On March 20th, 2025, President Donald Trump signed an executive order significantly reducing the size of the Department of Education. This reduction includes defunding and dismantling the ED and reducing funding for services that support students and schools. Superintendent Pat Hamilton is concerned how the policy will affect funding for Mason City Schools.
“Right now, I would say it seems pretty chaotic,” Hamilton said. “We don’t know anything right now because nothing’s actually been done as far as totally dismantling it.”
While most school funding comes from the state, the federal government provides about 13% of school funding in Iowa, according to the Department of Education. Hamilton said funding also depends on statistical data that the school holds.
“It’s formula-based, depending on the size of your school, the poverty of your school, the number of kids with reading and stuff like that, they determine how much money you get,” Hamilton said. “We have a lot of our Title I teachers who teach reading and math that currently get funded that way.”
The federal government’s goal of granting Title I funds is to close the gap with underachieving students and make learning more equitable.
Hamilton says many administrators are concerned what will happen to those funds if the ED is dismantled.
“It matters if they take that money and they abolish the Department of Education, and then they give it out to state and block grants. We may not see a big change in the amount of money if they do that,” Hamilton said. “If they do away with the department and with the funding, that [will make] a big change.”
Currently, Mason City Schools employs nine title teachers at the elementary level at a cost of just over one million dollars.
In a virtual meeting with Iowa Department of Education Director McKenzie Snow, Hamilton says the topic was discussed.
“I believe they’re saying that we probably won’t see a lot of change next year as far as the actual amount of funding,” said Hamilton. “I mean, you know, getting rid of the whole agency is not as easy as it sounds either. Congress would have to vote to get rid of the entire Department of Education.”
MCCSD APPROVES 2025-2026 BUDGET
While the future of the Department of Education is unknown, the school board passed a budget for the next school year.
“How we will work with our budget going into next year is through attrition, not replacing people when they retire,” Hamilton said. “We’re making reductions, fairly significant, but it’s all through attrition, meaning that right now nobody’s going to lose a job, but we had 18 people take early retirement and we won’t be replacing.”
Hamilton said each school has to hold a budget hearing twice, which is a report to the state to ensure schools are meeting the state requirements for school funding.
During the second final budget hearing, the Mason City School District submitted an overall budget of around $55 million for the 2025-26 school year, an increase of $659,609 compared to 2025.