The Community Schools program at two Unit 5 schools will be without federal funding to start the new school year.
The program has been funded through local grants, donations and — beginning in 2024 — federal grant money. The grant, at $1 million annually over five years, was used to support and expand programming at Fairview and Cedar Ridge elementary schools.
In December, the Department of Education announced the rest of the grant money will not be awarded. The cuts were another step in a series of Trump administration actions meant to defund “diversity, equity and inclusion” initiatives. ACT Now Illinois, through which grant money was secured, sued the federal government to pay the grant money after the announcement.
“Most of the litigation has been decided, unfortunately, against our favor,” said Rebecca Kinsey, Community Schools supervisor at The Baby Fold.
After the loss of funding, the programs at Fairview and Cedar Ridge were both forced to terminate their full-time enrichment coordinator positions. The program is still being funded by Unit 5 and the McLean County Board of Health, with funding from the latter expiring at the end of 2026.
“Our enrichment coordinators — their whole job was like the cool, fun parts about school,” said Kinsey. “They helped teachers coordinate field trips. They brought enrichment into the building. They coordinated all of our after-school programming, helped align really fun experiences to the strong curriculum in Unit 5, just to make things come alive for our students and make learning more accessible and engaging.”
Kinsey said the loss of the positions will come at a cost, limiting the amount of after-school and summer programming Community Schools can offer. The program coordinates programming for both alongside Unit 5 staff. Direct client assistance and transportation for after-school programming was also lost.
Community Schools history
Unit 5 has participated in the Community Schools program since 2012. The aim is to remove barriers to receiving a quality education — like food insecurity or lack of school supplies. It provides both in-school resources and after-school programming.
Beginning at Fairview Elementary School, the program soon began to utilize services from The Baby Fold, adding a coordinator and clinician who are employed by the agency, but who work at the school. A few years later, the program was offered at Cedar Ridge Elementary.
“We're still looking into other options to help pay for some after-school programming at Fairview and Cedar Ridge,” said Kinsey. “Right now, we're not exactly sure what that will look like. We don't have anything scheduled as of yet, but we're hoping to pull something together.”
Any programming for after-school, Kinsey said, will be drastically reduced.
