The Trump administration’s $400 million funding cut to national service agency AmeriCorps forced an early education service program at NYU to close for the 2025-26 academic year, the program director announced in an email sent to members last Thursday.
The program, Jumpstart, recruits and trains students at NYU — among 65 other institutions — to work with preschool children in low-income neighborhoods to improve their English literacy. Last week, it became part of over 1,000 initiatives addressing education, poverty and environmental protection to be disrupted by the Department of Government Efficiency’s recent layoff of 32,000 AmeriCorps workers. In New York, over $30 million in AmeriCorps grants have been canceled.
Zola Purville, Jumpstart team leader and CAS junior, said that cutting the funds would have a detrimental impact on the fluency rates of English language learners who come from underprivileged households.
“I knew that the presidency was going after education reform and the education department and trying to ‘reform it,’ — so I know that a lot of the work that Jumpstart does is directly under these things,” Purville said in an interview with WSN. “I wasn’t surprised, I was just very hurt and disheartened because a lot of the work that we do is for underprivileged kids.”
Jumpstart will stop operating on all college campuses due to short staffing and lack of funds. Purville said she met with the NYU Jumpstart director, and that the program plans to restructure its curriculum for longer-term viability.
Purville added that since all eligible tutors are paid through Federal Work Study grants, canceling Jumpstart also limits financial opportunities for college students from low-income households. She said that during this academic year, there are about 50 NYU students who are participating in the Jumpstart program.
In 2022, Jumpstart added 30 members to its existing team of 100 NYU participants, allowing the university to expand its services to three more daycare centers in Brooklyn. The expansion increased the availability of Jumpstart’s work-study grant offerings at NYU by 40% and added 37,000 tutoring hours to NYU-partnered education programs.
However, not all NYU-partnered AmeriCorps education programs are affected by the cut. In a statement to WSN, Reading Partners executive director Primo Lasana said that the program will continue to operate and grow in the next academic year.
“We are saddened to see the recent cuts to AmeriCorps organizations here in New York City and across the country,” Lasana said. “Reading Partners is proud to be an AmeriCorps member organization and we believe wholeheartedly in the inspiring power of national service.”
Over two dozen states, as well as nonprofits and labor unions, filed a lawsuit on Tuesday alleging that DOGE’s efforts to slash government programs are “illegal and unconstitutional.” The coalition of plaintiffs alleged that the Trump administration violated a federal act that ensures a transparent process for how national agencies develop and issue regulations. They also argued that the administration overstepped its power by controlling funds allocated by Congress, which allotted AmeriCorps $1.2 billion in funding during the current fiscal year.
“Children deserve to live — but what also encompasses living is getting a proper education and also developing skills that will help them better their learning in the future,” Purville said. “Cutting this program is a disservice to not only the children but also the people who work under it and who want to help better the future of the United States.”
Contact Amanda Chen at [email protected].
