending all benefits. “The steps involve finding an equitable way of reducing benefits,” said Talwani, who was nominated to the court by former President Barack Obama.
Talwani seemed to be leaning toward requiring the government to put billions of dollars in emergency funds toward SNAP. That, she said, is her interpretation of what Congress intended when an agency’s funding runs out.
“If you don’t have money, you tighten your belt,” she said in court. “You are not going to make everyone drop dead because it’s a political game someplace.”
Government lawyers say a contingency fund containing some $5 billion cannot legally be used to maintain SNAP, a program that costs about $8 billion a month. The states say it must be used for that purpose and point to more money available in a second federal account with around $23 billion.
Talwani said her ruling would apply nationwide, not just in the states that are part of the challenge. That could defy the intentions of the U.S. Supreme Court, which has limited the use of nationwide injunctions, though it hasn’t prohibited them.
Meanwhile, states, food banks and recipients have been bracing for an abrupt shift in how low-income people can get groceries.
The majority of states have announced more or expedited funding for food banks or novel ways to load at least some benefits onto the debit cards used in the program.
Advocates and beneficiaries say halting the food aid would force people to choose between buying groceries and paying other bills.
At a Washington news conference Friday, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, whose department runs SNAP, said the contingency funds in question would not cover the cost of SNAP for long. Speaking at a press conference with House Speaker Mike Johnson at the Capitol, she blamed Democrats for conducting a “disgusting dereliction of duty” by refusing to end their Senate filibuster as they hold out for an extension of health care funds.
A push this week to continue SNAP funding during the shutdown failed in Congress.
To qualify for SNAP in 2025, a family of four’s net income after certain expenses can’t exceed the federal poverty line, which is about $31,000 per year. Last year, SNAP provided assistance to 41 million people, nearly two-thirds of whom were families with children, according to the lawsuit.
FILE – Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek speaks during a signing ceremony in Washington, Friday, Feb. 23, 2024. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File)
SALEM, Ore. — October 29, 2025 — With federal funding for food assistance halted during the ongoing government shutdown, Governor Tina Kotek has declared a 60-day statewide food security emergency and directed $5 million to Oregon’s food bank network to help families facing hunger.
The move comes as thousands of Oregonians lose access to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which is entirely funded by the federal government. SNAP supports roughly one in six people in Oregon, including children, working families, seniors and people with disabilities.
Emergency declaration and state response
Kotek’s declaration activates the Oregon Department of Emergency Management to coordinate food distribution efforts through December, aiming to ensure that emergency food reaches vulnerable families during the holiday season.
The order also positions the state to restart SNAP benefits quickly once federal operations resume. “It’s unacceptable that families are being used as leverage in a political standoff in Washington, D.C.,” Kotek said in a statement. “While Congress fails to do its job, Oregon will do ours.”
$5 million directed to food banks
The Governor has authorized $5 million from Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) carryover funds to bolster Oregon’s network of food banks. According to the state, the funding will be used for food purchasing, distribution, and local operations to meet increased demand during the shutdown.
Call to action for Oregonians
Kotek also urged residents to help their neighbors by donating, volunteering, or supporting food relief efforts. The Oregon Food Bank has launched a “SNAP Gap” fundraising campaign at OregonFoodBank.org/SNAP-Gap.
In addition, the Oregon Beverage Recycling Cooperative is activating its Emergency Fund from Oct. 30 through Nov. 30, allowing Oregonians to donate bottle and can refunds to food assistance organizations through bottledrop.com/food. Many grocery stores across the state will also host checkout donation drives and food collection campaigns in the coming weeks.
The Department of Administrative Services will expand its annual charitable giving campaign to include statewide nonperishable food drives through December 5.
Federal appeal
Kotek renewed her call for the U.S. Department of Agriculture to release contingency funds authorized under federal law to sustain SNAP benefits nationwide. Earlier this week, Oregon leaders sent a letter to USDA Secretary Rollins urging the department to use all available funds to prevent hunger during the shutdown.
How to get help
Residents seeking food assistance can find resources at needfood.oregon.gov or alimentos.oregon.gov, or by calling 2-1-1. The Oregon Food Bank’s Food Finder tool, available in 19 languages, lists local pantries and meal programs.
Older adults and people with disabilities can contact the Aging and Disability Resource Connection of Oregon at 1-855-673-2372 or visit adrcoforegon.org.
Recent policy shifts have caused significant uncertainty in K-12 education funding, especially for technology initiatives. It’s no longer business as usual. Schools can’t rely on the same federal operating funds they’ve traditionally used to purchase technology or support innovation. This unpredictability has pushed school districts to explore creative, nontraditional ways to fund technology initiatives. To succeed, it’s important to understand how to approach these funding opportunities strategically.
How to find funding
Despite the challenges, there are still many grants available to support education initiatives and technology projects. Start with an online search using key terms related to your project–for example, “virtual reality,” “virtual field trips,” or “career and technical education.”
Explore national organizations like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation or Project Tomorrow and consider potential local funding sources. Local organizations such as Rotary or Kiwanis clubs can be powerful allies in helping to fund projects. The local library and city or county government may also offer grants or partnership opportunities. Schools should also reach out to locally-headquartered businesses, many of which have community outreach or corporate social responsibility goals that align with supporting local education.
Colleges and universities are another valuable resource. They may be conducting research that aligns with your school’s technology project. Building relationships with these institutions and organizations can put your school “in the right place at the right time” when new funding opportunities arise.
Strategies to win the grant
Once potential funding sources are identified, the next step is crafting a compelling proposal. Consider the following strategies to strengthen your application.
1. Focus on the “how and why,” not just the “what.” If your school is seeking funds to buy hardware, don’t simply say, “Here’s what we want to buy.” Instead, frame it as, “Here’s how this project will improve student learning and why it matters.” Funders want to see the impact their support will have on outcomes. The more clearly a proposal connects technology to learning gains, the stronger it will be.
2. Highlight the research. Use evidence to validate your project’s value. For example, if a school plans to purchase virtual reality headsets, cite studies showing that VR improves knowledge retention, engagement, and comprehension compared to traditional instruction. Demonstrating that the technology is research-backed helps funders feel confident in their investment.
3. Paint a picture. Bring the project to life. Describe what students will experience and how they’ll benefit. For example: “When students put on the headset, they aren’t just reading about ancient civilizations, they’re walking through them.” Vivid descriptions help reviewers visualize the impact and believe in your vision.
Eight questions to consider when applying for a grant
Use these guiding questions to sharpen your proposal and ensure a strong foundation for implementation and long-term success.
What is the goal? Clearly define what students will be able to do as a result of the project. Use action-orientated language: “Students will be able to…”
Is the technology effective? Support your proposal with evidence such as whitepapers, case studies, or research that can demonstrate proven impact.
How will the technology impact these specific students? Emphasize what makes your school or district unique, whether it’s serving a rural, urban, or high-poverty community and how this technology addresses those specific needs.
What is the scope of the application? Specify whether the project involves elementary school, secondary school, or a specific subject or program like a STEM lab.
