Rural schools feel the pinch from Trump administration's cuts to mental health grants

WASHINGTON (AP) — In parts of rural upstate New York, schools have more than 1,100 students for every mental health provider. In a far-flung region with little public transportation, those few school counselors often are the only mental health professionals available to students.

Hennessey Lustica has been overseeing grant-funded efforts to train and hire more school psychologists, counselors and social workers in the Finger Lakes region, but those efforts may soon come to end — a casualty of the Trump administration's decision to cancel school mental health grants around the country.

“Cutting this funding is just going to devastate kids,” said Lustica, project director of the Wellness Workforce Collaborative in the Seneca Falls Central School District. “The workforce that we’re developing, just in my 21 school districts it’s over 20,000 kids that are going to be impacted by this and not have the mental health support that they need.”

The $1 billion in grants for school-based mental health programs were part of a sweeping gun violence bill signed by President Joe Biden in 2022 in response to the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. The grants were meant to help schools hire more psychologists, counselors and other mental health workers, especially in rural areas.

Under the Biden administration, the department prioritized applicants who showed how they would increase the number of providers from diverse backgrounds, or from communities directly served by the school district. But President Donald Trump’s administration took issue with aspects of the grant programs that touched on race, saying they were harmful to students.

“We owe it to American families to ensure that taxpayer dollars are supporting evidence-based practices that are truly focused on improving students’ mental health,” Education Department spokesperson Madi Biedermann said.

Lustica learned of her grant's cancellation in April in a two-page letter from the Education Department, which said the government found that her work violated civil rights law. It did not specify how.

Lustica is planning to appeal the decision. She rejected the letter's characterization of her work, saying she and her colleagues abide by a code of ethics that honors each person’s individuality, regardless of race, gender or identity.

“The rhetoric is just false,” Lustica said. “I don’t know how else to say it. I think if you looked at these programs and looked at the impact that these programs have in our rural school districts, and the stories that kids will tell you about the mental health professionals that are in their schools, it has helped them because of this program.”

The grants supported programs in districts across the country. In California, West Contra Costa Unified School District will lose nearly $4 million in funding. In Alabama, Birmingham City Schools was notified it would not receive the rest of a $15 million grant it was using to train, hire and retain mental health staff.

In Wisconsin, the state’s Department of Public Instruction will lose $8 million allocated for the next four years. The state had used the money to boost retention and expand programs to encourage high schoolers to pursue careers in school-based mental health.

“At a time when communities are urgently asking for help serving mental health needs, this decision is indefensible,” state superintendent Jill Underly said in a statement.

In recent House and Senate hearings, Democrats pressed Education Secretary Linda McMahon on the end of the grants and the impact on students. McMahon told them mental health is a priority and the grants would be rebid and reissued.

“Anyone who works or spends time with kids knows these grants were funding desperately needed access to mental health care services,” American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten said in a statement. “Canceling the funding now is a cruel, reckless act that puts millions of children at risk.”

The strains on youth mental health are acute in many rural school districts.

In one upstate New York district, half the students have had to move due to economic hardship in the last five years, creating instability that can affect their mental health, Lustica said. In a survey of students from sixth through 12th grade in one county, nearly half reported feeling sad or depressed most of the time; one in three said their lives lacked clear purpose or meaning.

“We’ve got huge amounts of depression, huge amounts of anxiety, lots of trauma and not enough providers,” Lustica said. “School is the place where kids are getting a lot of the services they need.”

Some families in the region are unable to afford private counseling or are unable to get their children to appointments given transportation challenges, said Danielle Legg, a graduate student who did an internship as a school social worker with funding from the grant program.

“Their access to mental health care truly is limited to when they're in school and there's a provider there that can see them, and it's vital,” Legg said.

In the past three years, 176 students completed their mental health training through the program Lustica oversees, and 85% of them were hired into shortage areas, she said.

The program that offered training to graduate students at schools helped address staffing needs and inspired many to pursue careers in educational settings, said Susan McGowan, a school social worker who supervised graduate students in Geneva City School District.

“It just feels, to me, really catastrophic,” McGowan said of the grant cancellation. “These positions are difficult to fill, so when you get grad students who are willing to work hand in hand with other professionals in their building, you're actually building your capacity as far as staffing goes and you're supporting teachers.”

