His kids have their pencils, notebooks and enthusiasm. They’re ready to go back to school. But as their father, Pedro Ruiz doesn’t know if he is.

For more than four years, Ruiz, 41, his partner, Elizabeth Zambrano, 42, have benefitted from 21st Century Community Learning Centers, a federally funded initiative that provides free after-school and summer school programs for low-income families like theirs. It eases some of the hardships they face raising their own four children and a niece.

But days before federal money for 21st Century Community Learning Centers was to be disbursed to states, the Trump administration froze nearly $7 billion in education funding, sending officials scrambling and leaving families like that of Ruiz and Zambrano in limbo. The administration said it paused the

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