How will success be measured? Too often schools reach the end of a project without a plan to track results. Plan your evaluation from the start. Track key metrics such as attendance, disciplinary data, academic performance, or engagement surveys, both before and after implementation to demonstrate results.
What are your budgetary needs? Include all associated costs, including professional development and substitute coverage for teacher training.
What happens after the grant is over? If you plan to use the technology for multiple years, apply for a multi-year grant rather than assuming future funding will appear. Sustainability is key.
How will success be celebrated and communicated to stakeholders? Share results with the community and stakeholders. Host events recognizing teachers, students, and partners. Invite local media and highlight your funding partners–they’re not just donors, but partners in student success.
Moving forward with confidence
Education funding will likely remain uncertain in the years ahead. However, by being intentional about where to look for funds, how to frame proposals, and how to measure and share impact, schools can continue to implement innovative technology initiatives that elevate teaching and learning.
Gillian Rhodes, Avantis Education
Gillian Rhodes is Chief Marketing Officer at Avantis Education, creators of ClassVR. With morethan 20 years of experience in education marketing and leadership, he is passionate about helping schools use the latest technology to engage students and improve learning outcomes.
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Eight children were killed in domestic violence incidents across Colorado in 2024 — the highest number since the state began tracking annual domestic violence deaths eight years ago, according to a report released Tuesday by the Domestic Violence Fatality Review Board.
The youngest child to die was 3-month-old Lesley Younghee Kim, who was found dead with her mortally injured mother in a Denver home in July 2024.
“It’s a wakeup call, I hope, for people in Colorado,” said Whitney Woods, executive director of the Rose Andom Center, which helped compile the board’s report. “This is a real problem.”
Seventy-two people died in domestic violence incidents statewide in 2024. That’s up 24% from the 58 domestic violence deaths in 2023 but remains below pandemic-era peaks, when 94 people died in 2022 and 92 people died in 2021.
The pandemic years also saw elevated numbers of children killed, with four children killed in 2021 and six in 2022. Across the other years, no more than three children died in any given year, the board’s reports show.
Five of the eight children killed in 2024 died amid custody disputes between their parents, the report found.
“These findings highlight custody litigation as a high-risk period for families experiencing domestic violence and point to the urgent need for stronger safeguards within family court proceedings,” the report concluded. The legislatively-mandated board, chaired by Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser, began tracking domestic violence statewide in 2017 and makes annual recommendations for policy changes aimed at preventing deaths.
The fatality review board last year recommended that the state’s child and family investigators and parental responsibilities evaluators go through training on domestic violence, particularly around understanding the dynamics of domestic violence and how to evaluate the risk of lethality during the custody process. The Colorado Judicial Department is still developing such training, with work continuing in 2026, the report noted.
“That is to my mind a call to action,” Weiser said. “And we are working with the court system on this right now — how do we make sure our family courts and the general system for addressing domestic violence provides protection, support, services, so that we don’t see these deaths happen?”
The increase in domestic violence deaths came even as statewide homicides declined 17% to a five-year low. Roughly one in six homicide victims in Colorado in 2024 died during domestic violence incidents. Domestic violence victims account for 18% of all homicide victims statewide, the highest proportion in five years, the annual review found.
“That is really alarming in this line of work, for us,” Woods said.
The increase in domestic violence homicides amid the drop in overall homicides “suggests that while broader public safety interventions may be reducing general violence, they are not having the same impact on (domestic violence fatalities),” the report found.
The increase also comes at a time when many organizations aimed at preventing domestic violence and supporting survivors are facing funding shortfalls and uncertainty, Woods noted.
Among the 72 people killed in 2024, 38 were victims of domestic violence, 26 were perpetrators of domestic violence and eight — all of the children — were considered ‘collateral victims.’ The victims were overwhelmingly female and the perpetrators overwhelmingly male.
Across all 72 deaths, guns were used 75% of the time. The second most common type of attack was asphyxiation, which was involved in 8% of all deaths, followed by a knife or sharp object, used in 7% of deaths.
“Occasionally, people will make comments like, ‘If someone wants to kill someone they can kill them with a knife,’” Weiser said. “I think it’s fair to say access to firearms makes it far more likely that a domestic violence perpetrator will kill somebody.”
Removing guns from a suspect when domestic violence begins can be an effective prevention strategy, Woods said.
The report makes a number of recommendations aimed at preventing domestic violence deaths, including passing a new state law that would require police officers to take guns (those in plain sight or discovered during a lawful search) from domestic violence suspects at the time of arrest and hold onto those guns for 48 hours or until the suspect first appears in court. Suspects could then retrieve their guns if they were allowed to legally posses them.
“By empowering officers to disarm abusers immediately at the scene, the proposed law would provide urgent protection for victims and responding officers, create a period to reduce the chance of lethal escalation, and provide a tool for law enforcement to fill the relinquishment gap,” the report reads.
The report also recommends adjusting Colorado’s laws around third-degree assault, suggests law enforcement should give resources to both people involved in a domestic violence incident even when there is not enough evidence to make an arrest, and widening the scope of material gathered by local fatality review boards.
ENGLEWOOD — Metro Denver budtender Quentin Ferguson needs Regional Transportation District bus and trains to reach work at an Arvada dispensary from his house, a trip that takes 90 minutes each way “on a good day.”
“It is pretty inconvenient,” Ferguson, 22, said on a recent rainy evening, waiting for a nearly empty train that was eight minutes late.
He’s not complaining, however, because his relatively low income and Medicaid status qualify him for a discounted RTD monthly pass. That lets him save money for a car or an electric bicycle, he said, either of them offering a faster commute.
Then he would no longer have to ride RTD.
His plight reflects a core problem of lagging ridership that RTD directors increasingly run up against as they try to position the transit agency as the smartest way to navigate Denver. Most other U.S. public transit agencies, too, are grappling with a version of this problem.
In Colorado, state-government-driven efforts to concentrate the growing population in high-density, transit-oriented development around bus and train stations — a priority for legislators and Gov. Jared Polis — hinge on having a swift public system that residents ride.
But transit ridership has failed to rebound a year after RTD’s havoc in 2024, when operators disrupted service downtown for a $152 million rail reconstruction followed by a systemwide emergency maintenance blitz to smooth deteriorating tracks that led to trains crawling through 10-mph “slow zones.”
The latest ridership numbers show an overall decline this year, by at least 3.9%, with 40 million fewer riders per year compared with six years ago. And RTD executives’ newly proposed, record $1.3 billion budget for 2026 doesn’t include funds for boosting bus and train frequency to win back riders.
Frustrations intensified last week.
“What is the point of transit-oriented development if it is just development?” said state Rep. Meg Froelich, a Democrat representing Englewood who chairs the House Transportation, Housing and Local Government Committee. “We need reliable transit to have transit-oriented development. We have cities that have invested significant resources into their transit-oriented communities. RTD is not holding up its end of the bargain.”
At a retreat this past summer, a majority of the RTD’s 15 elected board members agreed that boosting ridership is their top priority. Some who reviewed the proposed budget last week questioned the lack of spending on service improvements for riders.