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Hennessey Lustica poses for a portrait, Thursday, June 26, 2025, in Newark, N.Y. (AP Photo/Lauren Petracca)

Hennessey Lustica poses for a portrait, Thursday, June 26, 2025, in Newark, N.Y. (AP Photo/Lauren Petracca)

Hennessey Lustica poses for a portrait, Thursday, June 26, 2025, in Newark, N.Y. (AP Photo/Lauren Petracca)

Hennessey Lustica poses for a portrait, Thursday, June 26, 2025, in Newark, N.Y. (AP Photo/Lauren Petracca)

Iran eased some restrictions on its people and, for the first time in days, allowed them to make phone calls abroad via their mobile phones on Tuesday. It did not ease restrictions on the internet or permit texting services to be restored as the death toll from days of bloody protests against the state rose to at least 2,000 people, according to activists.

Although Iranians were able to call abroad, people outside the country could not call them, several people in the capital told The Associated Press.

The witnesses, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal, said SMS text messaging still was down and internet users inside Iran could not access anything abroad, although there were local connections to government-approved websites.

It was unclear if restrictions would ease further after authorities cut off all communications inside the country and to the outside world late Thursday.

Here is the latest:

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen says the new sanctions will be imposed on Iranian officials over the crackdown on protestors.

“The rising number of casualties in Iran is horrifying. I unequivocally condemn the excessive use of force and continued restriction of freedom,” von der Leyen said in a post on social media.

She said that in cooperation with EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas “further sanctions on those responsible for the repression will be swiftly proposed. We stand with the people of Iran who are bravely marching for their liberty.”

The EU has already imposed sanctions on members of the Revolutionary Guard Corps and others over past concerns about human rights abuses in Iran.

Kaja Kallas said in Berlin Tuesday that the Iranian government might go the way of former President Bashar Assad’s government in Syria, which fell swiftly in late 2024 in a “surprise for everybody.” But she added that “very often these regimes are very, very resilient.”

Kallas said that “right now … it is not clear whether the regime is going to fall or not.” She said it would ultimately have to be up to the Iranian people to make decisions.

The U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency, which has been accurate in previous unrest in recent years, gave the latest death toll on Tuesday.

It said 1,847 of the dead were protesters and 135 were government-affiliated.

This came a day after the European Parliament announced it would ban Iranian diplomats and representatives.

“Iran does not seek enmity with the EU, but will reciprocate any restriction,” Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi wrote Tuesday on X.

He also criticized the European Parliament for not taking any significant action against Israel for the more than two-year war in Gaza that has killed more than 71,400 Palestinians, while banning Iranian diplomats after just “a few days of violent riots.”

Dutch Foreign Minister David van Weel said he summoned Iran’s ambassador to the Netherlands “to formally protest the excessive violence against peaceful protesters, large-scale arbitrary arrests, and internet shutdowns, calling for immediate restoration of internet access inside the Islamic Republic.

In a post on X, Weel also said the Dutch government supports EU sanctions against “human rights violators in Iran.”

The United Nations human rights chief is calling on Iranian authorities to immediately halt violence and repression against peaceful protesters, citing reports of hundreds killed and thousands arrested in a wave of demonstrations in recent weeks.

“The killing of peaceful demonstrators must stop, and the labelling of protesters as ‘terrorists’ to justify violence against them is unacceptable,” U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said in a statement Tuesday.

Alluding to a wave of protests in Iran in 2022, Türk said demonstrators have sought “fundamental changes” to governance in the country, “and once again, the authorities’ reaction is to inflict brutal force to repress legitimate demands for change.”

“This cycle of horrific violence cannot continue,” he added.

It was also “extremely worrying” to hear some public statements from judicial officials mentioning the prospect of the use of the death penalty against protesters through expedited judicial proceedings, Türk said.

“Iranians have the right to demonstrate peacefully. Their grievances need to be heard and addressed, and not instrumentalized by anyone,” Türk said.

Finland’s foreign minister says she is summoning the Iranian ambassador after authorities in Tehran restricted internet access.

“Iran’s regime has shut down the internet to be able to kill and oppress in silence," Elina Valtonen wrote in a social media post Tuesday, adding, “this will not be tolerated. We stand with the people of Iran — women and men alike.”

Finland is “exploring measures to help restore freedom to the Iranian people” together with the European Union, Valtonen said.

Separately, Finnish police said they believe at least two people entered the courtyard of the Iranian embassy in Helsinki without permission Monday afternoon and tore down the Iranian flag. The embassy’s outer wall was also daubed with paint.

