By Dakota Antelman – [email protected]
A major cut to federal education aid would be “devastating” to Concord’s public schools, Superintendent Laurie Hunter said.
For now, though, local leaders are heeding advice to sit tight in the face of national politics and rumored reductions.
“All the [advice] that we’re getting [is] to not overreact to the rhetoric,” Hunter told the Finance Committee on February 13.
President Donald Trump and adviser Elon Musk have set their sights on the Department of Education in recent weeks as part of a larger wave of cuts to the federal government. But various groups, including some legal organizations, have urged districts to “wait for things to play out,” Hunter said.
Authorities had already trimmed some education contracts as of February 18. The Trump administration might issue an executive order to dismantle the department altogether, according to multiple reports.
Districts with a larger proportion of federal funding, such as Boston, would be worse off if cuts continued. But Concord would not escape unharmed, according to Hunter and assistant superintendent of finance and operations Robert Conry.
Concord gets federal funding through initiatives like the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. In the 2025 fiscal year, IDEA grants sent $520,000 to the K-8 schools; Concord-Carlisle High School received roughly $450,000.
Using the K-8 system as an example, Hunter said losing IDEA money could force the district to raise its budget by 1.2% — or to cut from seven to 10 staff positions.
Neither Trump nor Musk has singled out IDEA grants. In his Fiscal ’26 budget presentation to FinCom, Conry said officials were ignoring “noise about grants from the federal government” and projecting level funding through IDEA.
Officials are watching the situation.
On February 4, School Committee member Cynthia Rainey said she worries that residents do not understand how damaging a loss of federal funding would be for Concord schools.
Hunter told FinCom that the loss of long-stable federal grants would be hard to withstand.
“I don’t see how, viably, the public school system would survive those kinds of reductions,” she said.
