{"id":196469,"date":"2025-12-17T12:32:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-17T12:32:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/196469\/"},"modified":"2025-12-17T12:32:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-17T12:32:10","slug":"us-department-of-education-deploys-over-208m-in-mental-health-grants-after-cutting-nearly-1b-for-programs-that-prioritized-dei-commitments-afrotech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/196469\/","title":{"rendered":"US Department Of Education Deploys Over $208M In Mental Health Grants After Cutting Nearly $1B For Programs That Prioritized DEI Commitments – AfroTech"},"content":{"rendered":"

The U.S. Department of Education will be deploying a new round of mental health grants.<\/p>\n

According t<\/a>o Education Week, the Education Department will distribute more than $208 million to school-based mental health programs to train and hire additional providers and psychologists. The funding follows the Trump administration\u2019s decision in April to cut over 200 health grants, totaling $1 billion, for recipients who incorporated diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) commitments into hiring, recruitment, training, and certification practices, notes<\/a> a separate Education Week article. <\/p>\n

In a news release,<\/a> the Department of Education claim the grants that were discontinued prioritized \u201cthe racial characteristics of providers and divisive ideologies, instead of focusing on competent provision of proven mental health interventions for students.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now, the Education Department has awarded a new round of grants to 65 recipients.\u00a0Education Week reports that 33 of those recipients are\u00a0\u201crural states and school districts\u201d\u00a0who will receive more than $120 million.<\/p>\n

Per the Department\u2019s news release, grant allocations will prioritize recipients with commitments to expanding the number of credentialed school psychologists and retaining providers through bonuses, stipends, and community support. Additional grant priorities include \u201cbuilding necessary capacity and local support to ensure the provision of intensive mental health services beyond the life of the grant.\u201d<\/p>\n

U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said in the news release, \u201cUnder the Biden Administration, it was more important to shape the racial and gender identities of mental health providers than it was to focus resources on high-quality, credentialed school psychologists who are best positioned to serve American students when they are at their most vulnerable.\u201d<\/p>\n

She continued, \u201cWhile there was doubt that the Trump Administration could right this wrong and re-compete these dollars before the end of the year, we are proud to announce that we did exactly that. Today, over $200 million is being awarded directly to states and school districts to support student mental health \u2014 a meaningful win for our education system.\u201d<\/p>\n

In response to Trump\u2019s decision to cut grants in April,\u00a016 Democratic state attorneys general filed a lawsuit. In October, a federal judge ruled in favor of the states attorneys, stating that the grant cancelations \u201cwere likely invalid because they contained no individualized reasoning for stopping the in-progress grants,\u201d according to Education Week.<\/p>\n

The judge\u2019s order prevents 49 grantees out of the 223 nationwide from having their grants cancelled, and those grantees should have their funding continue beyond Dec. 31. However, legal proceedings are ongoing in the broader case over the legality of the cancellations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The U.S. Department of Education will be deploying a new round of mental health grants. According to Education…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":196470,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[89965,89966,103,61,1831,60,410,411,216,17497],"class_list":{"0":"post-196469","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-afrotech","9":"tag-black-community","10":"tag-health","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-investing","13":"tag-ireland","14":"tag-mental-health","15":"tag-mentalhealth","16":"tag-tech","17":"tag-wealth-building"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196469","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=196469"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196469\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/196470"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=196469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=196469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=196469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}