“We’re not moving the needle. Ridership is not going up. It should be going up,” director Karen Benker said in an interview.
“Over the past few years, there’s been a tremendous amount of population growth. There are so many apartment complexes, so much new housing put up all over,” Benker said. “Transit has to be relied on. You just cannot keep building more roads. We’re going to have to find ways to get people to ride public transit.”
Commuting trends blamed
RTD Chief Executive and General Manager Debra Johnson, in emailed responses to questions from The Denver Post, emphasized that “RTD is not unique” among U.S. transit agencies struggling to regain ridership lost during the COVID-19 pandemic. Johnson blamed societal shifts.
“Commuting trends have significantly changed over the last five years,” she said. “Return-to-work numbers in the Denver metro area, which accounted for a significant percentage of RTD’s ridership prior to March 2020, remain low as companies and businesses continue to provide flexible in-office schedules for their employees.”
In the future, RTD will be “changing its focus from primarily providing commuter services,” she said, toward “enhancing its bus and services and connections to high-volume events, activity centers, concerts and festivals.”
But agency directors are looking for a more aggressive approach to reversing the decline in ridership. And some are mulling a radical restructuring of routes.
Funded mostly by taxpayers across a 2,345 square-mile area spanning eight counties and 40 municipalities — one of the biggest in the nation — RTD operates 10 rail lines covering 114 miles with 84 stations and 102 bus routes with 9,720 stops.
“We should start from scratch,” said RTD director Chris Nicholson, advocating an overhaul of the “geometry” of all bus routes to align transit better with metro Denver residents’ current mobility patterns.
The key will be increasing frequency.
“We should design the routes how we think would best serve people today, and then we could take that and modify it where absolutely necessary to avoid disruptive differences with our current route map,” he said.
Then, in 2030, directors should appeal to voters for increased funding to improve service — funds that would be substantially controlled by municipalties “to pick where they want the service to go,” he said.
Reversing the RTD ridership decline may take a couple of years, Nicholson said, comparing the decreases this year to customers shunning a restaurant. “If you’re a restaurant and you poison some guests accidentally, you’re gonna lose customers even after you fix the problem.”
The RTD ridership numbers show an overall public transit ridership decrease by 5% when measured over the 12-month period from August 2024 through July 2025, the last month for which staffers have made numbers available, compared with the same period a year ago.
Bus ridership decreased by 2% and light rail by 18% over that period. In a typical month, RTD officials record around 5 million boardings — around 247,000 on weekdays.
The precautionary rail “slow zones” persisted for months as contractors worked on tracks, delaying and diverting trains, leaving transit-dependent workers in a lurch. RTD driver workforce shortages limited deployment of emergency bus shuttles.
This year, RTD ridership systemwide decreased by 3.9% when measured from January through July, compared with that period in 2024. The bus ridership this year has decreased by 2.4%.
On rail lines, the ridership on the relatively popular A Line that runs from Union Station downtown to Denver International Airport was down by 9.7%. The E Line light rail that runs from downtown to the southeastern edge of metro Denver was down by 24%. Rail ridership on the W Line decreased by 18% and on R Line by 15%, agency records show.
The annual RTD ridership has decreased by 38% since 2019, from 105.8 million to 65.2 million in 2024.
A Regional Transportation District light rail train moves through downtown Denver on Friday, June 27, 2025. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)
Light rail ‘sickness’ spreading
“The sickness on RTD light rail is spreading to other parts of the RTD system,” said James Flattum, a co-founder of the Greater Denver Transit grassroots rider advocacy group, who also serves on the state’s RTD Accountability Committee. “We’re seeing permanent demand destruction as a consequence of having an unreliable system. This comes from a loss of trust in RTD to get you where you need to go.”
RTD officials have countered critics by pointing out that the light rail’s on-time performance recovered this year to 91% or better. Bus on-time performance still lagged at 83% in July, agency records show.
The officials also pointed to decreased security reports made using an RTD smartphone app after deploying more police officers on buses and trains. The number of reported assaults has decreased — to four in September, compared with 16 in September 2024, records show.
Greater Denver Transit members acknowledged that safety has improved, but question the agency’s assertions based on app usage. “It may be true that the number of security calls went down,” Flattum said, “but maybe the people who otherwise would have made more safety calls are no longer riding RTD.”
RTD staffers developing the 2026 budget have focused on managing debt and maintaining operations spending at current levels. They’ve received forecasts that revenues from taxpayers will increase slightly. It’s unclear whether state and federal funds will be available.
RTD directors and leaders of the Southwest Energy Efficiency Project, an environmental group, are opposing the rollback of RTD’s planned shift to the cleaner, quieter electric hybrid buses and taking on new debt for that purpose.
Colorado lawmakers will “push on a bunch of different fronts” to prioritize better service to boost ridership, Froelich said.
The legislature in recent years directed funds to help RTD provide free transit for riders under age 20. Buses and trains running at least every 15 minutes would improve both ridership and safety, she said, because more riders would discourage bad behavior and riders wouldn’t have to wait alone at night on often-empty platforms for up to an hour.
“We’re trying to do what we can to get people back onto the transit system,” Froelich said. “They do it in other places, and people here do ride the Bustang (intercity bus system). RTD just seems to lack the nimbleness required to meet the moment.”
Denver Center for the Performing Arts stage hand Chris Grossman walks home after work in downtown Denver on Thursday, Oct. 16, 2025. (Photo by Andy Cross/The Denver Post)
Riders switch modes
Meanwhile, riders continue to abandon public transit when it doesn’t meet their needs.
For Denver Center for the Performing Arts theater technician Chris Grossman, 35, ditching RTD led to a better quality of life. He had to move from the Virginia Village neighborhood he loved.
Back in 2016, Grossman sold his ailing blue 2003 VW Golf when he moved there in the belief that “RTD light rail was more or less reliable.” He rode nearly every day between the Colorado Station and downtown.
But trains became erratic as maintenance of walls along tracks caused delays. “It just got so bad. I was burning so much money on rideshares that I probably could have bought a car.” Shortly before RTD announced the “slow zones” last summer, he moved to an apartment closer to downtown on Capitol Hill.
He walks or rides scooters to work, faster than taking the bus, he said.
Similarly, Honor Morgan, 25, who came to Denver from the rural Midwest, “grateful for any public transit,” said she had to move from her place east of downtown to be closer to her workplace due to RTD transit trouble.
Buses were late, and one blew by her as she waited. She had to adjust her attire when riding her Colfax Avenue route to Union Station to manage harassment. She faced regular dramas of riders with substance-use problems erupting.
Morgan moved to an apartment near Union Station in March, allowing her to walk to work.
She still hoped to rely on RTD for concerts and nightlife, and to reach DIA for work-related flights at least once a month. But RTD social media posts have alerted her to enough delays on the A Line that she no longer trusts it, she said. To reduce her “anxiety” and minimize the risk of missing her flights, she shells out for rides — even though these often get stuck in traffic.
She and her boyfriend recently tried RTD again, riding a train to the 38th and Blake Station near the Mission Ballroom. They attended “an amazing concert” there, she said, and felt happy as they walked to the station to catch the train home.
