Maryland is fighting a U.S. Department of Education decision to cut millions in federal funding that helps the state hire qualified teachers for its understaffed classrooms.

On Thursday, Maryland joined several states in a lawsuit “challenging the Trump administration’s unlawful termination of grant funding for K-12 teacher preparation programs.”

The lawsuit says that early last month, the department cut $600 million in critical grants Congress authorized to address the nationwide teacher shortage. The money was also supposed to educate and send new teachers to “hard-to-staff” schools in underserved communities who could handle challenging subjects like math and special education.

The lawsuit names the U.S. Department of Education, the former Acting Secretary of Education Denise Carter and current Secretary of Education Linda McMahon as defendants.

The suit is one of many nationwide and in Maryland filed against the administration of President Donald Trump, who has said he wants to close the U.S. Department of Education and return all schooling decisions to the states. The Trump administration did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday.

In a news release, Maryland Attorney General Anthony G. Brown said Maryland grant recipients lost millions of dollars in funding which would be felt immediately inside some local classrooms.

“Eliminating this funding will further strain already under-resourced classrooms in urban and rural communities,“ Brown said, ”hurting our State’s most vulnerable children and compromising Maryland schools’ efforts to recruit and retain skilled teachers who are so critical to our students’ future.”

Brown said teacher shortages can lead to larger class sizes and fewer courses offered. The cuts could also lead to lower-quality instruction and more students performing poorly on national assessments, the lawsuit says.

Maryland is already struggling with a teacher shortage. Gov. Wes Moore has cited the need to hire thousands of teachers as the reason the state should delay giving teachers more time outside of the classroom for lesson planning and collaborating, a key part of the landmark education reform plan known as the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future.

According to the lawsuit, the federal government’s cuts effectively eliminated two programs established and funded by Congress over 10 years ago to address teacher shortages. Across the eight states suing, there were at least 40 programs that had been awarded over $250 million combined.

According to Brown’s news release, the grants went to states’ public universities and associated nonprofits to “provide teacher training, placement, retention, and new teacher pipeline development.” If the money isn’t restored, the cuts could cause layoffs or reduction in hours for university staff, Brown said.

A spokesperson for the University System of Maryland, the state’s system of public colleges, said Friday evening it is unable to comment on the litigation. Leaders of the Baltimore-area school systems were unavailable Friday. The Maryland State Education Association declined to comment because it is still looking at the issue.

Joshua Michael, president of the state’s education board, said he didn’t immediately have a sense of the impact these cuts could have on Maryland’s educator shortage. But he said it “very well could have a negative impact on both our recruitment and retention.”

“These were targeted investments to support the educator pipeline and particularly in ensuring that our educators reflect the students that they are teaching in communities,” Michael said. “The state is contemplating actually deepening investments in educator pipelines. And so it is so disappointing to see that disinvestment from our federal partners.”

The lawsuit says termination letters sent to grantees rescinding their funding did not cite a “source of authority that would permit the wholesale elimination of grant programs established by Congress.”

The lawsuit says the letters, which all stem from the same template, failed to name the specific reason each program was eliminated.

The cuts come as the education department has rushed to implement a series of Trump executive orders to eliminate “disfavored but lawful” diversity, equity and inclusion programs, the lawsuit says. The grants in question were crafted to support “traditionally underserved” school districts and help educators better teach children with disabilities, those from low-income families, and students who are learning English, all groups the state’s Blueprint bill also prioritizes.

Michael said Maryland has persistent achievement gaps by race and socioeconomic status that the state is still determined to close.

“That is built into our state law in the direction of the Blueprint,” Michael said. “We’re not going to shy away from ensuring that we have equitable outcomes for children coming out of our public schools.”

The lawsuit says that the unexpected cuts coming in the middle of the academic year and budget cycle have “upended months, if not years, of the work of public institutions of higher learning focused on educator preparation.”

The attorneys general joining Brown from California, Colorado, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York and Wisconsin are seeking a temporary restraining order to prevent program disruptions that a news release said would “immediately reduce the number of teachers and teacher trainees serving in schools.”

“The harm to Plaintiff States' students from losing these qualified teachers, due to the termination of previously awarded grants, will reverberate for years to come,” the lawsuit reads.

About the Education Hub

This reporting is part of The Banner’s Education Hub, community-funded journalism that provides parents with resources they need to make decisions about how their children learn. Read more.