State officials and teacher union leaders are reeling after President Donald Trump’s decision Tuesday to commit to a federal education funding freeze of more than $6 billion in federal K-12 education funding for the upcoming school year  — a move critics say will further kneecap schools after mass cuts and layoffs at the Department of Education earlier this year raised widespread fears about the future of public education in the United States.

The Trump administration told school officials that it is withholding funding typically released July 1 for services such as reading and math support, summer and after-school programs and assistance for migrant students and English learners.

The nation’s two largest states, California and Texas, stand to lose the most funding due to the  freeze, but no state will go unaffected if the funds aren’t released imminently.

The National Education Association (NEA), the nation’s largest labor union, said that schools could be forced to slash the salaries of educators or begin layoffs as a result of the federal education funding freeze, both moves that could cause classroom sizes to balloon and destabilize this woman-dominated profession. NEA President Becky Pringle called the freeze “outrageous and unconscionable.”

“Withholding billions in promised federal education funding that students need and states had planned to use to support children in their states is a cruel betrayal of students, especially those who rely on critical support services,” Pringle said in a statement. “Schools are already grappling with severe teacher shortages, burnout, and under-resourced classrooms, and here comes the federal government ripping resources away from public schools.”

Pringle said that withholding federal funding is part of the Trump administration’s pattern of hobbling public education by starving it of key resources in an effort to champion private and religious schools that aren’t obligated to admit the most vulnerable students, particularly those with learning disabilities or special needs or who belong to marginalized groups based on their race, religion or gender identity.

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), said in a statement that Trump has attacked public education since the day he took office, describing this federal education funding freeze as an “illegal” and ideologically-driven ploy to defund education. The programs affected, she pointed out, are congressionally approved.

Read the full article about the federal education funding freeze by Nadra Nittle at The Hechinger Report.