A man on the platform collapsed backward, hitting his head. He was bleeding. She called 911. Her boyfriend and other riders gathered. She ran across the street to an apartment building and grabbed paper towels. RTD isn’t really to blame, but “I just wish they had a station platform attendant, or someone. I do not know head-injury first aid,” Morgan said.
The train they’d been waiting for came and went. An ambulance arrived. They got home late, the evening ruined, she said.
“His head cracked open. He had skin flaps hanging off his head. This was stuck in my head, at least for the rest of the night.”
The government shutdown is entering a fourth week as Democrats and Republicans blame each other for holding the country “hostage.” Caught in the middle, federal workers, government services, and the economy are all feeling the impact. Previous shutdowns have seen reduced overall economic growth, disproportionately affecting certain industries. National parks and museums remain closed, flight delays are mounting, and backlogs for new small business loans and flood insurance renewals are growing.Republicans continue to accuse Democrats of blocking paychecks by refusing to reopen the government, while Democrats argue that Republicans are unwilling to negotiate over the core issue of health care funding. “Congressional Democrats seem to want to keep the government shut down even though it would mean that a lot of you would not get your paycheck,” Vice President JD Vance said in remarks to an audience of Marines celebrating the 250th anniversary Saturday.Democrats pushed back in “No Kings” protests across the country.”They’re the ones acting like children refusing to negotiate with Democrats in the Senate who they know have to vote for a budget in order for it to become law,” Sen. Chris Murphy said in an interview Saturday.The shutdown has had a sizable impact as uncertainty weighs on the federal workforce. Under the Trump administration’s direction, federal agencies have been planning not just furloughs but also permanent layoffs. However, a federal judge has temporarily blocked the firings, deeming them potentially illegal.Public perception of who is to blame has been roughly evenly split. A new Associated Press poll finds that a majority, about 6 in 10 Americans, blame President Donald Trump and Republicans for the shutdown. An even larger majority, three-quarters of Americans, believe both sides deserve at least a “moderate” share of the blame, suggesting that no one has truly escaped responsibility for the shutdown.Watch the latest coverage on the federal government shutdown:
WASHINGTON —
The government shutdown is entering a fourth week as Democrats and Republicans blame each other for holding the country “hostage.” Caught in the middle, federal workers, government services, and the economy are all feeling the impact.
Previous shutdowns have seen reduced overall economic growth, disproportionately affecting certain industries.
National parks and museums remain closed, flight delays are mounting, and backlogs for new small business loans and flood insurance renewals are growing.
Republicans continue to accuse Democrats of blocking paychecks by refusing to reopen the government, while Democrats argue that Republicans are unwilling to negotiate over the core issue of health care funding.
“Congressional Democrats seem to want to keep the government shut down even though it would mean that a lot of you would not get your paycheck,” Vice President JD Vance said in remarks to an audience of Marines celebrating the 250th anniversary Saturday.
Democrats pushed back in “No Kings” protests across the country.
“They’re the ones acting like children refusing to negotiate with Democrats in the Senate who they know have to vote for a budget in order for it to become law,” Sen. Chris Murphy said in an interview Saturday.
The shutdown has had a sizable impact as uncertainty weighs on the federal workforce. Under the Trump administration’s direction, federal agencies have been planning not just furloughs but also permanent layoffs. However, a federal judge has temporarily blocked the firings, deeming them potentially illegal.
Public perception of who is to blame has been roughly evenly split. A new Associated Press poll finds that a majority, about 6 in 10 Americans, blame President Donald Trump and Republicans for the shutdown. An even larger majority, three-quarters of Americans, believe both sides deserve at least a “moderate” share of the blame, suggesting that no one has truly escaped responsibility for the shutdown.
Watch the latest coverage on the federal government shutdown:
Last January, Diego Sandoval’s high school in San Diego County closed abruptly one Friday because of wildfires menacing the Southern California area. Classmates evacuated their homes as the fire spread. Frida Vergara, whose school was among the few in the area that didn’t close, recalls that friends with asthma were coughing and wheezing from the smoke.
It wasn’t the first time the students — both 17-year-old seniors in the Sweetwater Union High School District — saw how extreme weather disrupted learning. A year earlier, floods swamped parts of the county, damaging school buildings and closing one for more than a month. The problem is global: At least 242 million students in 85 countries or territories, or 1 in 7 students, lost education time in 2024 because of heat waves, fires, floods and other disasters, according to UNICEF.
Sandoval and Vergara say the connection between events like these and climate change is clear, and scientists agree: Greenhouse gases are trapping heat in the atmosphere and making disruptive and deadly weather events more common. And the two high schoolers say it’s also apparent who should pay for the damage: fossil fuel companies producing the materials that emit those gases.
That’s why, on Oct. 24, they and hundreds of other students across California plan to lead walkouts at their schools in support of state legislation that would put oil companies on the hook financially for infrastructure damage and other costs associated with the climate crisis. Young people at more than 50 high schools have signed on so far.
Known as the Polluters Pay Climate Superfund Act, the legislation is modeled on a 1980 law, passed in response to the infamous Love Canal disaster, that compels companies to pay to clean up hazardous waste they’ve created. Since 2024, two states — New York and Vermont — have adopted laws similar to the California bill that take the superfund concept and apply it to the climate crisis.
“Youth are now seeing that the ones responsible for this are the ones that are profiting billions of dollars off of climate change,” said Sandoval, who attends Eastlake High School, in Chula Vista.
Related: Want to read more about how climate change is shaping education? Subscribe to our free newsletter.
The California climate bill, introduced in February, lists climate-resilient schools, electric buses, green workforce development and job training as investments that could be covered by the superfund.
But after fierce opposition from the oil and gas industry and the California’s State Building and Construction Trades Council, a union that has often allied with the industry, the bill stalled. Esther Portillo, western environmental health director for the nonprofit Natural Resources Defense Council, which supports the bill, said concerns about a major oil refinery closing and about gas prices rising also deterred legislators, including some Democrats.
Dawn Addis, a Democratic assembly member and one of the bill’s authors, said the legislation will continue to be negotiated when the legislative session resumes in January. Supporters have made progress in responding to legislators’ questions about the bill’s details, she said, adding that she was optimistic about its passage. Addis, a former public school teacher, also commended the students and their activism.
“We want obviously students in the classroom learning but this is an extreme situation,” she said. “The effects of the climate crisis are incredibly, incredibly real for kids.”
The Trump administration and a coalition of conservative states led by West Virginia have filed separate lawsuits to block the New York and Vermont laws. The administration’s lawsuitscall the state laws a “brazen attempt to grab power from the federal government and force citizens of other States and nations to foot the bill for its infrastructure wish list.” Since taking office in January, President Donald Trump has canceled billions in clean energy projects, proposed rescinding rules that underpin regulation of greenhouse gases, and backed legislation that cut funding for schools to reduce their climate toll.
Like the California bill, the Vermont and New York laws single out the education system. Vermont’s, for example, talks about the fund paying for energy-efficient cooling systems and building upgrades in schools, among other types of buildings.
