Dennis Willingham knew when he took the job as superintendent in Walker County, Ala., that money for schools would always be tight.
That is the nature of public education in a rural area with few wealthy residents to tax and a student body that is nearly 70 percent lower income.
But since the White House temporarily withheld federal dollars from schools this summer and proposed cutting federal education spending next year, Dr. Willingham has felt a new pressure.
Walking around schools in his district, a mostly white, Republican area northwest of Birmingham with 6,700 students in the county schools, Dr. Willingham sees federal dollars everywhere. In the after-school program and the robotics club, in the high school students taking classes for college credit.
“The federal dollars are our lifeline,” Dr. Willingham said.
President Trump has targeted federal funding for education in his second term, embracing a longstanding conservative argument that the federal government adds bureaucracy without meaningfully improving student achievement. He has pledged to “return” education to states, which already have primary oversight over schools.
Mr. Trump has not proposed cutting the biggest pots of federal money for public schools — Title I, for low-income students, and IDEA, for students with disabilities. But the future of federal funding for schools is up in the air in a way that would have been inconceivable even a few years ago.
Mr. Trump has laid off more than 1,000 workers at the Department of Education and ordered his education secretary to put herself out of a job by shutting down the department. The White House’s proposed budget would cut education spending by 15 percent next year, a move some critics see as only the beginning of more efforts to slash funding.
But fiscal conservatism is quickly running into the reality of what the federal money actually pays for, with some Republicans in Congress pushing back.
Though federal money makes up just 8 percent of public school spending in the United States, it is largely geared toward students from low-income families and other disadvantaged groups, investments that ramped up in the 1960s during the Civil Rights Era and the War on Poverty.
The money was a recognition that lifting students out of poverty was a “national priority,” said Anne Hyslop, a policy director at All4Ed, an advocacy group focused on equity in education.
Today, many of the communities that rely most heavily on federal dollars are in Republican-led states, which tend to spend less on education and often have higher child poverty rates.
Alabama, which spends about $13,800 per student in state and local dollars, less than many other states, relies on federal money for 12 percent of its education budget. In New York, which leads the nation, spending $29,000 per student, federal money makes up just 7 percent of education funding.
Walker County, which voted for Mr. Trump three times, is a former coal mining hub that became an epicenter for the opioid crisis. The bulk of the education budget comes from state dollars. The district also raises money from local sales and property taxes.
But there are no fancy vacation homes to drive up property values, and business is limited. A poultry company and the school district are the county’s biggest employers.
Federal money helps “fill in the gaps,” Dr. Willingham said.
The White House’s proposal would collapse 18 federal programs, which cost a combined $6.5 billion last year, into a smaller, $2 billion pot of money to be spent flexibly by states. The programs include money for teacher training, art and music education and after-school programs in low-income communities.
Other federal programs, including money to help students learning English as a second language, would be eliminated.
In Walker County, the targeted programs total about $1.1 million a year, about 1 percent of the district’s budget.
The changes would streamline education and help free districts from the hours they spend on federal paperwork, said Jonathan Butcher, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank behind “Project 2025,” which put forth many of the policy ideas embraced by Mr. Trump in his second term.
Project 2025 makes the case that federal spending hasn’t paid off and ultimately proposes more cuts, including phasing out Title I for low-income school districts over a 10-year period.
“When can we ask, Please show me the results?” Mr. Butcher said. He pointed to the gap in test scores between students from high-income and low-income families, which has persisted for decades despite federal investment.
Critics say federal cuts would just mean less money for low-income districts, which have the least ability to make up the difference in local revenue and whose students show the greatest return on investment from increases in spending.
“We don’t have a problem with the federal Department of Education being dissolved,” said Dr. Willingham, a Republican. “We have a problem with funding being taken from our children.”
Federal money helps pay for all sorts of things in Walker County: two part-time art teachers who rotate through the schools, travel expenses that allow middle and high school robotics teams to go to state and national competitions, a $30-an-hour stipend for veteran teachers to mentor newer teachers down the hall.
About $30,000 pays for books, fees and other start-up costs for high school students to take classes through the local community college, an investment Dr. Willingham sees as critical in a county where just 16 percent of adults have degrees at the bachelor’s level or higher.
And then there are the federally funded after-school programs, which give students a place to go until 5:30 p.m. and in the summers, at a cost about $600,000 a year for two schools.
At Carbon Hill Elementary/Junior High School, students who stay after school get help with homework and rotate through activities like chess, pickleball and embroidery. During a recent cooking class, preschoolers made “sushi” out of Rice Krispies treats, banana slices and Fruit Roll-Ups.
The program provides an engaging place for students to be while their parents work, something Tiffany Lawrence, a nurse, appreciates for her sons, 9 and 13. It keeps them off video games and ensures that their homework gets done, she said, leaving more quality family time in the evenings.
For other students, after-school offers something even more essential: a dinner they can count on and adults who are looking after their basic needs.
The principal, Amy Atkins, recalled a student who made a pillowcase in the after-school embroidery class, only to reveal that he did not have a pillow to sleep on — an issue the school quickly rectified with a trip to Dollar General.
The program also pays for summer field trips to Birmingham and beyond, to the zoo, the aquarium, the science center.
The field trips are a highlight for Marian Nash-McCollum, a sixth grader at Oakman Middle School. Her mother works a manufacturing job, including Saturday shifts, leaving little time for summer excursions. Through the field trips, “we get to see and go different places,” Marian said.
Walker County officials say that federal money gives them the flexibility to pay for other things with money raised from local taxes. Without it, they would be forced to pick and choose priorities.
The cost to keep the after-school program, for example, would be the equivalent of laying off eight teachers, something Dr. Willingham views as a last resort.
To achieve lesser savings, the district could consider other options. “Do we have one less mental health therapist?” Dr. Willingham said. “Do we have three less school resource officers, leaving our schools open and vulnerable?”
School finance experts recommend that districts look strategically across their entire budgets.
“The question is, what is the most important thing for you to keep?” said Betty Chang, a managing partner at Education Resource Strategies, a nonprofit that consults with school districts on finances.
Some of the biggest cost savings, like closing a school or increasing class sizes, can be unpopular.
As in other districts, Walker County’s student population has declined because of lower birthrates and a burst of home-schooling since the pandemic. Dr. Willingham said he had trimmed about $1 million from his central office in recent years and was not yet ready to consider closing a school, a tough ask in a rural community where schools can be 15 minutes apart.
He plans to travel next month to Washington and make his case for federal funding on Capitol Hill, where Congress is up against a Sept. 30 deadline to fund the government. In an initial committee vote, key Senate Republicans rejected Mr. Trump’s proposed education cuts, though it is unclear what Republicans in the House may do, or what a final spending bill might look like.
Dr. Willingham hopes to reiterate a message he and other superintendents shared in a meeting with Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama last year.
“I said, ‘Please don’t take away our federal funding,’” Dr. Willingham said. “We can’t function without it.”
Sarah Mervosh covers education for The Times, focusing on K-12 schools.
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