Earlier this year, the Heritage Foundation released Project 2025, a roadmap for a presidential administration to enact far-right policies. If they were to become reality, these proposed policies would have far-reaching effects for Americans, from restricting health care access to exploiting child labor to decreasing environmental protections. In early learning and K–12 education, the changes would also be dramatic, and would include shuttering the U. S. Department of Education and eliminating Head Start.
The places that stand to be most impacted by Project 2025’s proposed changes in the realm of education are most likely rural communities and other areas where local and state investments in education are smaller, and where there are fewer local and state resources and accountability tools for ensuring high-quality education and equitable opportunity. But even in communities with large state and local investments in young children and K–12 students, the consequences of this agenda would have dramatic impact.
New York City is home to the country’s largest school district, and it has relatively strong local and state policies to support education compared to many other communities. But Project 2025’s proposed policies could still create massive disruptions for students and families.
Here are six ways that the policies of Project 2025, if enacted, could affect education in New York City.
1. Roughly 19,000 children and 1,000 pregnant women could lose access to early education and prenatal services from Early Head Start and Head Start.
Project 2025 calls for eliminating Head Start and Early Head Start, the federal programs that provide eligible children ages 0–5 and their caregivers with access to early learning and wraparound supports such as health screenings and employment resources. In New York City, these programs are an important part of the landscape of early childhood options serving the city’s nearly half a million children under age 5.
Head Start and Early Head Start programs are available to children from families earning less than the federal poverty level or who meet certain other eligibility criteria. That includes children with disabilities, who must make up at least 10 percent of enrollment at any Head Start program. A variety of different organizations in the city receive Head Start and Early Head Start funding directly from the federal government, including New York City Public Schools as well as community-based providers, such as Educational Alliance’s Manny Cantor Center, a community center in Manhattan’s Lower East Side that braids public and private funding to create intentionally diverse diverse early childhood classrooms.
If these grants were erased, early learning providers across the city would be left scrambling to keep their daycares and preschools open, and thousands of families in New York City could lose access to these programs designed to help children during their most critical years of brain development.
2. The city could lose up to $900 million per year for early education from the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG), and families could lose the choice of using child care vouchers to send their children to center-based early learning programs.
New York City currently receives about $900 million per year in funding for child care and early learning from CCDBG, a federal block grant to states to support child care for low-income working families. Some of this funding goes to city agencies to support early childhood programs directly, and some of it flows to families in the form of child care vouchers that they can use in a variety of different child care settings.
Project 2025 devalues early childhood education in daycares, preschools, and other center-based programs and calls for cutting federal funding to these programs. Instead, it would only allow only funding for family-based child care or paying parents directly for the cost of staying home with their children.
It is important to have family-based child care as a choice in the range of options, and some federal child care funding already goes to family-based child care programs, including CCDBG funding that New York City uses to contract with home-based daycares as well as child care vouchers that New Yorkers choose to use in home-based daycares or for informal care (such as a neighbor or relative caring for their child).
But many other families, including a majority of those using child care vouchers, choose to enroll their children in center-based programs. If CCDBG funding could no longer be used in this way, over 35,000 children currently enrolled in child care centers using vouchers and most of the roughly 110,000 children enrolled in infant/toddler, 3-K, and Pre-K programs contracted by the New York City Department of Education would stand to lose access to early learning.
3. Public schools could lose billions of dollars of federal education funding each year.
Project 2025 recommends eliminating the U.S. Department of Education. The Department of Education plays a critical role in setting educational standards and ensuring a minimum standard for education across states. In FY2024, the Department of Education allocated 13.6 percent (or over $32.3 billion) of its total funding to public K–12 schools.
Project 2025 also proposes several changes to federal funding, including block grants to states without restrictions, utilizing school vouchers and education savings account tax credits, and eliminating or reducing other means of federal funding. Specifically, Project 2025 demands eliminating Title I, Part A of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) and cutting federal funding for students with disabilities. Title I provides funds to public school districts, charter schools, and special education schools with high numbers of low-income children. In FY2024, the total budget for New York City public schools was $39.4 billion, 11 percent of which comes from federal stimulus funding and other federal funding ($4.1 billion total). Across New York State, over 1,000 local education agencies (including charter schools) received Title I funding in the 2024–25 school year, which totaled over $1.3 billion.
The loss of federal education funding in the public school system would mean disparities in education quality across districts in New York City could grow. Specifically, programs such as Title I address the needs of schools with high populations of low-income children. Eliminating Title I would directly impact at least a thousand schools across New York State, making it harder for these schools to provide the necessary resources, support, and initiatives needed to promote equity. Similarly, Project 2025 aims to reduce federal funding for students with disabilities, which would affect schools across the city, particularly the city’s District 75 schools, which provide highly specialized instructional support for students with disabilities.
