North Carolina Attorney General Jeff Jackson announced at a press conference today that he’s joining several other states in suing the federal government.
The issue at hand is a freeze on previously approved federal education funds that have left schools scrambling.
At the press conference, Alamance-Burlington School Board Chair Sandy Ellington-Graves said a portion of the frozen funds in her district was earmarked for multilingual student resources, specifically.
“Withholding these funds directly undermines our ability to serve our growing population of ML students, which we currently project to be around 4000 in our upcoming school year," she said. "That is equivalent to 17% of our enrollment.”
She said the money was slated to fund multilingual specialists, literacy tutors, teacher coordinators, counselors and more.
"These are not luxuries," she said. "They are fundamental to creating a supportive and enriching learning environment."
The freeze has impacted about $1.7 million in Alamance County, and more than $165 million in North Carolina as a whole.