“This bill is an incredibly important way to provide states with the ability to pay for necessary projects they should be implementing to save lives,” said Kimberly Ong, senior attorney and senior director at the Natural Resources Defense Council, which is representing New York and Vermont in some of the lawsuits.
In California, perhaps more than any other state, the costs to schoolchildren of climate change are mounting quickly. Kids there have already missed more than 54,000 hours of school time so far this year because of extreme weather events, according to an analysis by the nonprofit UndauntedK12, which helps schools green their operations. The Los Angeles Unified School District, which sustained damage in the Palisades Fire in January, says it was forced to set aside $2.2 billion to help pay for repairs.
“Polluter pay bills are interesting and innovative ways to create new revenue for climate adaptation and mitigation without raising taxes on everyone or approving another state bond,” said Jonathan Klein, co-founder of UndauntedK12. “Fossil fuel companies have profited billions of dollars, essentially creating this crisis,” he added, “and they knew what they were doing for decades.”
He noted that it will be important for education groups and students to help ensure that schools are a priority for any revenue that does materialize from such legislation.
Juan Alanis, a Republican state assembly member who voted against the bill when it was before the Standing Committee on Natural Resources, wrote in an email that he was concerned that it unfairly penalized companies that have already contributed money through California’s cap-and-trade program to reduce emissions. “While we all share a bipartisan commitment to combating climate change and protecting Californians from its devastating impacts, AB 1243 takes us down a troubling path of retroactive punishment that creates unnecessary uncertainty for businesses,” he wrote.
His colleague on the committee, assembly member Josh Hoover, called the bill “just another attempt by Sacramento politicians to virtue signal.”
Sandoval and Vergara, the San Diego County students, say they see the influence of Big Oil. Fossil fuel companies spent more than $38 million on lobbying and related activities in California last year, nearly $12 million more than the previous high set in 2017, according to an analysis by Last Chance Alliance, a coalition of environmental, health, climate and labor groups.
Sandoval said that growing up, his schools taught him about the impact of climate change on the environment but little about what he and other students might do to stop it. Getting involved in climate activism has made him see there are steps young people can take beyond, say, using less plastic.
“When I dedicate time to doing this, I know it’s more impactful than, say, my math homework,” he said. “We’re really seeing youth advocate for something that should be so common sense, yet we’re seeing incredible opposition on the other side.”
Contact editor Caroline Preston at 212-870-8965, via Signal at CarolineP.83 or on email at preston@hechingerreport.org.
The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.
The plunge into American entrepreneurship is anything but easy. Just ask Daniel Spokoyny, who took the leap this month after leaving academia to start BeeSafe AI, a San Diego-based startup aimed at combatting cyber criminals that use social engineering methods to scam consumers. If you have a phone and have ever received an SMS message inviting you to apply for a job, or maybe suggesting that you won the lottery, then you’ve likely encountered one of these schemes.
Spokoyny and his co-founder, Nikolai Vogler, are gathering intel on scammers, building out so-called “honeypot” chatbots, which will mimic real-life victims. This will help map out the networks of these cybercriminals in real-time.
To pay their salaries, build infrastructure and purchase software services, the co-founders applied for and received $305,000 worth of funding from The Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program. Without that program, Spokoyny says, BeeSafe wouldn’t be in business.
“The fact that these ventures are high-risk for academics is particularly what drives innovation because we tried to go out and raise money last year, and our technology was too high-risk for investors,” Spokoyny says. “That’s why we applied to the Small Business Innovation Research.”
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SBIR and its peer, the Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) are decades-old programs that have doled out more than $70 billion in funding to entrepreneurial research projects that show promise for innovation and mass commercialization. More than 30,000 companies owe their success in part to SBIR and STTR.
The main difference between the two is that SBIR, which started in 1982, has mainly focused on small businesses conducting their own R&D efforts while STTR, which started in 1992, often involves a partnership between a university or research lab and an entrepreneur. The three phases of the program are broken down into research, prototyping, and commercialization, respectively.
But as of this month, both SBIR and SBTT are on ice.
Funding for the programs ran out on Oct. 1 and was the subject of heated debate in the Senate Committee on Small Business & Entrepreneurship between the committee’s top lawmakers: Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA), committee chair, and Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA), ranking member.
“The SBIR & STTR programs fuel America’s innovation engine,” Markey, who has sought to make the program permanent, said last week. “Cutting successful small businesses out would be like cutting your top scorer before a big game.”
Sen. Ernst introduced her own bill as well, arguing that the programs are vulnerable to abuse from foreign adversaries like China. She pointed to a report she released that found 835 applications were flagged for having foreign risks between 2023 and 2024. (Of those applications, 303 were denied.)
“Even one case is too many,” Ernst said.
To the benefit of thousands of small companies, the government sought to obligate $4.7 billion across the two programs during fiscal year 2024.
And for as much funding as SBIR and SBTT have given out, they’ve also helped save the government money as well. A total of $4.5 million in SBIR awards allowed the Scottsdale, Arizona-based W5 Technologies, a mobile communication company, to come in and enhance a global communication network used by the government. In doing so, they helped the Department of Defense save $30 million, according to company CEO Jason Ferguson.
How did they do it? In essence, by taking a cell tower and extending the antenna out by 20,000 miles with unique satellite technology.
W5’s system uses what’s known as geosynchronous satellites. No bigger than two shoeboxes glued together, these satellites orbit the moon more closely than they do Earth. What’s special about them is that they rotate around the equator at the same speed as that of the Earth’s rotation. So from our perspective from Earth, the satellite is stationary. Because of this, W5 uses these satellites as cell towers to bounce signals off of. The technology helps American warfighters communicate in real-time (For security reasons, the military doesn’t use commercial networks like Verizon or Comcast for their comms.)
“The SBIR program allowed us to make the transition from only supporting large primes to us being a prime ourselves and really taking an idea, turning it into a working product, marketing it, and then selling it back into the Department of Defense,” Ferguson says.
In fostering American innovation, the programs have not just heightened national security, but strengthened economic security in the commercialization efforts of some of these projects. (More successful ventures allow for their expansion, which injects more jobs in a local ecosystem.)
So what happens to American innovation and to the small entities that might flounder without the benefits derived from SBIR and STTR? Just ask BeeSafe’s Spokoyny. “There’s a very good chance that without [SBIR funding], I wouldn’t have started the company with my co-founder.”
WASHINGTON (AP) — The president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said Friday she “cannot support” a White House proposal that asks MIT and eight other universities to adopt President Donald Trump’s political agenda in exchange for favorable access to federal funding.
MIT is among the first to express forceful views either in favor of or against an agreement the White House billed as providing “multiple positive benefits,” including “substantial and meaningful federal grants.” Leaders of the University of Texas system said they were honored its flagship university in Austin was invited, but most other campuses have remained silent as they review the document.
In a letter to Trump administration officials, MIT President Sally Kornbluth said MIT disagrees with provisions of the proposal, including some that would limit free speech and the university’s independence. She said it’s inconsistent with MIT’s belief that scientific funding should be based on merit alone.
