My advice is to chalk this up as a lesson learned. Publics don’t claim to meet need, and they don’t meet need.Even if they have pograms to meet need (esp for super low income folks), they aren’t obligated and the available funds vary from year to year.
In short, public schools are not financially friendly in terms of aid. They would say that the friendliness is already packaged into the low price (when compared to privates).
One thing to consider is that in future years, if you have a sibling enrolled along with you your EFC will go down. This likely won’t matter at a public, but may help at a private.