4. Public school enrollment could decline, and private school enrollment could grow, as a result of federal school vouchers or education savings account tax credits.
Project 2025 promotes the use of Education Saving Accounts (ESA) to allow parents to choose how they spend federal and state funds allocated to their child’s education. Citing states with existing programs—such as Arizona, where ESAs provide families with 90 percent of what the state would have allocated for a child in public schools to be used on private school tuition, online courses, personal tutors, spending for school supplies, and other expenses—Project 2025 hopes to implement this as a universal program across the country.
The funding implications of such a program for New York City are immense. As mentioned earlier, New York City holds the largest school district in the country; in the 2023–24 academic year, over 900,000 students were enrolled in 1,596 New York City district schools and an additional 145,000 were enrolled in 274 New York City charter schools. Ultimately, such a program could have several consequences for public schools in New York City.
If New York City families opt to use their ESAs to fund private school tuition or other alternative schooling, public schools (both district and charter) could experience significant reductions in funding. This would affect the availability and quality of resources, programs, and staffing. ESAs could also exacerbate socioeconomic racial segregation across New York City schools: families with greater income may be more able to take benefit from ESAs; for example, families with increased earnings could use ESAs to pay for a part of their child’s private school tuition and cover the remaining cost themselves, leaving a high number of students from low-income families to enroll in public schools.
5. It could be much harder for students and families to access federal recourse if their civil rights are violated in schools.
As mentioned earlier, Project 2025 proposes eliminating the U.S. Department of Education. In playing a vital role in setting educational standards across states, closing the Department of Education would also get rid of the department’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR). As an alternative, Project 2025 suggests that the duties of OCR be moved to the U.S. Department of Justice, where civil rights violations should only be addressed in the courts.
Currently, civil rights violations are managed through administrative enforcement by OCR. If Project 2025 were to happen, the process for filing a case would become longer, leading to an increase in case backlog. As a result, fewer students and their families would receive the justice they deserve when their civil rights are violated, and fewer schools would be held accountable for changing their policies to deter discrimination.
Across New York State alone, there are currently 417 records of OCR complainants against the Department of Education and charter schools, with some pending cases dating back to 2013. Transitioning this many cases to the Department of Justice to be addressed only in the courts could both disrupt ongoing investigations and processes, increase court backlog—making it harder for students and their families to get their cases heard—and prevent students and their families from receiving timely justice for civil rights violations.
6. Students could lose access to free school meals.
Research shows that, not surprisingly, students learn better when they have access to good nutrition and are not sitting in class hungry. Since 2017, New York City’s public schools have offered free breakfast and lunch for all students. The city’s universal free meals program combines federal funding for school meals with some city funding to ensure that all children, regardless of income and paperwork, can access free meals. After federal pandemic relief funding temporarily made universal school meals a reality nationwide, advocates have been pushing for a state-level universal meals policy in New York, and some are calling for a permanent federal expansion. But Project 2025 calls for the opposite: restricting the federal school meal program to low-income children who submit the required paperwork.
Part of what makes New York City’s universal free meals program (as well as the statewide proposal) possible is taking advantage of the Community Eligibility Provision. This option in the current federal school meal program allows schools or districts to demonstrate that they enroll enough low-income students by cross-referencing data on student participation in programs such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), and then provide free meals to all students, without having to get paperwork filled out and returned by every family. This is an important benefit, since even when children meet the income requirement, it can be challenging to get families to fill out and return the income verification forms. Some of the students most in need may struggle to get the forms filled out, when their housing situations are unstable, for example, or when parents who are undocumented are nervous about sharing their information.
Moving to universal free meals has also helped to remove the stigma that students sometimes associate with eating school meals. When New York City implemented the new policy, low-income students were more likely to take advantage of school meals, and students of all socioeconomic backgrounds reported improved school cultures with less bullying and fighting. If federal support for school meals were rolled back, the city’s universal free meals program, and the benefits that it has created for students, would be at risk.
Looking Ahead
In conclusion, the proposals drafted in Project 2025 illustrate a significant threat to the education system across the country, including New York City. By championing the elimination of the Department of Education and weakening or outright cutting essential education programs—including Early Head Start, Head Start, the Child Care and Development Block Grant, Title I funding, OCR, and free school meals—these policies threaten to dissolve central support systems for early childhood education and K–12 schools. Furthermore, they would widen gaps in opportunity and student outcomes, disproportionately affecting students of color, students from low-income families, and students with disabilities. If enacted, Project 2025 could damage the quality of education and the well-being of millions of students and their families nationwide for years to come.
