“Before I learned English, I couldn’t talk to people around me. Now I can take classes at the community college.”
“I was able to obtain U.S. citizenship and vote in my first election.”
“Now, I have my dream job in IT at UVA.”
These are testimonials from just three of the thousands of adults who learned to speak, read, and write English with help from Literacy Volunteers Charlottesville/Albemarle since the nonprofit started in 1983.
But the organization may not be able to help as many people achieve these and other goals going forward. Literacy Volunteers is one of two local adult education programs bracing for an uncertain future as U.S. Secretary of Education and former wrestling magnate Linda McMahon works to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education on President Donald Trump’s order.
Federal funds still haven’t arrived and come with new strings attached to limit help for undocumented immigrants
On July 1, the U.S. Department of Education froze the disbursement of more than $6 billion in already-awarded federal education grants, including K-12 grants and those meant for adult literacy, English language acquisition programs, and more. (Read more about what the U.S. Department of Education does and does not do in this article from NPR.)
Literacy Volunteers faced a potential loss of about $100,000, which amounts to 25% of its overall annual budget, said Executive Director Ellen Osborne — money it was counting on to continue serving the approximately 400 students it has this year.
The outlook was even worse for Thomas Jefferson Adult Career Education (TJACE) at Piedmont Virginia Community College, which faced the loss of nearly 70% of its total annual budget. TJACE at PVCC helps adults earn high school diplomas and GEDs, and build academic and language skills to help them advance in their careers. Approximately $700,000 of TJACE’s $1.1 million annual budget comes from federal grants, Susian Brooks, executive director of marketing and communications for PVCC, wrote in a prepared statement she emailed to Charlottesville Tomorrow.
And while most of those funds have since been unfrozen, as ABC News reported on July 25, some organizations are still waiting to receive them.
That’s in part because the federal government changed how those funds can be used — and who they can help.
On August 15, the Virginia Department of Education, which facilitates the disbursement of federal grants to local programs, sent an email notifying school districts and partner organizations of these changes.
The federal government now requires that any federal funding used for certain adult education programs meet the parameters laid out in a 2025 update to the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996. The changes prevent federal money from being used for the benefit of certain immigrants, including undocumented ones.
“Moving forward, the Department will work with state and local grantees, as well as subgrantees, to ensure that Federal public benefit usage is limited to U.S. citizens, residents, and certain eligible nonresidents,” Acting Assistant Secretary for Postsecondary Education at the U.S. Department of Education Christopher McCaghren wrote in a July 10 letter to grantees.
The Virginia Department of Education provided further guidance in its own email.
“These verification requirements require that your school division or program ensures that non-qualified aliens do not receive payment under your program, are not provided or receiving services funded by the program, and that non-qualified aliens are not able to access any Federal public benefit that may be imparted via these programs,” it said.
The agency required all organizations still hoping for their frozen funding to sign an attestation confirming that they will follow those guidelines.
“We have to spend more time discussing new regulations,” said Literacy Volunteers’ Osborne. “After reading all of it carefully, we’re signing the attestation and getting back to doing what we’re supposed to be doing — teaching.”
Osborne is hopeful that now that the Virginia Department of Education has the money, Literacy Volunteers will get its grant soon. But there’s no guarantee that they’ll have it next year.
And if they do get that funding, there’s a chance it will come with further restrictions on who they are able to serve. The U.S. Department of Education has struck a deal to outsource the management of several grant programs — including ones for adult education — to the U.S. Department of Labor, the Associated Press reported in July.
It is still unclear how that will all work out in practice, Steven Reid, programs manager with Literacy Volunteers, told Charlottesville Tomorrow. Neither the federal government nor the Virginia Department of Education have issued any official guidance on it.
“It is incredibly difficult to predict what is going to happen,” said Reid. “We think — definitely conjecture here — that there will be a stronger push toward adult education being predominantly focused on people in the workforce, primarily between the ages of 18 and 55.”
“That could potentially limit funds to work with people who are not in the labor force, such as stay-at-home parents, retired people, or people with disabilities preventing employment,” he added.
On top of all that, Reid said, the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, the grant that funds adult education nationally, is currently supported only through continuation grants, and has not been reauthorized at the federal level. It is unclear how that grant, which is already administered by the Department of Labor, will exist in the budget for the next federal fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1.
All of this uncertainty isn’t just limited to the U.S. Department of Education, either. Literacy Volunteers is still waiting on a $50,000 grant from the U.S. Office of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), which is supposed to come in via the City of Charlottesville, Osborne said. The money has been promised to the city, but HUD has not yet released the funds to the states, which in turn release it to localities.
‘We’re always full. We always have a waiting list.’
Since it was established in 1983, Literacy Volunteers has helped thousands of people in the Charlottesville area learn to read, write, and speak English. Initially, the organization worked primarily with people who had dropped out of high school. But as Charlottesville’s demographics shifted, so did the people coming to Literacy Volunteers for help.
Currently, the organization serves a lot of immigrants and refugees. That’s in part because Charlottesville is a designated resettlement area with the International Rescue Committee, a global nonprofit humanitarian agency that helps people who are fleeing war, persecution, political upheaval and other humanitarian crises. The Charlottesville office, which opened in 1998, is one of 28 throughout the U.S.
As a result, “there’s quite a bit of need” for English-language skills in the Charlottesville area, Osborne said. “We’re always full. We always have a waiting list.”
Literacy Volunteers generally works with folks who have low, or no, English literacy, Osborne said. And they do it for free. The organization trains about 100 new tutors per year, and some of them work with their students for years. Students can stay as long as they need to reach their goals.
