Time to Lift the Veil on Foreign Funding in K-12 Schools

State lawmakers in Georgia just won a major battle in the long war to reveal foreign influence in America’s K-12 public schools. A new bill, which recently passed both chambers of the state legislature, will force universities and local school districts to disclose when countries such as China and Qatar fund American schools.

Starting in July 2027, the Foreign Funding Transparency and Accountability Act will require public school districts, public universities, and technical colleges to report when they receive $10,000 or more in funding from certain foreign countries or entities. Georgia’s governor has until the end of April to sign the bill into state law.

Currently, federal law requires that universities report foreign gifts more than $250,000, but there is no such requirement for K-12 schools. Georgia State Rep. Esther Panitch, a Democrat who co-sponsored the legislation, explained why she was pushing for the law during a February 26 hearing. “Sunshine. Transparency. Letting parents and taxpayers know who is funding their children’s education,” Panitch said.

Qatari Influence in Georgia K-12 Schools Pushed Lawmakers to Act

At the hearing, Panitch cited FDD’s research into how the Qatari royal family’s U.S. charity arm, Qatar Foundation International (QFI), had spent at least $281,000 on education in Georgia. QFI is a Washington, D.C.-based LLC and is financed by the Qatari royal family through the Doha-based Qatar Foundation.

From 2021 to 2025, QFI gave five grants to Georgia State University to fund the Arabic Teachers Council of the South. The council is made up of K-12 Arabic teachers and college-level instructors. The group hosts teacher trainings and workshops that sometimes advance a political agenda. During a March 2024 teacher workshop, facilitators taught attendees how to avoid parental involvement and scrutiny when introducing social justice lessons in their classrooms.

Over the last 10 years, QFI also gave at least $79,000 to Amana Academy, a public K-8 charter school in Alpharetta, Georgia, that offers Arabic classes beginning in kindergarten. QFI funds paid for Arabic textbooks, vocabulary games, and student trips abroad. In a 2023 LinkedIn post, Amana Academy praised QFI for the grant, which allowed the school to take 17 students and staffers on a nine-day cultural tour of Qatar. The Persian Gulf state is officially a U.S. ally but has provided a home for leaders of terrorist groups, including Hamas.

Georgia Legislation Sheds Light on Grants From Problematic Sources

To avoid overburdening school officials, state lawmakers are not requiring schools to disclose all funding from any foreign country or foreign entity. Instead, the bill mandates that once money from a foreign source hits a total of $10,000, either in a series of grants or a single payment, the school must report it. If a school fails to disclose, state officials can issue a fine ranging from $5,000 up to three times “the amount of reportable funding the public educational institution failed to disclose.”

The bill requires disclosure only from countries or entities that the U.S. government deems as a country of concern, such as Iran, Russia, and China. While Qatar is not officially a country of concern, Georgia lawmakers included disclosure rules for foreign countries that are monarchies and share a border with a country of concern, or a country on the Special Watch List for a lack of religious freedom. The royal House of Thani runs the Qatari government and the country shares a land border with Watch List member Saudi Arabia and a maritime border with Iran.

Georgia Shows How States Can Act Despite Delays in Congress

Georgia is not the only state where QFI has sent money to influence K-12 classrooms. QFI gave a five-year grant of $465,000 to Tucson public schools in 2013 to fund the district’s Arabic programs. In New York, QFI has given more than $1 million to two public elementary schools in Brooklyn over the last few years. But Georgia has shown how it is possible to advance legislation that forces Qatar and other countries of concern to fully disclose its relationships with K-12 schools and classrooms across the United States.

Simone Weichselbaum is a research fellow with the Education and National Security Program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD). For more analysis from the author and FDD, please subscribe HERE. Follow Simone on X @SimoneJWei. Follow FDD on X @FDD. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.