Kentucky Schools Grapple With Loss of Community Support Grant

This article was originally published in Kentucky Lantern. OWENSBORO — On a September evening, students gathered on the lawn of Burns Elementary School in Daviess County for a family movie night. “It’s an inflatable screen. … It’s like going to the drive-in,” said Emmy Woosley, executive director of the Foundation for Daviess County Public Schools. “The kids are all out there playing. They’re excited to see their teachers after school and introduce their families.” The event was not only entertaining for the children but also informative for parents, with community partners participating. “The parents were able to stop by RiverValley Behavioral Health and see what services they have, or stop by Checkmarks and learn more about kindergarten readiness,” Woosley said. The school’s next family movie night might look different. The Trump administration late last year revoked the $47 million, five-year grant that was supporting efforts at Burns Elementary and 39 other Kentucky schools across 20 districts to help remove barriers to learning for students and families. Now the schools are looking for ways to keep the work going without the federal money. The funding came through the Full-Service Community Schools program, which the Trump administration wants to eliminate. Congress, nonetheless, approved $150 million for it in fiscal year 2026. A federal lawsuit in Washington D.C. is challenging last year’s cancellation of 19 community school grants nationwide worth $168 million, including the one in Kentucky. The Trump administration has said the program no longer aligns with its priorities. In Owensboro and Daviess County, that loss of federal support comes as a disappointment. “This grant was one of the most bipartisan and well-supported things that I’ve ever been a part of,” said Brian Benjamin, who was coordinating the program for Owensboro Public Schools. “It was inclusive in the fact that it included literally everybody, and the mission was to improve outcomes for all students and families.” “We would work with school leadership, parents, students, and community groups to see what their needs were exactly. And then design specific programming based around that,” said Benjamin. In the county school district, Burns Elementary was able to pay for wraparound early childhood services and a full day at school for preschoolers, thanks to the grant. Youngsters who were in the morning session moved to day care in the afternoon, and vice versa. The Bobcat Squad brought community partners, school staff and students together to meet non-academic needs. It was an opportunity for students who need more positive attention and also for students who already are exceptional leaders, said Woosley, who coordinated the program for Daviess County Public Schools. “Those students would meet on a regular basis and look at different projects. Then they would go out in the community once a month and work with local nonprofits from a service-learning standpoint.” At Burns Middle School, the grant paid for transportation so English language learners could receive more personalized staff support after school. The grant also supported Girls Who Run, a running club for students that also included opportunities to learn life development skills during conversations with adult volunteers. And there’s Guys in Ties, a partnership with Chamber Young Professionals in Owensboro. Young men would come to Burns Middle once a month and work with 8th-grade boys on life skills. At Owensboro Middle School, the Build Her Crown program aimed to enhance girls’ self esteem, while Faust Elementary’s Homework Diner facilitated parent engagement in academic performance. The grant that fueled Kentucky Community Schools Initiative was getting results. Nearly 95% of KCSI schools (34 out of 36 reporting) saw a drop in chronic absenteeism during the 2024-25 school year, according to the committee. Math proficiency also increased by an average of 10.79 percentage points and reading by 9.24 points across KCSI schools, based on locally selected assessments. The Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence was administering the grant which funded the Kentucky Community Schools Initiative (KCSI). The nonprofit is now one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s decision to revoke the grants midstream. The challenge now is to keep the community partnerships and supports for students and families going without the federal money, which would have run out anyway at the end of the five years. The Prichard Committee is asking families, educators, local leaders, businesses, and philanthropic partners to come together to sustain community involvement in schools. “It’s definitely a call to action,” Brigitte Blom, Prichard Committee president and CEO, told the Lantern. “We know students, particularly in low-income areas, face non-academic barriers to success. So maybe it’s access to health care or a supportive environment with caring adults. The community can play an important role in removing those non-academic barriers.” The loss of the grant comes as Kentucky is adopting a new system for K-12 assessment and accountability that encourages community involvement in setting standards. Blom said what distinguishes a community school is the intentionality “about bringing community partners to the table to help remove non academic barriers to success that students might have and to extend learning beyond the school, beyond the classroom and beyond the school year. So it also seeks to ensure community engagement, but also family engagement and how school is designed and delivered. “The model helps leverage public resources, private resources, community resources alongside dedicated funding for our schools to help realize greater success for students. So it’s efficient, it’s transformative, and continuing the work is really important,” she said. The grant funded positions in the school districts for a director to spearhead and coordinate community school efforts. In Owensboro, Benjamin, who moved into another position with the city schools after the grant was canceled, worries the loss of the director will make it tougher to follow through on plans to extend the community schools approach throughout the district. Schools will no longer have a direct link to community partners with the loss of the coordinators, he said. School personnel are “too busy providing direct services to students and families during the school day to build those kinds of relationships the way they want. This (district director) position allowed for somebody to do that,” Benjamin said. “And on the other side, community members genuinely want to be involved in schools. They either just have not been asked, or they haven’t been presented the right opportunity.” Benjamin believes school personnel will make their best effort to facilitate engagement. “Everything we were doing with this grant, we did have an eye on sustainability in the future. The problem is, a year to two years is just not enough to lay that groundwork to keep it going,” said Benjamin. Perhaps the most important statistic that will determine whether these initiatives will move forward is the nearly 50% increase in community partnerships reported by the committee. In an email, Maddie Edwards, DCPS public information officer, supported the Prichard Committee’s statistics. “Through this work, we saw improvements in attendance, academic progress, and student behavior, which reinforced what we know to be true. When schools, families, and communities work together, students are more likely to thrive,” she said. “While funding is not the only factor that drives progress, it does provide the structure that allows collaboration and innovation to take root in meaningful ways.” While Woosley believes the Guys in Ties program will continue despite the loss of grant funding, other activities, such as in-school transportation, may drop by the wayside. “Anything that’s supplementa…