Tags: head start, U.S. Department of Education, Project 2025
How Project 2025 Would Threaten Education in New York City
Earlier this year, the Heritage Foundation released Project 2025, a roadmap for a presidential administration to enact far-right policies. If they were to become reality, these proposed policies would have far-reaching effects for Americans, from restricting health care access to exploiting child labor to decreasing environmental protections. In early learning and K–12 education, the changes would also be dramatic, and would include shuttering the U. S. Department of Education and eliminating Head Start.
The places that stand to be most impacted by Project 2025’s proposed changes in the realm of education are most likely rural communities and other areas where local and state investments in education are smaller, and where there are fewer local and state resources and accountability tools for ensuring high-quality education and equitable opportunity. But even in communities with large state and local investments in young children and K–12 students, the consequences of this agenda would have dramatic impact.
New York City is home to the country’s largest school district, and it has relatively strong local and state policies to support education compared to many other communities. But Project 2025’s proposed policies could still create massive disruptions for students and families.
Here are six ways that the policies of Project 2025, if enacted, could affect education in New York City.
1. Roughly 19,000 children and 1,000 pregnant women could lose access to early education and prenatal services from Early Head Start and Head Start.
Project 2025 calls for eliminating Head Start and Early Head Start, the federal programs that provide eligible children ages 0–5 and their caregivers with access to early learning and wraparound supports such as health screenings and employment resources. In New York City, these programs are an important part of the landscape of early childhood options serving the city’s nearly half a million children under age 5.
Head Start and Early Head Start programs are available to children from families earning less than the federal poverty level or who meet certain other eligibility criteria. That includes children with disabilities, who must make up at least 10 percent of enrollment at any Head Start program. A variety of different organizations in the city receive Head Start and Early Head Start funding directly from the federal government, including New York City Public Schools as well as community-based providers, such as Educational Alliance’s Manny Cantor Center, a community center in Manhattan’s Lower East Side that braids public and private funding to create intentionally diverse diverse early childhood classrooms.
If these grants were erased, early learning providers across the city would be left scrambling to keep their daycares and preschools open, and thousands of families in New York City could lose access to these programs designed to help children during their most critical years of brain development.
2. The city could lose up to $900 million per year for early education from the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG), and families could lose the choice of using child care vouchers to send their children to center-based early learning programs.
New York City currently receives about $900 million per year in funding for child care and early learning from CCDBG, a federal block grant to states to support child care for low-income working families. Some of this funding goes to city agencies to support early childhood programs directly, and some of it flows to families in the form of child care vouchers that they can use in a variety of different child care settings.
Project 2025 devalues early childhood education in daycares, preschools, and other center-based programs and calls for cutting federal funding to these programs. Instead, it would only allow only funding for family-based child care or paying parents directly for the cost of staying home with their children.
It is important to have family-based child care as a choice in the range of options, and some federal child care funding already goes to family-based child care programs, including CCDBG funding that New York City uses to contract with home-based daycares as well as child care vouchers that New Yorkers choose to use in home-based daycares or for informal care (such as a neighbor or relative caring for their child).
But many other families, including a majority of those using child care vouchers, choose to enroll their children in center-based programs. If CCDBG funding could no longer be used in this way, over 35,000 children currently enrolled in child care centers using vouchers and most of the roughly 110,000 children enrolled in infant/toddler, 3-K, and Pre-K programs contracted by the New York City Department of Education would stand to lose access to early learning.
3. Public schools could lose billions of dollars of federal education funding each year.
Project 2025 recommends eliminating the U.S. Department of Education. The Department of Education plays a critical role in setting educational standards and ensuring a minimum standard for education across states. In FY2024, the Department of Education allocated 13.6 percent (or over $32.3 billion) of its total funding to public K–12 schools.
Project 2025 also proposes several changes to federal funding, including block grants to states without restrictions, utilizing school vouchers and education savings account tax credits, and eliminating or reducing other means of federal funding. Specifically, Project 2025 demands eliminating Title I, Part A of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) and cutting federal funding for students with disabilities. Title I provides funds to public school districts, charter schools, and special education schools with high numbers of low-income children. In FY2024, the total budget for New York City public schools was $39.4 billion, 11 percent of which comes from federal stimulus funding and other federal funding ($4.1 billion total). Across New York State, over 1,000 local education agencies (including charter schools) received Title I funding in the 2024–25 school year, which totaled over $1.3 billion.
The loss of federal education funding in the public school system would mean disparities in education quality across districts in New York City could grow. Specifically, programs such as Title I address the needs of schools with high populations of low-income children. Eliminating Title I would directly impact at least a thousand schools across New York State, making it harder for these schools to provide the necessary resources, support, and initiatives needed to promote equity. Similarly, Project 2025 aims to reduce federal funding for students with disabilities, which would affect schools across the city, particularly the city’s District 75 schools, which provide highly specialized instructional support for students with disabilities.
