Your Title II Money Is Coming in October

Last updated: September 3, 2026

Your district’s second Title II-A installment is scheduled to reach your state on October 1, 2026, and the money is not being cut this school year. A proposed clawback in the House would only take back funds that districts have not yet committed, which means the best step you can take this fall is to obligate this year’s allocation to professional development that finishes during the 2026-27 school year.

If you lead a school, you have probably spent the past two years watching federal education funding move in ways that are difficult to plan around. Title II, Part A was held back for most of July 2025. The Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief funds are gone. The administration has twice proposed eliminating Title II-A, and a House committee bill would end the program for 2027-28 and rescind part of this year’s money. This makes it reasonable for you to wonder whether the professional development you planned in August is safe to schedule in October. This article walks through what has been enacted, what remains a proposal, when your money arrives, how long you have to spend it, and the three planning decisions that protect your school no matter how the next appropriations cycle ends.

What Is Title II-A, and What Does It Pay For?

Title II, Part A of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act is the primary federal funding stream dedicated to teacher and principal quality. Allowable uses include professional development, instructional coaches, mentoring and induction programs for new teachers, class-size reduction, and leadership training for school administrators (U.S. Department of Education (opens in a new tab)).

The program distributes roughly $2.2 billion a year, so every state and nearly every district receives an allocation. With ESSER fully closed out, Title II-A is now the largest dedicated professional learning funding source that most schools have left. For many principals, it is the only flexible source available for coaching cycles, conference registration, substitute coverage for peer observation, and outside training to support teacher development.

Is Title II Funding Being Cut in 2026?

No. The final fiscal year 2026 appropriations bill, enacted on January 20, 2026, funded Title II-A at $2.19 billion and Title IV-A at $1.38 billion. Congress considered and rejected the administration’s proposal to eliminate Title II-A and fold it into a consolidated block grant (Learning Forward (opens in a new tab)).

Those FY26 dollars fund the 2026-27 school year. The money you are planning for right now was appropriated, was signed into law, and is flowing.

The proposals that have generated most of the coverage apply to fiscal year 2027, which funds the 2027-28 school year. Let’s take a moment to understand them separately.

• 
  Enacted · in effect now

  What is law

  • 
    FY26 appropriations, signed January 20, 2026Title II-A funded at $2.19 billion. Funds the 2026-27 school year.
  • 
    Continuing resolution (H.R. 6500), signed September 2, 2026Holds FY26 levels through December 11, 2026. No rescission of Title II-A.

• 
  Proposed · not law

  What is only a proposal

  • 
    President’s FY27 budget request, April 2026Consolidates Title II-A and 16 other programs into a block grant of about $2 billion.
  • 
    House FY27 Labor-HHS-Education bill, June 2026Eliminates Title II-A for FY27 and rescinds $1.6 billion of the October 2026 installment. Passed committee 34 to 28; not passed by the full House or the Senate.

The President’s FY27 budget request (April 2026) proposes consolidating Title II-A and 16 other programs, roughly $6.5 billion in total, into a block grant of approximately $2 billion. It level-funds Title I at $18.4 billion. A budget request is simply a proposal to Congress and carries no legal force on its own (AESA (opens in a new tab)).

The House FY27 Labor-HHS-Education bill (June 2026) goes further. It eliminates Title II-A for FY27, rescinds $1.6 billion of the FY26 Title II-A money scheduled for October 2026, cuts Title I by $1.9 billion, and gives Title IV-A a small increase. It advanced out of the House Appropriations Committee on a party-line vote of 34 to 28. It has not passed the full House, and the Senate has not produced its own education bill. None of it takes effect unless it passes both chambers and is signed into law. Congress has not yet decided what FY27 will look like, and that decision is expected between December 2026 and March 2027 (AASA (opens in a new tab); NAESP (opens in a new tab)).

There is also a continuing resolution that is now law. The Senate approved it 90 to 6 in August, the House followed 370 to 48 on September 1, and the President signed it on September 2, 2026 as H.R. 6500, the Continuing Appropriations and Extensions Act, 2027. It holds FY26 funding levels through December 11, 2026, and it contains no rescission of Title II-A. For your purposes, that means no shutdown will interrupt the October 1 disbursement, and no clawback is in effect right now (Education Week (opens in a new tab); The White House (opens in a new tab)).

When Does the Money Actually Arrive?

Title II-A reaches states in two installments.

The first installment, roughly $500 million nationally, went out on July 1, 2026, on schedule and with no withholding. That is a meaningful change from July 2025, when the Department of Education held back all Title II-A funds for most of the month while it conducted a programmatic review.

The remaining amount, roughly $1.7 billion, is scheduled for October 1, 2026. The Department confirmed in August 2026 that it will distribute these funds through its normal G5 grants management system rather than routing them elsewhere (Education Week (opens in a new tab)).