“Therefore, with respect, we cannot support the proposed approach to addressing the issues facing higher education,” Kornbluth said in a letter to Education Secretary Linda McMahon and White House officials.
The higher education compact circulated last week requires universities to make a wide range of commitments in line with Trump’s political agenda on topics from admissions and women’s sports to free speech and student discipline. The universities were invited to provide “limited, targeted feedback” by Oct. 20 and make a decision no later than Nov. 21.
Others that received the 10-page proposal are: Vanderbilt, the University of Pennsylvania, Dartmouth College, the University of Southern California, the University of Arizona, Brown University and the University of Virginia. It was not clear how the schools were selected or why.
Colleges have faced mounting pressure to reject the proposal University leaders face immense pressure to reject the compact amid opposition from students, faculty, free speech advocates and higher education groups. Leaders of some other universities have called it extortion. The mayor and city council in Tucson, home of the University of Arizona, formally opposed the compact, calling it an “unacceptable act of federal interference.”
Even some conservatives have dismissed the compact as a bad approach. Frederick Hess, director of education policy at the American Enterprise Institute, called it “profoundly problematic” and said the government’s requests are “ungrounded in law.”
At the University of Virginia, officials invited campus feedback on the proposal this week. A message from university leaders said it would be “very difficult” to accept certain terms of the arrangement and said the decision will be guided by “principles of academic freedom and free inquiry.”
Democrats in the Virginia Senate threatened to cut the university’s funding if it signed the deal. In a letter to the university’s leaders on Tuesday, top Democrats called the compact a trap and said the state would not “subsidize an institution that has ceded its independence to federal political control.”
California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, issued a similar ultimatum to USC last week.
At Brown, which already struck an agreement with the White House in July to resolve a series of investigations, university president Christina H. Paxson said Friday she is seeking campus input to decide how or whether to respond to the new proposal.
The compact marks a new tactic to seek reforms In its letter to universities, the administration said the compact would strengthen and renew the “mutually beneficial relationship” between universities and the government. That bond faces unprecedented strain as the White House cuts billions of dollars in research funding from campuses it accuses of antisemitism and liberal bias.
The compact is a proactive attempt at reform even as the government continues enforcement through other means, the letter said. The nine universities were invited to become “initial signatories.”
Kornbluth’s letter did not explicitly decline the compact but suggested that its terms are unworkable. Still, she said MIT is already aligned with some of the values outlined in the deal, including prioritizing merit in admissions and making college more affordable.
Kornbluth said MIT was the first to reinstate requirements for standardized admissions tests after the COVID-19 pandemic and admits students based on their talent, ideas and hard work. Incoming undergraduates whose families earn less than $200,000 a year pay nothing for tuition, she added.
“We freely choose these values because they’re right, and we live by them because they support our mission,” Kornbluth wrote.
As part of the compact, the White House asked universities to freeze tuition for U.S. students for five years. Those with endowments exceeding $2 million per undergraduate could not charge tuition at all for students pursuing “hard science” programs.
It asked colleges to require the SAT or ACT for all undergraduate applicants and to eliminate race, sex and other characteristics from admissions decisions. Schools that sign on would also have to accept the government’s binary definition of gender and apply it to campus bathrooms and sports teams.
Much of the compact centers on promoting conservative viewpoints. To make campuses a “vibrant marketplace of ideas” campuses would commit to taking steps including “transforming or abolishing institutional units that purposefully punish, belittle, and even spark violence against conservative ideas.”
Republican Senate Majority Leader John Thune said that if a “critical mass” of Democrats support the House-passed continuing resolution bill to fund the government, he would be willing to negotiate health care reform, specifically the Affordable Care Act (ACA), in an exclusive interview withPolitico.
Newsweek reached out to Thune’s office for comment Wednesday night.
Why It Matters
The U.S. federal government entered its first shutdown in six years after lawmakers failed to pass a new funding bill, disrupting services for millions and compounding existing strains on a workforce diminished by record departures this year.
The standoff exposes deep partisan divides over health care funding and future fiscal priorities, with potential repercussions for federal workers, ongoing public services and the economy at large. The competing strategies of Republicans and Democrats—centered on whether to link funding to health care subsidies—could set the tone for legislative cooperation or gridlock heading into future elections and key budget deadlines.
What To Know
In his interview with Politico, Thune, of South Dakota, signaled willingness to discuss future negotiations on expiring Obamacare insurance subsidies if a sufficient number of Democrats agree to pass the House-passed continuing resolution, which would extend funding through November 21. Thune said he would not negotiate on the substantive extension of subsidies or broader health care reforms until the government is no longer shut down.
“I keep telling them: When they have eight or 10—preferably 10, or more—when they have a critical mass, let me know if there’s a conversation they want to have,” Thune said toPolitico. The comments are in line with previous remarks the lawmaker has made about his openness for discussion.
Democrats demand immediate extension of enhanced ACA subsidies and the reversal of Medicaid cuts, as Republican leaders, including Thune, emphasize that passing the current GOP-backed House bill is the only viable path to reopening the government.
“Some of those conversations are happening,” Thune said to Politico. “With our members and their members, there’s a lot of back-and-forth going on right now about some of the things they would like to see happen.”
“What I can’t guarantee, of course, is an outcome and, in particular, one that would clear in the House too,” Thune said later in the interview. “The White House is another factor here. But I think everybody realizes we want solutions.”
What People Are Saying
Thune, on X Wednesday: “Democrats passed CRs 13 different times when they had the majority and Biden was president. They have lost all rationale when it comes to their hatred for President Trump. I hope Democrats will come to their senses and reopen the government.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, also on X Wednesday: “Republicans shut down the government because they can’t be bothered to protect health care for Americans across this country. Premiums are set to more than double! Americans cannot afford this.”
This is a developing story that will be updated with additional information.
Lucy Suppah, a member of the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, attends a protest in Madras on Saturday, April 5, 2025. (Photo by Julia Shumway/Oregon Capital Chronicle)
A new report from Portland State University found that budget cuts under President Donald Trump’s new spending bill threaten nearly half of federal funding allocated to federally recognized Native American and Alaska Native nations last year.
Roughly $530 million of the $1.19 billion allocated to Northwest tribal nations in fiscal year 2024 — used to fulfill the federal government’s trust and treaty obligations to Native American and Alaska Native tribes — is at risk of being cut. The congressionally allocated funds serve myriad functions for tribes in the Northwest, including providing clean drinking water, affordable housing, schools, transit and land management. Funding is decided by Congress on a yearly basis and can be disbursed over a period of time that exceeds the calendar year it is allocated.
“All across the board tribes are worried about the funding cuts that are happening right now,” said Serina Fast Horse, who is Lakota and Blackfeet and serves as the co-director of the Northwest Environmental Justice Center, which provides grant application assistance and advising to Indigenous communities in the Northwest.
