In a budget the Trump administration deemed “efficient, effective, accountable,” thousands of D.C. students face the risk of losing significant financial aid to attend college. The Fiscal Year 2019 Budget Request to Congress included the elimination of the DC Tuition Assistance Grant (DCTAG).

Mayor Muriel Bowser launched #SaveDCTAG as a way to preserve the District’s grant for D.C. residents to receive funds towards out-of-state institutions.

Established in 1999, DCTAG provides up to $10,000 to college-bound D.C. residents. The grant goes toward paying the difference between in-state and out-of-state tuition at public colleges located in America. But Trump’s budget, released Feb. 12, proposed cutting DCTAG funding “because of a lack of a clear federal role for supporting the cost of higher education specifically for District residents,” the {Washington Post} reported.

“DCTAG is a successful program that has worked for years to expand educational opportunities for our young people, and it is unfathomable that any leader working to build a safer, stronger and more competitive country would choose to cut a program like this rather than expanding it,” Mayor Muriel Bowser (D) said in a statement last Monday.

The mayor’s office launched a #SaveDCTAG social media campaign to preserve the grant program, calling for petition signatures.

Congress created DCTAG in 1999 under the Clinton administration to address concern that college-bound students in the District were at a disadvantage because D.C. lacks a state university system. DCTAG expanded higher education opportunities by allowing D.C. students to attend public universities and colleges nationwide at in-state tuition rates.

Since DCTAG’s implementation, 26,000 District students have been able to enroll in college, most of whom reside in the majority-Black Wards 4, 5, 7, and 8. Overall, Washington, D.C., is majority Black and has about a 20 percent rate of geographical mobility.

“I want to assure D.C. parents and students, thousands of whom are away at college now, that I do not believe they are in danger of losing their DCTAG funds,” U.S. Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) said in a statement. “DCTAG has been funded every year by Republican and Democratic Congresses alike and, unlike Trump this year, Republican presidents as well, since its creation. This draconian and backwards budget shows how out of touch this administration is with reality.”

Norton said, in a statement, she has been working with appropriators during the negotiations for the upcoming fiscal year 2018 omnibus to secure the $40 million annual amount she has gotten for DCTAG the past two fiscal years.

According to the proposal, the budget provides $501 million for Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Minority-Serving Institutions (MSIs), and Hispanic-Serving Institutions

(HSIs) through the Higher Education Act to help close gaps among racial and socioeconomic groups in college enrollment and degree attainment.