“They are funds that have been in place since the Johnson administration, so I’m turning 60 tomorrow, and these funds have been there pretty much my entire lifetime.”
Executive Director of the Literacy Center of West Michigan Dr. Wendy Falb says $7 billion in education funding has been impounded. That includes $729 million supporting adult education allocated by a previous Congress, or just over $600,000 of the center’s operating costs, making up about 25% of its budget.
“Our program here starts on July 1, and on July 2nd we learned that the federal government was clawing back those funds that we were all expecting.”
The center has been around for 39 years, helping adults gain the literacy needed for employment, healthcare, education and citizenship. Dr. Falb says immigrants made up nearly 10% of workers in 2021, and nearly 30% of adults in Kent County read below the 4th grade level in English.
“So, we’re having to kind of very quickly reduce our programming and staffing on that, which is not an ideal way to approach contraction and services, both financially and in terms of the communities that we serve.”
The state is stepping in with additional dollars, but Falb says funding for next year is still in question. Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel is launching a lawsuit to reinstate those allocated funds.