Iranian security forces arrested what a state television report described as “terrorist groups” linked to Israel in the southeastern city of Zahedan.

The report, without providing additional details, said the group entered through Iran’s eastern borders and carried U.S.-made guns and explosives that the group had planned to use in assassinations and acts of sabotage.

The Israeli military did not immediately comment on the allegations.

The Nobel Peace Prize laureate hailed people who have “long warned about this repression, at great personal risk.”

“The protests in Iran cannot be separated from the long-standing, state-imposed restrictions on girls’ and women’s autonomy, in all aspects of public life including education. Iranian girls, like girls everywhere, demand a life with dignity,” Yousafzai wrote on X.

“(Iran’s) future must be driven by the Iranian people, and include the leadership of Iranian women and girls — not external forces or oppressive regimes,” she added.

Yousafzai was awarded the peace prize in 2014 at the age of 17 for her fight for girls’ education in her home country, Pakistan. She is the youngest Nobel laureate.

The French Foreign Ministry said it has “reconfigured” its embassy in Tehran after reports that the facility's nonessential staff left Iran earlier this week.

The embassy's nonessential staff left the country Sunday and Monday, French news agency Agence France-Presse reported.

The ambassador remained on site and the embassy continued to function, the ministry said late Monday night.

Associated Press writer Angela Charlton contributed from Paris.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said he believes the Iranian government is in its “final days and weeks,” as he renewed a call for Iranian authorities to end violence against demonstrators immediately.

“If a regime can only keep itself in power by force, then it’s effectively at the end,” Merz said Tuesday during a visit to Bengaluru, India. “I believe we are now seeing the final days and weeks of this regime. In any case, it has no legitimacy through elections in the population. The population is now rising up against this regime.”

Merz said he hoped there is “a possibility to end this conflict peacefully," adding that Germany is in close contact with the U.S. and European governments.

The Israeli military said it continues to be “on alert for surprise scenarios” due to the ongoing protests in Iran, but has not made any changes to guidelines for civilians, as it does prior to a concrete threat.

“The protests in Iran are an internal matter,” Israeli military spokesperson Brig. Gen. Effie Defrin wrote on X.

Israel attacked Iran’s nuclear program over the summer, resulting in a 12-day war that killed nearly 1,200 Iranians and almost 30 Israelis. Over the past week, Iran has threatened to attack Israel if Israel or the U.S. attacks.

Mobile phones in Iran were able to call abroad Tuesday after a crackdown on nationwide protests in which the internet and international calls were cut. Several people in Tehran were able to call The Associated Press.

The AP bureau in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, was unable to call those numbers back.

Witnesses said the internet remained cut off from the outside world. Iran cut off the internet and calls on Thursday as protests intensified.

This frame grab from videos taken between Jan. 9 and Jan. 11, 2026, and circulating on social media purportedly shows images from a morgue with dozens of bodies and mourners after crackdownon the outskirts of Iran's capital, in Kahrizak, Tehran Province. (UGC via AP)

This frame grab from videos taken between Jan. 9 and Jan. 11, 2026, and circulating on social media purportedly shows images from a morgue with dozens of bodies and mourners after crackdown on the outskirts of Iran's capital, in Kahrizak, Tehran Province. (UGC via AP)

This frame grab from videos taken between Jan. 9 and Jan. 11, 2026, and circulating on social media purportedly shows images from a morgue with dozens of bodies and mourners after crackdown on the outskirts of Iran's capital, in Kahrizak, Tehran Province. (UGC via AP)

Protesters hold up placards and flags as they demonstrate outside the Iranian Embassy in London, Monday, Jan. 12, 2026. (AP Photo/Alastair Grant)

Shiite Muslims hold placards and chant slogans during a protest against the U.S. and show solidarity with Iran in Lahore, Pakistan, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/K.M. Chaudary)

Activists carrying a photograph of Reza Pahlavi take part in a rally supporting protesters in Iran at Lafayette Park, across from the White House, in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Protesters burn the Iranian national flag during a rally in support of the nationwide mass demonstrations in Iran against the government in Paris, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Michel Euler)

People attend a rally in Frankfurt, Germany, Monday, Jan. 12, 2026. (Boris Roessler/dpa via AP)

A picture of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is set alight by protesters outside the Iranian Embassy in London, Monday, Jan. 12, 2026. (AP Photo/Alastair Grant)