Spring 2025 School Challenges: Massive Funding Cuts, A Constitutional Crisis, AI, Others

This spring brings a number of intersecting challenges to schools.

*Extreme budget cuts
*A constitutional crisis
*AI

Budget Cuts

Schools just managed through ESSR cuts and are now facing enormous cutbacks in education funding from the federal government. The Trump administration has made every effort to impound/rescind funding based on all possible justifications: a “temporary” freeze, failure to comply with DEI”A” (they added an A for “access”) bans, banning DEIA related programming ($600 million directly cut).

This is just the beginning. The GOP 2026 budget proposal aims cut funds from the US Department of Education budget. Trump wants to abolish the agency all together. While its abolition could include some of the money transferred to the states in the form of block grants, I don’t know of any active legislative proposal that transfers all or nearly all of that.

This article discusses some of the impact on Rhode Island

"People need to understand that without federal support, the public education system in Rhode Island would be crippled," Magaziner said. "If these cuts happen, it means fewer teachers, bigger class sizes, fewer programs, less [career and technical education] and a less talented workforce for employers.

San Francisco is facing huge cuts, and I don’t know if these include impending federal cuts.

[I’ve been wondering how public schools are going to purchase all these new edtech products].

The total impact will vary by district, as the amount of money districts receive is largely determined by the socioeconomic status of the students. In my hometown, for example, it appears that 8% of the funding for the school district comes from the federal government.

At best, districts have no idea what they are going to be able to access in terms of federal funding. State funding will also probably decline, as the next federal budget will likely cut funding to the states, including Medicaid funding. And even if the GOP decides to fund programs like Medicaid at current levels, the Trump administration can gut them by terminating the staff that implement them; USAID is a Congressionally established and funded program and it barely exists as a result of executive branch actions.

There could also be a severe recession triggered by massive reductions in federal spending and its follow-on impacts. This will reduce the local tax bases that support schools. Imagine having your child in a public school in the greater DC-area at the moment.

Worse, we could even end up with stagflation. Stagflation occurss when you have significant unemployment with a recession plus high prices. An economic downturn usually reduces prices, but we coud end up with stagflation for a number of reasons.

1 — Tariffs continue to create risis costs for goods;

2 — High energy demand from AI, which is usually supressed in a downturn, keeps energy prices high

3 — Supply chocks due to any conflicts.

Spring budget proposals will likely see drastic spending reductions coming from schools — significant layoffs and massive programming reductions. It seems that most parents will be surprised this is on the horizon and explaining this without being “political” will be extremely challenging for schools.

Constitutional Crisis

It can seem hyperbolic to argue that we are in a “constitutional crisis.” It can even seem political. But mainstream advocates are saying this is exactly what we are facing.

There are three reasons to be concerned.

1 — Legality of DOGE’s mostly secret work

2 — Impoundment of Congressionally appropriated funds, something ruled unconstitutional on a 9-0 in the 1970s

3. — Refusal to comply with court orders.

We haven’t seen #3 yet, but there is certainly resistance/slow compliance occurring, and many suspect it will happen.

We could see outright challenges.

Musk has been ramping up attacks on judges who have ruled against the administration.

Last week, a controversy erupted involving New York City Mayor Eric Adams, the Trump administration, and a wave of resignations from Justice Department prosecutors. This situation stemmed from the Justice Department's decision to drop a corruption case against Adams, leading to accusations of political interference and a "quid pro quo" arrangement.

Adams was indicted in September 2024 on federal corruption charges, including bribery and conspiracy. The charges stemmed from his time as Brooklyn Borough President, where he allegedly accepted illegal campaign contributions and lavish travel perks from foreign nationals in exchange for political favors. After Donald Trump assumed presidency in January 2025, Adams appeared to align himself more closely with the new administration, particularly on issues of immigration.

Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove, a former personal attorney for President Trump, ordered federal prosecutors in Manhattan to drop the corruption case against Adams. Bove argued that the prosecution was hindering Adams' ability to cooperate with the Trump administration's efforts to combat illegal immigration and violent crime. This directive triggered a significant backlash within the Justice Department, leading to multiple resignations.

At least seven prosecutors stepped down in protest, including Danielle Sassoon, the acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. Sassoon, a Republican appointed by the Trump administration, expressed her dismay at the decision and alleged that Adams' lawyers had proposed a "quid pro quo," offering the mayor's assistance with immigration enforcement in exchange for the dismissal of the charges. In her resignation letter, stated that the request was inconsistent with her duty to prosecute federal crimes without bias and to advance good-faith arguments before the courts.

