Funding for these grants, which provide schools with added mental health counselors, was allotted through a gun violence bill signed into law by then-President Joe Biden in 2022.
Documents obtained by conservative activist Christopher Rufo revealed that some of the grant recipients were using the funds to meet DEI directives, such as setting goals of hiring a certain percentage of providers with “a diverse background.”
Rufo accused grant recipients of using the funds to “advance left wing racialism and discrimination.”
“These grants are intended to improve American students’ mental health by funding additional mental health professionals in schools and on campuses,” Madi Biedermann, deputy assistant secretary for communications at the Education Department, told the Hill. “Instead, under the deeply flawed priorities of the Biden Administration, grant recipients used the funding to implement race-based actions like recruiting quotas in ways that have nothing to do with mental health and could hurt the very students the grants are supposed to help.”
The Department of Education said it would extend support to school mental health services in other ways, according to a notice to members of Congress obtained by the Associated Press.
EXCLUSIVE: EDUCATION DEPARTMENT LAUNCHES TITLE IX INVESTIGATION INTO WASHINGTON STATE
“The Department plans to re-envision and re-compete its mental health program funds to more effectively support students’ behavioral health needs,” the notice stated.
The Trump administration has removed billions in federal grants it perceived as related to DEI and has threatened to slash more from schools and universities.
