BATON ROUGE (LSU Manship School News Service) — With President Donald Trump slashing the federal education budget, Louisiana school superintendents are scrambling to determine if they will lose any of the $2.7 billion in federal K-12 funding that has supported local school districts for years.

“We don’t have any backup for the funds if they were cut,” said Johnnie Adams, the school superintendent in Catahoula Parish. “Anything they cut, there’s a very slim chance we would have any other way to continue that program. Or if we did, we would be cutting money from something else.”

“I’d just like to share that our schools are in need,” Adams added, “and any financial help they can give to help us be more successful for our students would be greatly appreciated.”

In Calcasieu Parish, school superintendent Jason VanMetre acknowledged the uncertainty surrounding the situation, saying, “Things are still a bit up in the air on this situation, so I really don’t have comment at this time.”

President Trump campaigned on dismantling the federal Department of Education, and his administration has cut the department’s workforce almost in half. This push aligns with his larger plan to lessen federal supervision and transfer authority to the states, and for some educators in Louisiana, that brings hope.

“What I anticipate is that more of the funding that is supposedly being spent for education will actually get to the schools that are charged with educating children,” said Jeff Powell, the superintendent of schools in Rapides Parish.

He hopes that money that was paid in salaries and benefits to federal employees will be redirected to school systems “so that we can get the funds where they’re needed in order to have an academic return on investment.”

The U.S. Education Department distributes funding for K-12 schools, including many that are given federal money to help low-income families.

The department also manages federal loans for college and post-secondary students and enforces civil rights laws in schools.

During her confirmation hearing, Linda McMahon, Trump’s education secretary, said she did not know of plans to cut the core grants on which states like Louisiana depend.

But Trump has said he expects her to shrink the department so much that she puts herself out of a job.

The changes also have raised concerns about the ability of state governments to make up for any reduction in federal funds.

Educational programs in Louisiana, especially those helping low-income and disabled students, depend significantly on federal support. Cuts to the state education budget could endanger crucial services to schools in Louisiana, including special education programs and free meal programs since the state would have trouble coming up with the money itself.

Louisiana also receives $14 billion a year in federal grants for its Medicaid program, and some of that money also could be threatened by budget cuts being considered in Washington.

During her confirmation hearing, McMahon said: “We will empower states and districts to have more say in what is working on the ground for students instead of bureaucratic edicts from Washington, D.C.”

Powell, the Rapides Parish superintendent, cited that comment and recalled the nearly $200 billion the federal government sent to schools around the country in response to the COVID-19 epidemic.

He said Louisiana’s share of that money helped it rise to No. 32 on a national assessment of 4th and 8th grade reading and math scores from No. 49 five years ago.

Powell said he hoped that the savings from firing federal education workers also would lead to more money being sent to the states.

Last Tuesday, the Education Department announced it was firing more than 1,300 workers. These layoffs, in addition to employees who accepted separation packages and probationary workers, terminated last month, bring the department down to barely more than half the size it was at the start of the year.

While Trump cannot dismantle the department entirely without approval from Congress, the cuts are part of an effort toward that goal.

But Trump officials also have said that they are firing workers throughout the government to save money and reduce the increase in federal budget deficits expected to come from plans to extend the 2017 federal tax cuts.

And some education experts say the magnitude of the cuts at the Education Department is likely to hurt some school districts, especially in rural areas.

“You can’t just move dollars like that without downstream impacts on individual districts,” Joshua Cowen, an education policy professor at Michigan State University, told NBC News.

“Like rural communities that really rely on the ability to easily, quickly interface with their own state agency and with the U.S. Department of Education to just get what they need, get decisions made, get dollars cleared.”