Hagan Scotten, another prosecutor involved in the case, also resigned. Scotte, who had clerked for Chief Justice John Roberts, wrote a scathing resignation letter accusing the Justice Department of seeking to misuse prosecutorial authority to sway elected officials. He stated that he would not be part of a political prosecution and that the move would place Adams at the mercy of the Trump administration.

Eventually, the DOJ found someone who was willing to file to drop the charges without resigning, but the damage remains. Today, four NYC deputy mayors resigned over the issue. This is already triggering a good amount of chaos.

But that’s small potatoes. Over the weekend, a number of prominent law professors opened a statement for others to sign arguing that we are in a constitutional crisis.

I'm not familiar with the work of everyone on this list, but Bruce Ackerman and Erwin Chemerinsky are two of the most "famous," for lack of a better word, Constitutional law professors of our time.

For my AI friends, this is like Demis Hassabis, Yann Lecun, Fei Fei Li, Ilysa Sutskever, and Dario Amodei all saying we have achieved AGI.

This, which I suspect will have thousands of signatures, will be published on February 28th.

It’s hard to emphasize enough that this is being raised by many “mainstream,” “non-radical” individuals.

For example, a friend of mine, a Harvard Law School graduate who won the college National Debate Tournament in 1990, wrote an article contending that federal judges should consider striking against most federal petitions to the courts.

What if the judiciary treated the federal government itself as a vexatious litigant? Imagine courts refusing to hear broad categories of cases where the United States is a party until the executive branch obeys court orders. The agencies and departments that make up the federal government rely heavily on the courts to enforce contracts, prosecute criminal cases, and otherwise resolve a sprawling range of disputes about the operation of government. . A refusal to entertain some — or most — cases from an Administration that disrespects judicial authority would be a drastic but forceful step—and far more effective than imposing fines that will likely not be paid.

The functional equivalent of a “judicial strike” is a radical idea without precedent. But so is an administration openly contemplating the defiance of court orders and a rejection of Marbury. If court orders can be ignored without meaningful consequence, then courts will be losing cases anyway — and the most impactful ones, where the Constitution’s limits on executive power are at issue.

When I shared the petition on LinkedIn, he noted —

From another friend who has had an outstanding legal career.

On Saturday, Mike Pence shared an article he wrote in 2010:

It will be odd—and arguably contradictory—for government and history teachers to educate students about the U.S. Constitution, democratic principles, and the importance of civic engagement while being unable to discuss an ongoing coup attempt because it is deemed "political." But this will happen. It will be surreal, but it will happen.

More from Charlie Sykes and Robert Reich.

AI

I keep talking about it, but AI is rapidly advancing.

Remember that last spring, Elon Musk said AI will be able to do everything and that there will be no jobs. Perhaps “no jobs” is hyperbolic, but Elon is replacing many federal workers with AI.

You can have a job if you want to have a job, but the AI will be able to do everything.
-- Elon Musk

For all those cheering the elimination of "unnecessary" federal workers by Elon Musk+, remember that Elon believes that in the world of AI none of us will need to work, as it will be able to do everything we can do.

When will it be able to do everything we can do, as well or *substantially better* than us? 5 Years (Yoshua Bengio, Demis Hassabis, Dawn Song, Ya-Qin Zhang, Geoffrey Hinton (5-20 years); Yann LeCun (10 years or less); Dario Amodei & Sam Altman (2026/7).

It can already do a lot of what most of us do now (customer service, bookkeeping, accounting, paralegal/jr. associate work, etc). Superintelligence is not needed for this.

“Fully intelligent,” human-level AI will be able to generalize from one knowledge domain to another (I was the governor of a state, I can lead the NCAA (Charlie Baker)) and *invent new things* (Einstein successfully developed the theory of relativity). Yes, within 5 years many expect AI will be able to do that and more.

Fully embodied/robotic human-level AI? 10 years (Ya-Qin Zhag). FS-1 already plans on shipping 100,000 humanoid robots over the next few years, and they’ve already shipped many and claim they will soon release a humanoid robot with a full end-to-end neural network.

So, while you may think it's great Elon is getting rid of "unnecessary" employees, you and your students *may* soon be unnecessary. You may already be unnecessary; they just don't know it yet/haven't gotten around to replacing you yet.

This will produce a radical transformation in employment, governance, and social structures, all of which will have considerable impacts on schools. Very few schools are ready to talk to students about this but most students are starting to think about it.

Other

In early 2025, the world faces a number of additional challenges, including the potential for a compromised peace deal in Ukraine, escalating trade tariffs, rising energy costs, and uncertainty surrounding various geopolitical issues related to Greenland and Panama.

Good luck to us all.