For planning purposes, you can treat October 1 as the date your state receives its award. Your district will then draw down and distribute funds to schools on its own schedule, which typically adds several weeks. Ask your business office now when building-level Title II-A funds will be available to encumber, and whether your district has an encumbrance deadline later in the year, so you can plan your purchases around both dates.

What Is the $1.6 Billion Rescission, and Can It Reach Your District?

A rescission is a legislative action that takes back money Congress has already appropriated. The provision in the House FY27 bill would rescind $1.6 billion of the October 2026 Title II-A installment. It is a committee-passed provision only. It has not cleared the full House; it is not in the Senate’s work, and it is not in the continuing resolution.

A rescission can only reach unobligated funds. Money that a district has committed through a signed contract, an executed purchase order, or an incurred cost is obligated and cannot be pulled back. Districts sitting on unspent balances are the ones exposed, and that includes FY25 carryover, which many districts are still holding.

AASA, The School Superintendents Association, expects the House clawback to fail in the Senate, since any final appropriations bill needs 60 votes there and this one would not get them (AASA (opens in a new tab)). Though that’s a reasonable prediction, it is still simply a prediction rather than a guarantee, and you will not know for certain until Congress finishes the FY27 bill, which historically happens somewhere between December and March. Obligating your funds now means you do not have to wait for that answer and won’t have to worry about any later decisions.

How Long Do You Have to Spend Title II-A Funds?

Title II-A funds are available for 27 months from July 1 of the award year. That figure is 15 months of initial availability plus the 12-month Tydings extension (U.S. Department of Education (opens in a new tab)).

If your district is carrying an FY25 balance, you can look at it first. Those are the oldest dollars, they are the ones most likely to be characterized as unspent in any rescission conversation, and they expire soonest, so using them first is wise. After that, you can consider the FY26 balance.

Three Plans to Consider for This Fall

1. Commit this year’s allocation to work that finishes this school year

   Look for professional learning that starts and ends inside 2026-27. This can be things like coaching cycles tied to teachers already on growth plans. A literacy or math series with a defined number of sessions. Substitute coverage so teachers can observe one another. A subscription to an on-demand professional development platform. Conference registrations for the spring. Each of these can be obligated in the fall and delivered before June.

   Importantly, you can aim for a signed agreement or an executed purchase order before winter break. Since a line item in a spending plan does not obligate funds, you want to make sure you have a purchase order in place.

2. Do not build next year’s staffing on Title II alone

   There is still a real risk to Title II funds beginning in FY27. If Title II-A is eliminated or consolidated for 2027-28, districts that fund coach or mentor salaries entirely from this stream will face a mid-year problem next spring.

   Identify now which positions could shift to Title I schoolwide funds, Title IV-A, or local dollars if FY27 Title II-A winds up being eliminated. Education Week reported in May 2026 (opens in a new tab) that superintendents are already budgeting this way. They are spending this year’s money, and they are avoiding new multi-year or recurring commitments that assume the program survives.

3. Keep contract terms inside the funding window

   Structure agreements so the period of performance sits within the availability window for the funds paying for them. This will be things like annual terms with an option to renew, or annual invoicing rather than a multi-year payment. The next section walks through how to do this.

What About Multi-Year Subscriptions and Contracts?

Subscriptions and licenses for professional development content are an allowable Title II-A expense. For example, the California Department of Education states this explicitly in its Title II-A FAQ (opens in a new tab), and many other states also take that position. So the question is usually not whether you can buy a subscription with these funds, but how you should structure the purchase.

The issue comes down to timing. Federal cost principles require that a cost benefit the period the funds are available for, a rule known as allocability (2 CFR 200.403). In plain terms, you should not use FY26 dollars to pay for services your teachers will receive after those funds expire on September 30, 2028. This is why, for example, a three-year prepaid subscription tends to get flagged by district business offices, and several states go further by requiring the contract term to fall inside the grant year. If you choose to seek external professional development, simply request terms within your funding window.

There are a few contract structures that work just fine:

• A 12-month term with an annual renewal option. This is the most common approach and the simplest one for your business office to approve, since the service period clearly sits inside the funding window.

• A multi-year agreement with annual invoicing and a non-appropriation clause. You are billed one year at a time, and the clause allows your district to end the agreement if federal funding is not available in a future year.

• A price lock written into the contract terms rather than secured through prepayment. You can still protect yourself against a rate increase without committing funds to a period they were not appropriated for.

Before you sign anything, bring your business office into the conversation and ask how your district and state handle contract terms that cross fiscal years.

Dates to Watch

Here are a few upcoming dates for you to watch:

1. October 1, 2026Disbursement

   The second Title II-A installment reaches states.

2. December 11, 2026Continuing resolution

   The continuing resolution expires.

3. December 2026 through March 2027FY27 decision

   Congress finalizes the FY27 appropriations bill. This decision determines whether Title II-A exists for the 2027-28 school year.

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