The organization has a wide variety of learning materials in its office at the Jefferson School City Center near downtown Charlottesville. It has a large collection of beginner books for adult learners at a variety of levels, and in a variety of topics that appeal to adults — biographies, history, science, romance — as well as textbooks, flashcards, magnetic letters, and a slew of other materials. Adults aren’t exactly looking to read P.D. Eastman’s Go, Dog. Go!, Osborne said.
Tutors say that the content of their one-on-one sessions often depends on what the students themselves want to learn.
One student wanted to become more proficient in English in order to earn her food safety certification, said tutor Margaret Sheehan. Sheehan based those lessons around the language and concepts in the food safety certification manual.
Others wanted to learn enough English to take their driver’s test, or the U.S. citizenship test — which is not easy, Sheehan says. When she had a student studying for the citizenship exam, Sheehan found herself turning to the back of the book looking for answers to questions that she, an American citizen herself, didn’t know.
Many people come to Literacy Volunteers wanting to learn English so that they can become part of the community, Osborne said. They want to communicate with their children’s teachers and with their neighbors. They want to be able to talk to a doctor and understand what’s going on with their health.
“All of these little things that you or I don’t think about on a daily basis, those things are so much harder if you don’t speak the language,” said Osborne.
‘We started as a very small, all-volunteer organization in a church basement. I hope we don’t have to go back to that.’
Since its founding, Literacy Volunteers has used a combination of philanthropy, state, and federal grants to fund its services, Osborne said. Over the past decade, it has received money from the federally-mandated Integrated English Literacy and Civics Education (IELCE) program, which is specifically designed to help immigrants and refugees learn the language and customs of the U.S. — exactly what Literacy Volunteers does.
This year, the organization was awarded $100,000 in IELCE funding from the U.S. Department of Education, but that was part of the July funding freeze. Even though the funds have reportedly been unfrozen, Osborne said Literacy Volunteers won’t count on the money until she sees it. This was supposed to be the third year of a three-year grant.
Normally, Literacy Volunteers would be getting ready to reapply for that grant — something they’ve been very successful in in previous years, because the program demonstrates very good outcomes to the Virginia Department of Education, Osborne said. In short, Literacy Volunteers is successful in its mission. But without guidance from the state or the federal government about whether or not they’ll even receive the money they’ve already been awarded, the organization isn’t sure whether, or how, to move forward.
Even before the IELCE news, the organization was facing a funding shortfall after another grant it had applied for and received, was cancelled. This one was through U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, an arm of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Literacy Volunteers was supposed to receive $34,000 per year for two years from that grant, to help provide citizenship instruction and naturalization services.
“It means that we have to do more fundraising,” Osborne said. Literacy Volunteers has three full-time, and two part-time, paid staff who work out of the organization’s office in the Jefferson School City Center. “We have to continue to cut costs wherever we can.”
Most of the organization’s costs are staff salaries and rent, Osborne said, so that’s where the cuts would likely come from. Staff are the people who recruit, train, and support the volunteer tutors. They’re the ones who match volunteers and students, and who select the curriculum appropriate for each individual student. They work with students on computer learning systems, offer professional development opportunities for volunteers, and more.
“We may accept fewer students in order to serve them — and their tutors — better,” Osborne said.
“We started as a very small, all-volunteer organization in a church basement,” she added, pointing out how much the organization has grown in the past 42 years. “I hope we don’t have to go back to that.”
Folks who have enough proficiency, either when they arrive in Charlottesville, or after working with a Literacy Volunteers tutor, go to TJACE, the adult education program whose future is even more uncertain than Literacy Volunteers’. From TJACE, students can go on to take classes — and earn certificates and degrees — at PVCC.
A spokesperson for PVCC did not reply to Charlottesville Tomorrow’s inquiry about how many students and faculty would be affected, and specifics about how they would be affected, by a federal funding shortfall.
Osborne worries about how much harder life in the U.S. will be for community members served by both Literacy Volunteers and TJACE at PVCC if federal funding for these programs and others is greatly reduced, or worse, goes away completely. They’re the ones who will suffer the greatest losses, she said.
“This is a group of people who are actively seeking out education,” Osborne said. “You can’t just stand there, open your hands, and have education flow into your brain. These folks are willing to put in the work and do what’s needed: do the homework, show up for their tutoring, or their class, and really put forth the effort.”
Literacy Volunteers touts the accomplishments of its students on its social media accounts. In the spring, the organization posted that one of their students had been accepted into PVCC’s nursing degree program, and another was pursuing HVAC training through PVCC’s Workforce Services program. Another had made a doctor’s appointment in English for the first time. Multiple Literacy Volunteers students became citizens at the naturalization ceremony at Monticello in July.
Some students too afraid of federal agents to meet for lessons, tutors say
Even before the funding chaos, things were looking different for Literacy Volunteers tutors and students.
Tutors say that due to an uptick of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids reported around the country and in Virginia, many students are afraid to meet for in-person lessons. Virginia is one of the states showing the most aggressive efforts to arrest and remove “unauthorized immigrants,” according to an Axios report from June, even those with no criminal record.
“I have one student who is reluctant to leave her home,” said tutor Kathy Sublette. “That’s not about budget cuts. They feel besieged.”
“They have so much to offer, they have so much to contribute,” said Caroline Wilhelm, a tutor with Literacy Volunteers. “We should be so thrilled that they are now part of our country and our community, and the fact that our efforts to integrate them are hindered, that’s a real loss for Charlottesville.”