Fast Horse says there are serious concerns among Northwest tribes about further cuts to vital programs ranging from health and wellness to early childhood education. The report warns of vulnerabilities to programs and grants that tribes rely on for resilience in the face of climate change, like improving home weatherization, managing forestland and renovating aging homes. Federal dollars to help Northwest tribes bolster their infrastructure against the increasing threats from wildfire, drought and sea-level rise could also be slashed.
The Portland State report found millions in Clean Air Act funding could also go away — the Environmental Protection Agency earmarked nearly $2 million in 2024 for Northwest tribes in a series of grants for monitoring air quality and pollution. Much of the congressionally allocated funding has yet to be distributed to tribes and is now at risk of being cut altogether.
The report demonstrates how proposed major reductions across the federal government, including at the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of the Interior and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, could reverberate across Indian Country.
Tribal officials shared concerns that drastic cuts could cause the federal government to fall short of trust and treaty obligations that mandate the federal government support tribal services, uphold tribal sovereignty and protect tribal treaty resources — responsibilities that courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, have repeatedly upheld.
“All the funding reductions addressing clean water, air and dealing with climate change have impacts on the Tribes’ culture and treaty protected resources,” said William E. Ray Jr., chair of the Klamath Tribes.
Researchers declined to disclose specific projects at risk of elimination for fear of retaliation, and a number of tribes and tribal organizations declined to comment to InvestigateWest, citing similar concerns.
“Trump and Congressional Republicans are wreaking havoc on Tribal communities with their ‘Big, Ugly BETRAYAL’ of a law that arbitrarily cuts many programs supporting folks in Indian Country, where chronic underfunding is already impacting services and exacerbating disparities,” said Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley, a Democrat.
He added that the federal government plays an outsized role in funding essential services to tribal communities, including health care, education and public safety, and that the Inflation Reduction Act took important steps in advancing funding for water infrastructure and environmental programs for tribes.
In 2024, Clean Air Act related funds were used to fund 15 projects for 12 Northwest tribes. The Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation, the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, and the Tulalip Tribes are some of the Native American nations set to receive research grants for improving air quality and pollution monitoring. Among 12 tribes selected for funding, several of them focus on minimizing exposure to poor air quality and harmful pollutants to their elderly and medically vulnerable residents. Other tribes intend to study impacts of pollutants on important first foods — culturally significant staple foods consumed before colonization — that officials say are critical to improving health outcomes for their citizens.
Researchers at PSU examined 469 programs impacted by President Trump’s reversal of former President Joe Biden’s Executive Order 14008, which sought to address climate change and created a number of environmental justice initiatives. Sixty of the programs identified by researchers were specifically named in the Republican-led spending bill for cuts, and 17 of those provided funding directly to tribes. The programs accounted for roughly 35% of all federal investments in tribes in 2024. The report says not all of the funding will be cut, but a significant portion of it could be.
The cuts come at a time when Native Americans and Alaska Natives already have limited access to federal services and funds, according to a December 2024 report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan congressional watchdog. It found when tribes had to compete with other entities for federal funding, they may receive a small portion of the total amount, and that limited access to federal services and funds contributes to known disparities for Native Americans and Alaska Natives compared to other Americans.
Of the $20.15 billion in federal funding that went to tribes between 2010 and 2024, tribes within the boundaries of Idaho received a total of $304.56 million, Washington tribes $1.81 billion, Oregon tribes $690.76 million, and Alaska Native tribes received $2.35 billion.
Other programs at risk of being cut include the EPA’s embattled Environmental Justice Government-to-Government Program, which funded initiatives by states, tribes and local governments to support activities that lead to measurable environmental or public health impacts.
Under that program, in 2023, the EPA awarded the Tulalip Tribes $977,000 to work in conjunction with the Confederated Tribes and Bands of Yakama Nation to create a tool to detect which homes are at greatest risk from wildfire smoke infiltration and dangerously hot weather, which are growing issues affecting both communities.
While the federal government has repeatedly affirmed its obligations to tribes, actual allocations remain disproportionately small compared to population figures. In 2024, Native American tribes received just 1.7% of federal energy and environment spending, despite Native people making up 2.9% of the U.S. population.
Between 2010 and 2024, tribes within the bounds of Idaho, Washington and Oregon received roughly $2.81 billion in federal investments in energy and environmental infrastructure, which represents roughly 14% of the $20 billion in allocations made to tribes nationwide.
The researchers determined that programs funded under the Inflation Reduction Act, Biden’s 2022 climate, health and tax law, are at particular risk of being eliminated. The funding allocated to tribes under the IRA represented a historic investment in infrastructure in Indian Country, more than doubling energy and infrastructure investment from $1.51 billion nationwide to $3.94 billion in 2024, around .04% of total federal grant spending obligations for 2024.
“When you put them in the context of how much money the federal government actually spends on certain things, it’s pennies on the dollar,” said Sophie Lalande, a co-author of the PSU report.
Soon after taking office and without consulting Congress, the Trump administration suspended some grants that tribal communities used heavily, such as community change grants, distributed by the EPA’s Offices of Environmental Justice and of External Civil Rights Compliance during the Biden administration, to support climate resilience and clean energy. Distributed as a part of the Inflation Reduction Act, the grants were suspended as part of the Trump administration’s anti-diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.
The grants helped tribal communities in the Northwest tremendously, according to Fast Horse.
“They were providing hundreds of thousands of dollars to communities for infrastructure improvements, like access to clean drinking water and climate resilience hubs, just really essential pieces of community development for health and safety of communities,” she said.
The report stresses a multiplier effect from investments made in tribal communities. Infrastructure dollars invested on tribal lands often serve as anchors for broader local development, since tribal lands often share regional infrastructure like power grids, roads or water systems with non-Native communities, with the power of dollars rippling outward into surrounding rural towns and cities.
Bobby Cochran, a researcher with Portland State University and senior project manager at the National Policy Consensus Center, co-authored the report.
“We just haven’t made a major investment in infrastructure since the ’60s or ’70s, so this wasn’t fluffy,” he said. “It’s really important stuff that was just trying to play catch-up.”
A coalition of over 200 New York City public charter schools marched across the Brooklyn Bridge last week in what school networks are calling a show of support for a “child’s right to learn” and opponents have labeled as forced advocacy.
Eva Moskowitz, founder and CEO of Success Academy — after hosting organizer webinars, sending SOS emails to supporters, family and faculty, and allegedly admonishing employees for failing to lobby elected officials to her — rallied on Sept. 18 with some 15,000 students, parents and staff, then “marched for excellence” from Brooklyn to Printing House Square, just outside New York’s City Hall.
The rally was described by organizers as an opportunity for advocates to “raise their voices in unity” and send a message demanding “excellence as a civil right,” as well as “equal treatment and access to excellent schools.”
Supporters said the rally was an opportunity to demand equal treatment of and access to charter schools. Photo by Jonathan Portee
“This rally is about equity, justice and opportunity,” said Samantha Robin, a parent at Dream Charter School. “Parents deserve the freedom to choose schools that honor their children’s genius, their culture, and their potential.”
With mere weeks before the New York City mayoral election, charter schools, facing the prospect of a new mayor opposed to their expansion in Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, are framing the “March for Excellence” rally as part of a yearslong larger fight for the equal treatment of charter school students.
