Last year, a federal government decision to eliminate grant funding for counselors, social workers and other mental health professionals left some Maine schools without the means to hire needed staff. 

Following a judge’s order in December, Maine education institutions regained some of that funding, but it amounted to just half of what they anticipated for the year. And Maine schools still don’t know if they can count on receiving more of the congressionally allocated money in the future.

In 2022, the U.S. Department of Education agreed to award more than $10 million over five years mostly to the Maine Department of Education and the University of Maine System, which began using the funds to train and help school districts hire mental health workers. The federal government also awarded money to School Administrative District 37 in Washington County. 

But in April 2025, the Education Department said it would stop releasing the funds because they no longer aligned with the Trump administration’s priorities, sparking a 16-state lawsuit, which Maine joined, to reinstate the money. 

A U.S. District Court in the state of Washington ruled in December that the Education Department acted unlawfully by canceling the Mental Health Service Professional Demonstration Grant Program and the School-Based Mental Health Services Grant Program without evaluating them first or providing a policy rationale for the cuts. The court ordered the federal government to reinstate the grant programs and follow procedure for evaluating awards.

The Education Department said in a March 2 letter to grantees that it would appeal the decision. Then, last week, the states that launched the lawsuit asked the court to enforce the ruling, arguing that the federal government flouted the decision by sending only six months of funding. 

The funding freeze had an effect locally. 

Two school districts — based in Eastport and Livermore Falls — that had relied on the federal funds, which they received as pass-through grants from the state, did not hire mental health care providers for the 2025-26 school year, Maine education department spokesperson Chloe Teboe said. Other districts made up the funding using other means.

The partial release of funding only covers about half of what awardees would normally receive for each grant year, which starts in January, leaving education institutions in Maine in limbo as they plan next year’s budgets. They may receive no more: In the March 2 letter to grantees, the Education Department said it released only six months of funding as a “risk mitigation measure” until grantees complete a “check-in” by June. It said it might release more funding afterward or “take further mitigation actions.”

The Education Department told grantees it was only releasing funds “under protest.” Supporting the hiring of professional mental health care providers in schools is “inconsistent with, and no longer effectuates, the best interest of the federal government,” it wrote.

However, it was under the first Trump administration that the U.S. Congress approved funding for the Mental Health Service Professional Demonstration Grant Program following a mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, in 2018.

Trump’s Commission on School Safety, which was also established in response to the shooting, then found a need to support mental health in high-poverty districts, prompting Congress to establish the School-Based Mental Health Services Grant Program. Congress increased funding for both programs in 2022, following another mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas.

Many students struggle with mental health challenges. About 40 percent of American high school students had “persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness” in 2023, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About a fifth of them considered attempting suicide, and half that many students attempted suicide. 

Maine and Vermont, the two most rural states in New England, had the highest suicide rates among kids ages 10 to 17 in the northeast, according to 14 years of data tallied by an office within the U.S. Department of Justice. 

Female and LGBTQ+ kids are more likely to have mental health struggles, according to the CDC. The Trump administration sought to eliminate this fact from the agency’s webpage, saying it promoted “gender ideology,” but a court order prevented the government from doing so.

‘It impacts their learning’ 

As federal mental health funding remained in limbo this past year, some school districts had to decide whether to fund programs themselves or cut them altogether. 

For three years of the five-year grant period, Eastport schools received $65,541 per year, and RSU 85 in Lubec received $63,208 annually, said Chad Allen, business manager of the consolidated Sunrise County School System, which oversees both districts in Washington County. This year, each district received only half of these amounts.

Because funding was uncertain, Eastport did not hire a mental health professional for the current school year, said MaryEllen Day, superintendent of the Sunrise County School System. Now, planning for the future is tricky: Jobs are scarce in Washington County, she said, and workers are unlikely to leave their current jobs to fill an open position in a rural school district that might not last. 

Meanwhile, RSU 85 hired someone by having local taxpayers pick up the cost, she said.

