This op-ed was originally published in The Kansas City Star on February 9, 2026.
By Drew Mitrisin
I wore my Timberlands last week. They’ve always been one size too big. When I was in Washington, D.C., in 2014, they were part of the uniform for my AmeriCorps program, City Year, an AmeriCorps program that places young adults in high-need schools for one year to provide the extra academic and emotional support students need to stay on track. I’d wear an extra pair of socks so they’d fit a little better. My role required a lot of walking. Walk to the bus at 6:30 a.m., hop on the Metro train, catch another bus and walk up a big hill from the bus stop to Leckie Elementary.
Every day, our team of 10 corps members would greet the students with morning chants, positive affirmations and high fives. We’d walk into our classrooms and pull students for small group interventions, help with lunch duty, coach students on socioemotional skills, and host after-school programs. Then catch the bus, Metro and another bus home and get ready to do it again the next day.
A year of national service. A year that changed the trajectory of my life and, I hope, helped my students stay on the path to graduation.
Since it was founded in 1993, more than 1 million people have completed a year of national service through AmeriCorps. For me, that was a year in a fourth-grade math classroom in a historically disadvantaged community in southeast D.C., just a few miles from the U.S. Capitol. Other AmeriCorps members perform disaster relief, energy and land conservation, tutoring, support services for older adults and other roles that strengthen our civic networks. All of us took the shared pledge: “I will get things done for America — to make our people safer, smarter, and healthier. I will bring Americans together to strengthen our communities.”
For a very modest monthly stipend ($800 in 2014) and the promise of an approximately $7,250 education award to be spent on student debt or future schooling, AmeriCorps members serve a year and get trained and exposed to a career path. For most of my teammates, that led to a career in education. Those oversized boots led me down a path toward a career in public policy.
National service for security, opportunity
How can the public sector help my students have access to healthy foods, reduce gun violence in their neighborhoods or improve reading scores? While AmeriCorps prompted me to ask those questions, which I continue to ask every day as a member of the Overland Park City Council, AmeriCorps also serves as an answer to those questions: boots on the ground in places that need help. Boots and uniforms that provide safety, security and opportunity.
Not only is AmeriCorps a solution — it’s a great deal for American taxpayers. The AmeriCorps budget per year is around $1 billion, but for every $1 spent by the U.S. government, $2 are leveraged by corporate or private donors, school partnerships or other matching funds. In Kansas City, those local partners for City Year Kansas City include CommunityAmerica Credit Union, the Hunt Family Foundation, Royals Charities, Hallmark, 15 and the Mahomies Foundation and many others. In other words, sophisticated private sector and philanthropic organizations that want to see their contributions go toward programs with the highest return on investment.
But it all starts with the baseline federal funding — and over the past year, that funding was under direct threat. Federal grant cancellations for 2025 affecting our region include: $178,497 to fund 30 AmeriCorps members to promote school readiness, trauma-informed counseling and occupational and speech therapy in central Kansas City; $124,986 to fund five AmeriCorps members to provide education and training and provider referrals and breast cancer screening navigation services to eligible low-income women throughout Missouri; $125,000 for AmeriCorps members to carry out conservation and disaster response service learning responsible for restoring 1,125 acres of vital habitat in Missouri.
DOGE cut grants, put staff on leave
And the list goes on. Nationally, the now-defunct Department of Government Efficiency or DOGE cut about $400 million in grants and placed 85% of federal AmeriCorps staff on leave. While some of those cuts were eventually reversed by the courts, there’s lasting damage when essential services are simply pulled without warning.
That’s why Congress’ decision last week to fund AmeriCorps at $1.25 billion for 2026 was so powerful. It reestablished AmeriCorps as something that is valued by the legislative branch, the branch that is supposed to oversee government funding. This 2026 funding restores stability for communities that cannot afford a lapse in AmeriCorps service.
Historically, AmeriCorps funding enjoyed strong bipartisan support, even if AmeriCorps advocates have had to fight hard against budget cuts. When not caught up in partisan crossfire, members of both parties understand the value AmeriCorps represents to the American taxpayer. Former U.S. Rep. Billy Long from southwest Missouri, conservative enough to receive a Trump administration appointment to serve as IRS commissioner, was an enthusiastic supporter of AmeriCorps. Why? Because when a devastating tornado hit Joplin in 2011, AmeriCorps members were on the scene within hours and more than 300 AmeriCorps members provided disaster relief in the months following the tornado.
Every time I lace up those Timberlands today, I’m reminded of the spirit of idealism that carried my team through our year of service. But I am also reminded of how much our neighbors are hurting right now. From the recent unrest in the Twin Cities to the protests on our own streets here in Overland Park and Kansas City, there is a palpable sense of anxiety about how the government shows up in our lives.
We often talk about “boots on the ground” as a measure of force or enforcement, but AmeriCorps represents a different kind of footprint. It represents a government that shows up to tutor a struggling reader, help an older adult navigate a health crisis or rebuild a town after a tornado.
Those oversized boots once helped me climb the hill to Leckie Elementary. Today, they remind me that we have a choice in the kind of presence we leave in our communities. We can focus on what divides us, or we can commit to the steady, uphill work of service — restoring not just our schools and lands, but our belief in what we can still build together.