The rally comes at a delicate moment for the charter sector. Charters, which are publicly funded and privately run, serve 15% of city students but have experienced slowed growth in enrollment since the pandemic, according to research from the New York City Charter School Center.
Mamdani, the only major mayoral candidate running in November, has been critical of charters. He centered his education platform on universal child care and has been vocal about his intention to review charter school funding as mayor.
Thousands of people attended the rally and march.Photo courtesy of March for ExcellenceSuccess Ccademy CEO Eva Moskowitz, who organized the rally and allegedly demanded that Success students and teachers attend. Photo by Jonathan Portee
Supporters in attendance included Rafiq Kalam Id-Din, Chair of the Black, Latinx, and Asian Charter Collaborative; Leslie-Bernard Joseph, CEO of KIPP NYC public schools; and many charter school families and faculty, who were instructed on organizing and staying on message throughout the event.
Rumors circulated online that faculty attendance at the rally was compulsory.
In the r/survivingsuccess group on Reddit, one user’s simple question concerning the veracity of the claim sent members of the small but sprawling community of current and former charter school teachers into a frenzy.
Reporting that details internal emails and other documents about the event suggest a coordinated effort to pressure employees into participating and coerce students into demonstrating what the charters are calling targeted advocacy.
Will Doyle, 21, grew up attending public schools in the Bay Ridge area. Now a first-year teacher with Success Academy in Sheepshead Bay, Doyle explained the reason for the rally.
A number of charter schools canceled classes for the day and brought students to the rally instead. Photo by Jonathan Portee
“We’re here advocating for charter schools, but I do know that with the mayoral elections coming up, some candidates oppose the expansion of charter schools,” Doyle said. “From what I’ve heard, mayoral candidate Mamdani seeks to oppose the expansion of charter schools. I don’t have a source for that, but I have done some personal research. I don’t know if he’s the only one.”
Doyle said he was happy to attend the rally because he works for a charter school and all employees are required to attend these events as part of their job.
An operations associate with Success, who asked not to remain anonymous, echoed that the event was planned due to a general concern about “certain candidates” in the upcoming election. The associate noted that Success Academy is trying to show a presence for the cause of charter schools.
“I think that [charters] definitely would advocate that they need more money and space. But I think the big thing is just accounting for future challenges,” he said.
Rallygoers marched across the Brooklyn Bridge to Manhattan after the Cadman Plaza event. Photo by Jonathan Portee
While the repercussions for skipping the rally may not seem swift or severe, staff at the charters have said they worry about the condition of their working environments should they opt not to attend the rally.
“I think that there is pressure. I know that it might not reflect directly on your employment, but it’ll reflect on your experience in the school building if you weren’t going to be here,” the associate said.
CUNY law professor David Bloomfield told Gothamist that under laws governing nonprofits, charters can require staff to participate in demonstrations if they are advocating for the schools, rather than speaking in support or opposition to a political candidate.
Documents obtained by a reporter for Labor New York showed that Zeta Charter elementary and middle schoolers had classroom instruction canceled for the day and instead were scheduled to participate in a “school-on-a-bus” civics lesson, suggesting the event was part of the school’s curriculum for the 2025-2026 academic year.
Some lawmakers are calling for an investigation of the event, which they said was a “misuse” of public funds. Photo by Jonathan Portee
Pop-up tents for rally “marshals” to hand out water, snacks, and protest signs were scattered around Cadman Plaza Park. First-year parents and teachers showed little hesitation in sharing their excitement about the event, while members of the charter system with more than a year under their belt were often skittish about sharing their reasons for attending.
A day after the rally, two lawmakers — state Sens. John Liu and Shelley Mayer, who chair the senate’s education committee — called for an investigation of the event, which they said had been an “egregious misuse of instructional time and state funds.”
The pair said in a letter that the state provides public funding to charter schools “to educate students, not for political activism or for influencing elections.” If violations are uncovered, they said, the state should take back a portion of the funding it had provided to the participating charter schools.
Cybersecurity threats to K-12 schools are growing in frequency, sophistication, and cost, yet many school districts remain under-resourced and underprepared, according to the CoSN 2025 State of EdTech District Leadership report.
The report highlights state-level actions to strengthen K-12 cybersecurity amid escalating threats and shrinking federal support and details recent legislative activity across five states. It also provides recommendations on governance, funding, workforce development, incident response, and data standards to help state and district leaders across the country secure the future of digital learning.
Sixty-one percent of school districts rely on general funds rather than dedicated cybersecurity budgets to protect their networks and data, the report notes.
Recent federal policy shifts, including the elimination of funding for the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center (MS-ISAC), have weakened national support for school districts. In response, states such as Arkansas, Massachusetts, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Texas are taking action. The 2025 legislative actions reviewed in the report provide ideas for developing and adopting policies that will help school districts and their partners address these challenges.
“While federal support for K-12 cybersecurity is in turmoil, several states are advancing innovative, bipartisan legislation to help safeguard student data, improve incident response, expand insurance access, and build the cybersecurity workforce we urgently need,” said Keith Krueger, CEO, CoSN. “These states’ common strategies offer actionable ideas for state and district leaders across the country and underscores the importance of system-wide collaboration and strategic leadership.”
Key findings
Eighteen K-12 cybersecurity bills were introduced in 2025 across the five states studied.
Seven bills became law–all in Arkansas and Texas–focused on insurance access, training and infrastructure support, cyberattack response, data practices, and risk assessments.
Sixty-one K-12-focused and broader cybersecurity bills were introduced across the five states in 2025 that would indirectly benefit K-12 cybersecurity, covering government systems, postsecondary institutions or crosscutting issues such as insurance, incident response, AI accountability and workforce development.
Several common policy strategiesemerged across the cybersecurity legislation introduced or enacted in the tracked states:
Centralized cybersecurity governance and oversight
Cybersecurity insurance and risk management
Cybersecurity workforce development and education
Integration of cybersecurity into K-12 and higher education policy
Incident reporting and crisis response readiness
AI, privacy and cybersecurity intersection
Policy recommendations
Establish or Strengthen Statewide K-12 Cybersecurity Governance: Designate a cybersecurity lead within the state education agency and ensure that school districts are included in state-level cybersecurity planning and governance bodies.
Fund and Require School District Cybersecurity Risk Assessments: Allocate funding for school districts to conduct risk assessments and develop mitigation strategies.
Align Workforce Policy with K-12 Needs: Support teacher certification in cybersecurity and create K-12 student pathways aligned with current and emerging workforce demand.
Mandate Incident Reporting and Create Response Protocols: Require timely reporting of cybersecurity incidents and support districts with coordinated response plans and training exercises.
Update Procurement and Data Governance Standards: Require that vendors meet minimum cybersecurity standards and align procurement processes with national frameworks.
By adopting well-designed strategies–centralized oversight, insurance requirements, workforce investment, integrated planning and responsible innovation oversight–states can help their school districts move from reactive to resilient. Cross-sector collaboration and sustained investment will be critical to protecting students, educators and the integrity of public education systems.