There is a mental health crisis in America, and that includes Maine, Day said. Because districts in Day’s area are rural and remote, students do not have sufficient access to services outside of school, she said.

“We need them in the schools for our students. It impacts their learning,” Day said. “By getting a grant like this — money for mental health — we can help our students.”

A nearby district, SAD 37, based in Harrington, could not continue funding programs that the federal funding would have backed, Superintendent Kenneth Johnson said, though he did not provide details on any program rollbacks. The district did not receive money through the recent, partial release of funds, he said. 

“We are a small rural district and could not continue to fund [federal] grant activities locally and simply hope that there might be a favorable outcome to the challenges put forth by others to the elimination of funding,” Johnson wrote in an email to The Maine Monitor.

The Maine School of Psychology — Maine’s only school psychology training program — at the University of Southern Maine expected to receive $455,362 this year, but it only received $227,681. The university has a five-year, $1.6-million grant that was supposed to last until 2027, University of Maine System spokesperson Samantha Warren said.

The money supported multiple initiatives to bolster the ranks of mental health staff in Maine schools, Warren said. For instance, the university launched a school psychology program for 11 educators in rural Maine, including educators in high-needs schools in Aroostook County, which employed only one credentialed school psychologist at the start of the project, Warren said.

It also funded fieldwork in 17 rural school districts, and provided mental and behavioral health services to more than 700 students, she said.

Warren didn’t answer questions about how the freeze affected the initiatives specifically, only saying the work deserved ongoing support.

“Predictable, ongoing federal funding is essential to sustaining this progress and keeping those enrolled in the state’s only school psychology training program on track to timely degree completion and careers in Maine’s most under-resourced schools,” she said.

‘No one wants this’

This year, the state education department received $852,043 in funds from the School-Based Mental Health Services Grant Program, short of its anticipated $1.7 million, Teboe said. 

The funds came in year four of its five-year grant totaling about $9 million. The state has sent most of the money to nine districts each year to recruit and retain mental health providers in schools that historically lacked them: Eastport Public Schools, Jefferson Village Schools, Lewiston Public Schools, RSU 12 in Somerville, RSU 24 in Sullivan, RSU 54 in Skowhegan, RSU 73 in Livermore Falls, RSU 79 in Presque Isle and RSU 85 in Lubec. 

“That ongoing uncertainty has also led to difficult conversation in participating [school districts] regarding whether their budgets can accommodate these school-based mental health provider positions,” Teboe said.

Lewiston Public Schools typically receives $248,644 in school-based mental health funding each year, making it one of the largest school district recipients in Maine, according to the state education department. After receiving only a portion of the total, and given that other federal funding streams are ending, the district is now likely to cut some positions entirely.

“We will not be able to employ these staff unless other funding becomes available,” Lewiston Superintendent Jake Langlais wrote in an email.

The district is proposing to cut seven positions, including social and emotional learning coaches, social workers and guidance counselors, according to a memo that Langlais provided. Four positions were previously backed by the federal mental health grant funneled through the state education department. The others are backed by different federal grants that are ending, Langlais said.

The federal funding changes have come at a precarious time. Earlier this month, the Lewiston school district proposed a budget of $130.6 million that would cut 30 positions — seven of which are vacant — next school year, the Sun Journal reported. Langlais pointed to unavoidable costs as a driving factor behind the current budget proposal, such as an energy contract that increased by $750,000 and transportation costs that rose by $2.5 million.

“No one wants this,” Langlais said of the cuts at a March 9 budget presentation meeting. “Also, the idea that these are people’s livelihoods, it’s how they put food on the table and take care of their families. It’s heavy when we talk about people and not vacant positions.” 

If you or someone you know is experiencing a mental health crisis, call the Maine crisis hotline at 888-568-1112 or text the national crisis line at 741741. You can also call or text 988 to be connected to the suicide hotline.

This story was originally published by The Maine Monitor, a nonprofit civic news organization. To get regular coverage from The Monitor, sign up for a free Monitor newsletter here.