This week, WQED Multimedia laid off four full-time staff and one part-time employee and announced the suspension of its Creator Academy, formerly known as WQED Film Academy and before that, Steeltown Entertainment Project.
In an online post at wqed.org/thecreatoracademy, WQED cited the “unprecedented threats to federal funding for the arts, education, and public broadcasting” as the reason for the suspension of its youth media education program.
But WQED president and CEO Jason Jedlinski acknowledged WQED was not expecting to receive further funding from NEA before its new fiscal year in October.
“This decision was multi-faceted, and not about any single grant,” Jedlinski said. “We continually assess and adapt our programs to align with funding realities, community impact and WQED’s long-term sustainability.”
Jedlinski declined to provide names or job titles of those who were let go, other than to confirm that they are all Creator Academy staff. The layoffs are effective Friday.
Creator Academy received more than $50,000 from the National Endowment for the Arts to offset wages for Creator Academy staff in the past.
The NEA began terminating grants on May 2, hours after President Donald Trump proposed eliminating the agency in his next budget, per The New York Times.
On its website, WQED explained, “We must be prudent with our resources while various legal challenges work through the courts.”
WQED’s website announcement states that students and families who expressed interest in Creator Academy’s summer session were notified and will receive refunds on tuition deposits. The site also says, “We hope to resume youth media education programming as we get more clarity about past and future sources of funding. We expect the Creator Academy will evolve. We plan to create community-based, accessible educational experiences with broad impact and equity across the many communities we serve.”
The suspension of Creator Academy comes less than a week after President Trump announced his intention to defund public media, including PBS and NPR, even as PBS president Paula Kerger said such a move would be “blatantly unlawful” because the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which distributes public funding to public media outlets, is not a federal executive agency subject to Trump’s orders.
Since then, the U.S. Department of Education terminated Ready To Learn, a federal grant program that funds educational efforts and TV shows for children, despite the first installment of the terminated grant having been awarded by the first Trump administration in 2020, per The New York Times.
A spokeswoman for Pittsburgh-based Fred Rogers Productions said none of its children’s programs is a current Ready To Learn grantee.
Jedlinski said funding from Ready To Learn was not used for Creator Academy, but Ready To Learn funding has been a foundation of WQED’s Learning Neighborhoods, “funding community partnerships designed to reach children wherever they live, play and learn.”
Jedlinski said WQED has received Ready To Learn grants for 15 years, with the latest cycle focused on education efforts in Washington County.
“This early termination affects some of our ongoing programs in Washington County along with statewide professional development efforts for educators,” Jedlinski wrote in an email. WQED also posted to its website about the impact of Ready To Learn cuts.
Jedlinski said no members of WQED’s education department have been let go.
Jedlinski did not give budget specifics.
“We decline to provide additional information beyond the extensive financial documents already public on our website, wqed.org/public-documents,” he said.
With the exception of some Ready to Learn grant funding and $31,175 pending from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, Jedlinski said WQED has been reimbursed for all contracted federal funding for the current fiscal year.
“We have a number of pending grants with various agencies in various stages of pipelines that are unlikely to come to fruition,” Jedlinski said. “We continue pursuing other sources of private and public funding for WQED’s services to communities in southwestern Pennsylvania. However, no gift can possibly replace the scope and scale of federal funding and the essential local-national partnerships that sustain public media as we know it.”