Public schools around the country averted an immediate spending crisis when Congress voted Tuesday afternoon to pass an 11th-hour deal to raise the debt ceiling and prevent the government from defaulting on its loans, writes Joy Resmovits at the Huffington Post.

A default could have increased school systems’ capital, borrowing and construction costs, forcing spending cuts in areas closely related to student learning.

Schools have already suffered massive cuts in recent years, and lost about 200,000 public education employees, due to the recession and the drying up of stimulus funds.

The debt deal’s changes to the Pell Grant program, which helps disadvantaged students pay for college, have been highly publicized, but details of what the debt deal will mean for K-12 education funding are a bit hazier.

According to Joel Packer, executive director of the Committee for Education Funding, Title I and IDEA could still be vulnerable to cuts.

“There might be fewer services to students with disabilities,” Packer said. Because public schools are legally required to provide those services, other local education expenditures would have to be cut to make up the difference.

Education groups have come out against the debt deal. Packer’s CEF wrote a letter disparaging the agreement, saying the $1.5 trillion in deficit reduction required by the end of the year could “result in deeper cuts to education and children’s programs.”