Trump administration reinstates teacher training grants at UMN, St. Thomas, pending appeal

By: Becky Z. Dernbach, Sahan Journal

Following a court order from a federal judge in Maryland, the U.S. Department of Education reinstated teacher training grants this week to the University of Minnesota and the University of St. Thomas.

Danaya Franke, director of NXT GEN Teach at the University of Minnesota, said her program had received official notification of the grant reinstatement on Monday, the deadline for the department to comply with the judge’s order. She said she felt excited, relieved, and “optimistic for the communities in which we are trying to promote special education pathways.”

The University of St. Thomas also confirmed it was notified this week that its grants had been reinstated. “We will continue working to help St. Thomas students who were impacted by last month’s grant terminations continue their journeys to becoming licensed teachers and benefit students from across Minnesota,” the university said in a statement.

Three federal grants to the two universities total nearly $12 million. They fund training for more than 500 teachers throughout the state, many in special education. Minnesota, like many states, has been struggling with a special education teacher shortage. 

In February, the Trump administration announced it was cutting these grants as part of its plans to eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. But two lawsuits soon followed. The American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education and the National Center for Teacher Residencies — organizations that count St. Thomas and the U among their members — sued, accusing the Department of Education of violating the Administrative Procedure Act with an “arbitrary and capricious decision.” 

Amy Smith, the dean of the School of Education at St. Thomas, filed an affidavit in the Maryland case. Without the grant funding, she said, “the teacher pipeline program at UST will graduate fewer students capable of serving in high-needs areas such as special education.”

Julie Rubin, a U.S. district judge in Maryland, issued a preliminary injunction on March 17, saying that the teacher training groups were likely to prevail on the merits. She ordered the administration to reinstate the grants within five business days. By the end of the day on March 24, all 71 grants covered by the order had been reinstated, according to a joint status report the parties filed in court on Wednesday. 

The Trump administration has appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals.

The St. Thomas grants provide support to the Grow-Your-Own programs to train school staff in St. Paul Public Schools and Minneapolis Public Schools to become teachers; help working educators in districts throughout the state earn their teaching licenses; and support the certification of special education teachers in charter schools. 

The University of Minnesota grant, which was awarded in October 2024, will develop an apprenticeship program to train special education teachers in Duluth, Morris, Warren-Alvarado-Oslo, and four metro suburban districts.

Both St. Thomas and the University of Minnesota pledged to continue supporting their teacher preparation programs regardless of what happened to the grants. But the consequences were immediate.

The grant terminations left St. Thomas students scrambling to figure out how to pay for summer tuition. Charter school teachers-in-training lost their wage stipends; to make the math work, some transitioned into solo teacher roles well before they had planned to do so. And some undergraduate students at Dougherty Family College, a two-year program at St. Thomas that helps high-achieving low-income students explore careers, said it made them see teaching as a less stable career path.

Franke praised the University of Minnesota for its support through the ordeal. “We never skipped a beat with the work,” she said. Though she had worried the grant termination would affect her timeline for launching the program this fall, she said she now felt “much more confident in the projected plan as it was originally written.”

Samuel Carlson, a student teacher resident at St. Paul’s Maxfield Elementary School who plans to finish his special education program at St. Thomas this summer, said the grant’s reinstatement gave people in his program more hope. Still, the back-and-forth left him feeling unsettled. 

“It’s weird that this is something that could be taken away in the first place,” he said.

Since the Trump administration has appealed, the grants’ reinstatement may not be final.

“I am celebrating right now, and I am proceeding with caution, and am on track to launch an apprenticeship in the fall of 2025 as originally planned,” Franke said. “Nobody knows what happens tomorrow. Today, we are celebrating and moving forward.”

• April snowstorm prompts school closings, e-learning days for Wednesday
• Lawsuit: U of M grad student detained by ICE ‘feared he was being kidnapped’
• St. Paul community group hopes for alternate solution to trash dispute
• The Indian Child Welfare Act is before the Minnesota Supreme Court again. Here’s why