Mass layoffs at the Department of Education announced Tuesday will affect every division within the agency, leaving many worried about what resources will be left to support vulnerable children.
There will be approximately 2,200 employees remaining after the layoffs, down from about 4,000, according to the department. President Donald Trump has long said he would like to completely dissolve the department — a goal Secretary of Education Linda McMahon has said she “wholeheartedly supports,” as HuffPost previously reported.
“Today’s reduction in force reflects the Department of Education’s commitment to efficiency, accountability, and ensuring that resources are directed where they matter most: to students, parents, and teachers,” McMahon said in a statement about the cuts. Education Department staffers being laid off will be placed on leave starting March 21, according to an agency press release.
Sheria Smith, the president of American Federation of Government Employees Local 252, which represents more 2,800 employees at the agency, said in a statement that the mass firings show that the Trump administration “has no respect for the thousands of workers who have dedicated their careers to serve their fellow Americans.”
“It is also clear that there is a rampant disinformation campaign to mislead Americans about the actual services, resources, grants, and programs that the U.S. Department of Education provides to all Americans,” she added.
The agency has said that programs that are written into law like Title I funding for low-income schools, resources for special education programs, and financial assistance for low-income college students would continue — just with a reduced staff.
But it’s unclear if the agency can still properly administer those programs after such dramatic cuts.
“A lot of the work is making sure funds are spent appropriately,” Jon Valant, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, told HuffPost, referring to the programs the agency has said will continue. “If you just hand money to a school district and you don’t pay attention to where they’re spending it, that’s a huge problem. It’ll be more prone to abuse.”
“They seem hellbent on sabotaging their own department and undercutting its ability to actually fulfill its core duties,” Valant added.
McMahon said on Fox News that the layoffs were simply about getting rid of “bureaucratic bloat.” But some of the divisions that have been hard hit — such as the Institute for Educational Science, the agency’s research arm — perform core functions.
IES studies and analyzes how to produce the best educational outcomes for public school students. It had already been hit by cuts brought on by the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, the Elon Musk-led advisory group that has been wreaking havoc across the federal government since Trump returned to power.
But the new round of layoffs threaten the very existence of IES.
“What they’re doing to IES, it functionally means there’s no research arm,” Valant said. “It’s collecting data to help us learn about educational outcomes, but it just can’t do that anymore.”
The department’s Office of Civil Rights, which handles complaints from students and their families about discrimination at school, is also being gutted by the layoffs, according to documents reviewed by HuffPost.
The office has a yearslong backlog of complaints, which Trump already exacerbated by freezing thousands of pending complaints (about half were from kids with disabilities). The layoffs are sure to make the backlog worse — McMahon has whittled OCR’s 11 regional offices down to six, including the one in Dallas that handles complaints from across the South.
“Is chaos and confusion that we are experiencing going to carry over to our students, especially if they’re waiting for results from our agency?” Brittany Coleman, the national shop steward for AFGE Local 252, said Wednesday on a press call. Coleman and Smith both worked in the Dallas regional office before receiving termination notices.
Under previous administrations, there was a step-by-step process to resolve complaints. But under Trump, the Department of Education has skipped to the end of the process and issued ultimatums to institutes and schools it feels don’t align with the president’s priorities.
The Office of English Language Acquisition, which helps public school students learn English, has been abolished, according to documents reviewed by HuffPost. The office doles out grants for educators who teach and support students learning English and for research that studies the best way to support these types of learners. The Trump administration has laid off every single person doing that work.
The shuttering of the office comes at a time when immigrant children are increasingly under attack. Earlier this year, the administration rescinded a rule that kept immigration agents from entering schools, sparking fear and anxiety in students who come from immigrant families. Several states have introduced bills that would bar undocumented children from going to school — in violation of a 1982 U.S. Supreme Court decision.
Officially dismantling the Education Department would require congressional approval, but these sweeping cuts bring Trump perilously close to his goal.
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“We will still have a Department of Education. On the surface, it will have some of the same structures, but it will be hollowed out,” Valant said. “And what’s left is going to be weaponized in ways that align with the Trump administration.”
