When a federal judge temporarily halted President Donald Trump’s freeze on federal grant funding, including school funding, just before 5 p.m. Tuesday, it offered a degree of clarity after a day of widespread confusion in the world of education.

Less than a day later, Trump appeared to rescind the Office of Management and Budget memo that set the funding “pause” in motion.

But just 30 minutes after that, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt took to X to …rescind the rescission. “This is NOT a rescission of the federal funding freeze,” she posted, regarding the confusion around school funding. “It is simply a rescission of the OMB memo.”

She described her post as an attempt to “end the confusion.”

It didn’t.

“For an administration that wants to make the argument that public education is dysfunctional and not serving our students well, they are amplifying and contributing to that narrative,” said Amy Loyd, CEO of All4Ed, a policy and advocacy organization. Until last October, she served in the Department of Education as assistant secretary for the Office of Career, Technical and Adult Education.

For now, it’s unclear which programs will be affected as the new administration takes stock of spending it deems wasteful or contrary to the president’s agenda. Those goals include freeing up funds for school choice, ending “wokeness” and passing a tax cut package. Start-up funds for charter schools, school lunches, funding for homeless students and hundreds of other federal grants “will be reviewed by department leadership for alignment with Trump administration priorities,” said education department spokeswoman Madison Biederman.

OMB said it spared major “formula” grants, like Title I for low-income students, special education funding and Impact Aid to districts serving military families. While the administration said Head Start wouldn’t be impacted, the preschool program is still listed among thousands to be reviewed.

The administration originally gave agencies until Feb. 7 to identify grants that advance, among other things, “Marxist equity, transgenderism and green new deal social engineering policies.” Over several chaotic hours, district leaders and advocates tried to interpret whether their programs would be cut while coming to terms with the enormity of the president’s actions.

Read the full article about confusion around school funding by Linda Jacobson at The 74.