4. Public school enrollment could decline, and private school enrollment could grow, as a result of federal school vouchers or education savings account tax credits.
Project 2025 promotes the use of Education Saving Accounts (ESA) to allow parents to choose how they spend federal and state funds allocated to their child’s education. Citing states with existing programs—such as Arizona, where ESAs provide families with 90 percent of what the state would have allocated for a child in public schools to be used on private school tuition, online courses, personal tutors, spending for school supplies, and other expenses—Project 2025 hopes to implement this as a universal program across the country.
The funding implications of such a program for New York City are immense. As mentioned earlier, New York City holds the largest school district in the country; in the 2023–24 academic year, over 900,000 students were enrolled in 1,596 New York City district schools and an additional 145,000 were enrolled in 274 New York City charter schools. Ultimately, such a program could have several consequences for public schools in New York City.
If New York City families opt to use their ESAs to fund private school tuition or other alternative schooling, public schools (both district and charter) could experience significant reductions in funding. This would affect the availability and quality of resources, programs, and staffing. ESAs could also exacerbate socioeconomic racial segregation across New York City schools: families with greater income may be more able to take benefit from ESAs; for example, families with increased earnings could use ESAs to pay for a part of their child’s private school tuition and cover the remaining cost themselves, leaving a high number of students from low-income families to enroll in public schools.
5. It could be much harder for students and families to access federal recourse if their civil rights are violated in schools.
As mentioned earlier, Project 2025 proposes eliminating the U.S. Department of Education. In playing a vital role in setting educational standards across states, closing the Department of Education would also get rid of the department’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR). As an alternative, Project 2025 suggests that the duties of OCR be moved to the U.S. Department of Justice, where civil rights violations should only be addressed in the courts.
Currently, civil rights violations are managed through administrative enforcement by OCR. If Project 2025 were to happen, the process for filing a case would become longer, leading to an increase in case backlog. As a result, fewer students and their families would receive the justice they deserve when their civil rights are violated, and fewer schools would be held accountable for changing their policies to deter discrimination.
Across New York State alone, there are currently 417 records of OCR complainants against the Department of Education and charter schools, with some pending cases dating back to 2013. Transitioning this many cases to the Department of Justice to be addressed only in the courts could both disrupt ongoing investigations and processes, increase court backlog—making it harder for students and their families to get their cases heard—and prevent students and their families from receiving timely justice for civil rights violations.
6. Students could lose access to free school meals.
Research shows that, not surprisingly, students learn better when they have access to good nutrition and are not sitting in class hungry. Since 2017, New York City’s public schools have offered free breakfast and lunch for all students. The city’s universal free meals program combines federal funding for school meals with some city funding to ensure that all children, regardless of income and paperwork, can access free meals. After federal pandemic relief funding temporarily made universal school meals a reality nationwide, advocates have been pushing for a state-level universal meals policy in New York, and some are calling for a permanent federal expansion. But Project 2025 calls for the opposite: restricting the federal school meal program to low-income children who submit the required paperwork.
Part of what makes New York City’s universal free meals program (as well as the statewide proposal) possible is taking advantage of the Community Eligibility Provision. This option in the current federal school meal program allows schools or districts to demonstrate that they enroll enough low-income students by cross-referencing data on student participation in programs such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), and then provide free meals to all students, without having to get paperwork filled out and returned by every family. This is an important benefit, since even when children meet the income requirement, it can be challenging to get families to fill out and return the income verification forms. Some of the students most in need may struggle to get the forms filled out, when their housing situations are unstable, for example, or when parents who are undocumented are nervous about sharing their information.
Moving to universal free meals has also helped to remove the stigma that students sometimes associate with eating school meals. When New York City implemented the new policy, low-income students were more likely to take advantage of school meals, and students of all socioeconomic backgrounds reported improved school cultures with less bullying and fighting. If federal support for school meals were rolled back, the city’s universal free meals program, and the benefits that it has created for students, would be at risk.
Looking Ahead
In conclusion, the proposals drafted in Project 2025 illustrate a significant threat to the education system across the country, including New York City. By championing the elimination of the Department of Education and weakening or outright cutting essential education programs—including Early Head Start, Head Start, the Child Care and Development Block Grant, Title I funding, OCR, and free school meals—these policies threaten to dissolve central support systems for early childhood education and K–12 schools. Furthermore, they would widen gaps in opportunity and student outcomes, disproportionately affecting students of color, students from low-income families, and students with disabilities. If enacted, Project 2025 could damage the quality of education and the well-being of millions of students and their families nationwide for years to come.
Tags: head start, U.S. Department of Education, Project 2025