The Trump administration is rescinding up to $29 million in COVID-era grant funding for Nevada schools, a move that state officials say jeopardizes efforts across all 17 school districts, charter schools and private schools to help students recover from the pandemic. 

The state’s top education official said during a Wednesday phone interview it's unclear whether the money is lost for good or if there’s a chance the administration will consider giving schools more time to spend their funds. 

“Those dollars are definitely needed for student achievement … learning loss,” State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jhone Ebert said. “We were going to take advantage so that we could make sure that every dollar was expended.”

Secretary of Education Linda McMahon sent education departments around the country a letter on March 28 announcing that funds obligated through the Education Stabilization Fund (ESF) — created to support school systems during the pandemic — needed to be returned to the federal government that day.

Nevada received an award of $2.1 billion from the ESF, mostly through the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund (ESSER) for a variety of priorities, from expanding mental health services to upgrading technology to offering summer career courses for students. The Clark County School District alone received a $1.2 billion allocation from ESSER.

The state still had about $29 million unspent in its ESF allocation through the end of January. That included about $22 million in ESSER funds as well as funding for private schools. 

It also funded 14 positions at the Nevada Department of Education, six of which have since been cut. 

Nevada was one of 41 states that had previously received an extension in February to use the funds from the federal department through March 2026, but the letter by McMahon — who was confirmed by the Senate as the new education secretary in early March — moved the deadline up. The $29 million figure may be reduced as NDE calculates how much had been spent prior to McMahon’s new deadline of 5 p.m. Friday. 

“Extending deadlines for COVID-related grants, which are in fact taxpayer funds, years after the COVID pandemic ended is not consistent with the department’s priorities and thus not a worthwhile exercise of its discretion,” McMahon wrote.

Ebert said in a Wednesday interview that the department received McMahon’s letter minutes after it went into effect. She said prior to the letter, there was no indication that it was going to happen. 

McMahon argued in her letter that schools had ample time to spend the COVID relief funds, which were initially allocated in 2021. But Ebert said some projects got a late start because of procurement and hiring delays, especially at the height of the pandemic, preventing schools from being able to fully spend down their funds.

“Nobody sat around,” she said. 

The affected NDE positions included staff members who helped administer the funds, including training for private schools, as well as staffers working on projects around competency-based learning, in which students work at their own pace, and enrichment programs to address learning loss during the pandemic. Ebert — who was selected in March as the next Clark County School District superintendent — said for now, NDE will continue funding eight of those positions to manage funds that were expended before the Friday deadline. 

In fiscal year 2023 — the most recent year for which the department has an ESSER report — Nevada reported spending $80 million on hardware and software, $23.4 million on curriculum adoption and learning materials and $10.7 million on additional staffing for mental health support.

The agency met with school district superintendents, chief financial officers and grant managers Monday to explain that the federal funds would no longer be available, and that any ongoing projects would now be the sole financial responsibility of each local education agency to fund. Ebert said as of Wednesday, the department hasn’t received guidance from federal contacts on how to reapply for an extension — McMahon’s letter stated that extensions could be granted on a case-by-case basis. 

“We were planning on driving those dollars down to zero that were allocated, and that's still our goal if we're afforded that opportunity,” Ebert said. 

The ESF was first created through the March 2020 Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act and then provided with additional funding in the subsequent congressional spending bills addressing the pandemic. 

The Department of Education’s termination of the funds is part of a broader effort across the Trump administration to rescind unspent pandemic-related aid. State programs addressing mental health, epidemiology and food insecurity created during the pandemic with federal funds all had their grants abruptly cut in March.

Multiple Democratic governors in other states have asserted the rescission of obligated funds is illegal. Elizabeth Ray, a spokeswoman for Gov. Joe Lombardo, said his office is working with NDE to identify which projects they should request an extension for. 

Ebert said NDE is determining whether there are other grants available or if it will need to go to the Legislature to request additional funding in case the federal education department doesn’t grant additional extensions.