After nearly a two-month delay, federal funding for adult education courses started to make its way to institutions across the nation.
In San Antonio delays in funding and changes in student eligibility criteria led to a slower rollout of class schedules, but administrators pledged to not lose momentum.
“We expect to hit the same targets if not more,” said Sammi Morrill, Alamo Colleges vice chancellor of economic and workforce development.
Alamo Colleges District’s enrollment target will remain similar to previous years, Morrill said, aiming for about 900 students. Over the 2024-25 school year, the colleges served 966 students and offered about 70 courses across its campuses and its five education and training centers.
This year, days before some of these courses began on Aug. 25, Alamo Colleges officials released a much slimmer roster of Adult and Continuing Education Courses with 21 GED classes available as of this week, and a note stating the “spring schedule coming soon!”
This is about 50 courses short of the total offered in the fall and spring of the 2024-25 academic year, which included more than 30 classes for non-English speakers.
All of these courses are offered free of charge for qualified students, but because these run on a mix of local, state and federal funds, the changes in qualification criteria at the federal level meant a change in how students would be vetted.
“We anticipated that they wanted the interpretation of eligibility to be solidified first before releasing the grants under (fiscal-year) 25, that include adult ed,” said Priscilla Camacho, Alamo Colleges’ chief legislative, industry and external relations officer.
This summer the Trump administration delayed $715 million in grants for adult education programs that were slated to have been received by July 1, with about $78 million slated for the state of Texas. These are the funds that allow colleges to offer free or affordable adult education classes including General Education Development, known as GED, and English as a Second Language, or ESL, and job training courses.
Across the nation more than 1 million people benefit from these courses, but now, eligibility is also tied to citizenship or legal residency requirement.
At Alamo Colleges, Morrill said they were able to “braid in” other sources of funding to avoid a halt in ongoing or upcoming classes. Additional courses for the spring semester are expected to be added soon, she said, including ESL — English as a Second Language — options.
“This last year because we had dollars from the city and the institution, we were able to roll over close to $500,000,” Morrill said. “And that alone helped us to sustain our people and never turn off the intake, never turn off enrollment.”
For the upcoming fiscal year, 2025-25, which begins on Oct. 1, Camacho warned the Alamo Colleges board of trustees that they are expecting about $10 million less nationally in federal funding that would impact adult education and workforce programs.
Despite these cuts, the goal for this upcoming academic year remains the same and there are no plans to slow down or cut seats or programs based on grant qualifications.
“We’re going to explore all options of where we can get additional funding,” Camacho said. “We do get money from the city right now to help as part of their Ready to Work program, to help do GED work, and so we feel like we can find the resources somewhere within our portfolio.”
Morrill and Camacho said some eligibility criteria had been received, although in draft form, from the Texas Workforce Commission, which oversees grants for these types of programs.
Some of the confirmed qualifications involve having proof of legal residency in the U.S., with “qualified alien” being described by these new federal requirements as somebody who has permanent residency status and individuals who have received some sort of protection from deportation such as asylum, Camacho said.
Individuals interested in taking any of these courses are encouraged to still submit applications, regardless of their status, Morrill said. The interest forms for courses that are not yet listed such as the ESL classes are available online.
“We have other dollars. So if they’re not eligible in this form, we may be able to cover them in another one,” Morrill said.
Morrill’s team works with a budget of about $1.3 million for these programs, which includes federal funds distributed through the Texas Workforce Commission.
“GED is definitely at the top of adult education and is one of those areas that we are very interested in to make sure that we see who is eligible and what documentation is going to be required to confirm eligibility,” Camacho said.
Over the last year, courses needed to complete the GED have been evaluated to determine if any of the subjects can be compressed into one class and decrease the time to completion. The goal, Camacho said, was not to cut courses for the sake of it, but to improve access.
Although eligibility requirements for continuing education courses are not solidified, Morrill and Camacho said offering affordable options goes hand-in-hand they said with the Alamo Colleges Moonshot, which seeks to eradicate poverty through education and training.
“We do not want those students to be impacted,” Camacho said. “They are some of the most vulnerable. These are individuals who are just trying to come back into the swing of things and to lose that motivation and that momentum would have been devastating.”
The San Antonio Report partners with Open Campus on higher education coverage.
