SALT LAKE CITY — President Donald Trump’s recent executive order calling for the dismantling of the Education Department to boost state and local control of education has triggered both cheers and alarm.
Many, including Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, insist increased state involvement in funding education in Utah will benefit local students. Other Utah education leaders aren’t convinced.
But just how much of the money being funneled to Utah’s public schools actually comes from Washington, D.C.?
A data summary released by the University of Utah’s Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute highlights the ongoing education funding linkage between the Beehive State and the federal government.
The summary also doubles as a reminder that the funding of education in Utah — even pre-Trump — is already, largely, a local enterprise.
“State and local governments fund almost all of Utah’s public education, even as the federal government’s influence has grown nationally,” said Andrea Brandley, senior education analyst at the Gardner Institute, in a Gardner news release.
“In Utah, federal funding has generally shrunk over time as a share of the education budget, with brief spikes during downturns like the COVID-19 pandemic.”
Size and composition
Utah’s 2026 fiscal year state budget includes about $600 million in federal funds for public education — representing about 7% of the state’s total education budget, according to the Gardner report.
The state’s total public education budget comes to about $8.6 billion, with about 93% coming from sources within the state.
Almost 60% of the $600 million in federal funds appropriated for Utah’s public education is dedicated to child school nutrition programs such as free and reduced lunch reimbursement. Those federal nutrition funds do not come from the Education Department, but from the Department of Agriculture.
Recent local legislation calls for the approximately 40,000 K-12 Utah students currently eligible for “reduced price” meals to be moved to the “no cost” classification for the lunchtime meal.
The remaining federal funds earmarked for Utah public schools are appropriated to areas such as Title programs, primarily serving schools with a sizable number of students classified as “at-risk,” special education and a relatively small amount going to career and technical education.
State and local funds provide most of the funding for such non-nutrition programs.
Trump has pledged that many of the Education Department’s “useful functions” — including Pell Grants and Title I funding and resources for children with disabilities and special needs, “will be fully preserved” and “redistributed to various other agencies and departments.”
Dispersing federal education funds in Utah
All of the state’s school districts and in-person charter schools are the beneficiaries of federal education funds, according to the Gardner report.
As expected, the schools with larger economically disadvantaged populations receive more federal funds — generally through Title I and free or reduced-meal programs.
Salt Lake County’s Granite School District — which educates 58,000 K-12 students — received $135 million in federal funds in 2024, the most of any Utah school district.
Meanwhile, federal funding-per-student ranges across Utah school districts — from about $400 per student in Morgan School District to almost $8,000 per student in the San Juan School District in southeast Utah.
About 72% of the San Juan School District’s approximately 3,000 students qualify for free or reduced-price school meals.
A bit of history
Since 1867, when the original Office of Education was created, the federal government’s role in Utah’s public education school system has expanded “from limited involvement to significant funding and policy influence,” according to the Gardner report.
No surprise, the report added, federal education funding tends to rise during economic downturns. Pandemic relief during COVID-19 drove a significant increase from 2021 to 2024, temporarily pushing fed support to historic highs.
“Outside of this temporary surge, federal funding in Utah has generally declined both as a share of total education and on a per-pupil inflation-adjusted basis,” according to the report.
Over the past quarter-century, federal public education funding per student in Utah spiked in 2022 at $1,670. In 2024, that figure had dipped to $890.
Federal education funding: Looking ahead
Without specifically mentioning ongoing efforts to shutter the Education Department, the Gardner report acknowledged that federal funds are supplementing key education funding from Utah’s state and local governments.
“Changes in federal funding may impact funding levels or require greater investment by state and local governments to maintain the same level of services,” according to the report.
The report concludes by noting that most federal programs support at-risk and underserved students “working towards better education outcomes.”
“This contributes to long-term workforce development and supports higher earnings, productivity, and tax revenues over time.”
In a recent op-ed piece, Cox addressed concerns that the Education Department disruptions could harm Utah kids from disadvantaged homes and communities.
Utah, he responded, has a “long track record of investing in education” — including supporting low-income schools.
“But we could do it with more flexibility, less bureaucracy, and greater accountability to Utah families — not Washington regulators,” he wrote.
Meanwhile, at a recent Utah State Board of Education meeting, board member Carol Barlow Lear said she “had not been impressed” in recent years with how the state has managed education funds.
She worries federal funding levels for current Education Department-supported programs could be diminished.
“There is no evidence, in my mind, to say the state can do this better,” said Barlow Lear.
The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.
