MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Schools have a dilemma. Many are losing federal dollars for programs they consider essential as the Department of Education faces an uncertain future. Nebraska Public Media's Kassidy Arena reports on one program designed to help staff rural schools that is now endangered.
KASSIDY ARENA, BYLINE: The U.S. has a hard time filling teaching positions - 86% of schools across the country report hiring challenges, says the National Center for Education Statistics. And studies show rural districts have the hardest time holding onto teachers. Nebraska is no exception. Most of its districts are considered rural, and finding teachers to fill those spots can be difficult. Nebraska thought it found a solution last summer with a program called Project RAICES.
EZRA ALAMI: I've always said that Project RAICES really gave me my voice.
ARENA: Ezra Alami (ph) is originally from Iraq and was raised in Lincoln. The first-generation college student never thought college was for her because of its expense, but she was one of 16 students to receive a full-ride scholarship to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
ALAMI: Project RAICES has honestly helped me discover, like, what is the difference I can make and should make, and how should I do that?
ARENA: RAICES stands for Reenvisioning Action and Innovation through Community Collaborations for Equity across Systems. It's a University of Nebraska-Lincoln program in partnership with Kansas State University, funded by a grant that came at the end of the Biden administration that was supposed to last three to five years. The universities had to prove the program enhanced equity, and that's where the problem now lies.
Project RAICES is among many programs that lost federal grant money due to the Trump administration's rollbacks on initiatives that promote diversity, equity and inclusion. The Department of Education cut more than $600 million from teacher training programs. Superintendent Matt Farup of Wakefield Community School District in northeastern Nebraska says, while he understands why some people are concerned about diversity programs excluding certain groups, he says Project RAICES was open to anyone who wanted to be a teacher.
MATT FARUP: This program is not discriminatory. It's not exclusive.
ARENA: The Wakefield district has fewer than 600 students and has just short of 50 teachers.
FARUP: It's trying to help us solve a problem that in three years will be an unbelievable crisis for every school district.
ARENA: The crisis, says Dominque Howse, is that there are not enough teachers in the public education pipeline. She's with the Center for Black Educator Development.
DOMINQUE HOWSE: We need more teachers in the policy conversation 'cause right now we have billionaires dictating what's happening to working-class families and for children of working-class families. That's not OK.
ARENA: Ted Hamann was a Project RAICES coleader. He says he was angry when he had to tell students that program funding was ending years earlier than planned and all money would have to be returned.
TED HAMANN: I literally have 16 faces I can put in my mind of, these are the folks whose prospective teaching futures are in jeopardy.
ARENA: One of those students is University of Nebraska-Lincoln freshman Ali Waly (ph). He studies secondary education with plans to teach in Lincoln public schools starting in 2028. He remembers the day he and the other students found out their program had ended early.
ALI WALY: It was almost like a funeral, just the feelings and just the dread and the crying. And we were mourning.
ARENA: And Waly says the cuts hurt putting teachers in school districts where they know the community.
WALY: This is the place I grew up. That's just one of the reasons why I think I would be so good at this job.
ARENA: Less than a month after the announcement to cut Project RAICES, education groups that work to expand the pool of qualified teachers filed a federal lawsuit against the Department of Education for cutting more than 100 teacher preparation programs across the country. A court ruling allows some of those programs to temporarily remain in place, but their future is still uncertain - and so is the fate of the Department of Education, which is undergoing a dismantling under the Trump administration. When repeated calls were made for comment about Project RAICES, there was only a voicemail response that said the Department of Education's Information Resource Office is temporarily closed.
For NPR News, I'm Kassidy Arena in Lincoln, Nebraska.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.