Early Wednesday morning, the House Appropriations Committee approved, on a party-line vote, the House’s version of the FY27 Labor HHS Education spending bill, which proposes to cut 10% of the Department of Education’s funding and eliminate key language education programs. Specifically, the bill would eliminate all funding for Title II-A (educator professional development) program, Title III (English Language Acquisition) program, HEA Title VI.

For FY26, there will be $49 million available new grants, with awards ranging between $500,000 and $1 million. The notice indicates that the Department expects to award between 10 and 13 grants, and that each grant will be for a duration of up to 5 years. Applications will be due July 14th, with final reviews from the federal government ending by September 12th.

Yesterday, Senators Roger Wicker (R-MS) and Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Representatives Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA)and Brad Schneider (D-IL) reintroduced the Senator Paul Simon Study Abroad Act (S. 4541), a bill designed to increase the number and diversity of American students studying abroad. Among the reasons that JNCL-NCLIS, along with many of its members, endorsed this bill is that it includes a grant priority for those programs with a significant world language component.

The Department of Education’s FY27 budget again takes aim at language education programs. In K-12, it would eliminate Title III English Language Acquisition and Migrant Education, both of which last year’s budget sought to zero-out. The budget justifies deleting the $890 million Title III program and $428 million Migrant Education program using a mix of rhetoric related to illegal immigration, low test scores and federal overreach as grounds.

This afternoon, the House of Representatives passed, on a vote of 217 to 214 , a five bill FY26 Appropriations minibus that contains final FY26 funding for the Departments of Labor, HHS, Education, Transportation, HUD, State, and Defense. It does not include final FY26 funding for the Department of Homeland Security as a result of Senate Democrats forcing the Senate to remove this bill from the package over ICE’s controversial activities in Minneapolis. Instead of funding Hom