President Trump is expected to issue an executive order to boost school choice programs by freeing up federal government spending towards it, a White House official confirmed.
CBS first reported on the expected order, which Trump is expected to sign on Wednesday. The order would direct the Department of Education to prioritize the usage of discretionary grant programs for school choice and direct the agency to issue guidance on how much money to give districts and schools for K-12 scholarship programs.
The order will direct the Department of Health and Human Services to issue guidance about states getting grants for families to use funding from the grant programs to support private and faith-based schools.
The order is also expected to direct newly sworn in Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to look into how military families can use school choice and report back to Trump how military families can use Department of Defense funding to send children of servicemembers to their choice of school.
One of Trump’s platform pledges was “to protect the God-given right of every parent to be the steward of their children’s education,” and while he did not push school choice as an issue in his first administration, multiple states have embraced it in the years since.
Trump’s Education secretary nominee Linda McMahon has not yet been confirmed but when McMahon was nominated, Trump said her top priority would be to “fight tirelessly to expand ‘Choice’ to every State in America.”
The order will also direct the next interior secretary to the president with a plan on how families with children attending Bureau of Indian Education schools can use federal funds to send them to a school of their choice instead.
Trump’s Interior secretary nominee Doug Burgum, and Trump’s Health and Human Services secretary nominee Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have also not been confirmed.
Trump issued an executive order on Tuesday to broadly restrict access to gender-affirming care for transgender children and teenagers younger than 19, following another campaign promise to ban treatments.
