The United States Department of Education is shooting almost 1,400 employees asking questions about how the Federal Government will maintain its obligations under the Information Education Law with disabilities and other laws.
The agency said that with the layoffs announced on Tuesday night, its workforce will be approximately half the size that was when President Donald Trump was inaugurated in January. Almost 600 employees have already renounced or retired since then.
The cuts will affect each division within the agency, the Department of Education said, and some are expected to see an important reorganization. However, officials indicated that they would maintain legal programs that include formula funds, competitive subsidies and «financing for special needs students.»
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«Today’s reduction reflects the commitment of the Department of Education with efficiency, accountability and guarantee that resources are directed when they import: for students, parents and teachers,» said the Secretary of Education Linda McMahon.
Trump has pledged to close the Department of Education and McMahon said that the reduction of the workforce is a step towards complying with that objective.
«What we did today was to take the first step to eliminate what I think is a bureaucratic swelling,» McMahon said in an interview in Fox News. She said that the staff is being held to ensure that programs as an idea, that they receive appropriations of the Congress, do not «fall into cracks.» But, when asked what idea represented, McMahon said it was only his fifth day at work.
«I am not sure to be able to tell you exactly what it represents, except that they are the programs for disabled and needs,» he said.
McMahon has outlined plans to return control over education to the United States. She has proposed a mobile supervision of the idea to the Department of Health and Human Services and sends the Office of Civil Rights of the Department of Education, which manages complaints of discrimination against disability in schools, to the Department of Justice.
Disability defenders have warned that efforts to dismantle the Department of Education could have a huge impact on 7.5 million students of special education in the nation. The agency sends billions in funds to the states every year and supervises everything, from early intervention for young children with disabilities to vocational rehabilitation. The department is also responsible for ensuring that the civil rights of students with disabilities are protected.
«Trump and McMahon cannot eliminate the education department without an act of Congress, but he can suffocate, strangle and cut this knee department,» said Marcie Lipsitt, a Michigan Special Education defender who routinely helps families complaints before the civil rights office of the Department of Education. «The reduction proposed by Secretary McMahon of an already insufficient personnel is nothing more than a destripation of the public education institution for the children of the United States and their parents.»
Even before the shots, Lipsitt said that the complaint processing in the agency had decreased considerably since Trump assumed the position. Without the application of the Department of Education, he said that families often have little resource when schools do not fulfill their special education obligations.
«This reduction of personnel will be the end of any application on the idea 2004, section 504 and the ADA,» he said. «Parents will panic.»
Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association, which represents millions of educators, predicted that changes at the federal level will be reduced to the classroom.
«The true victims will be our most vulnerable students,» he said. «By gartering the Department of Education, it will send to the upward class sizes, it will reduce job training programs, it will make higher education more expensive and beyond the reach of middle -class families, it will eliminate special education services for students with disabilities and protection against civil rights of intestinal students.»
The defenders are now weighing the next steps.
«We are deeply concerned that the department does not have the ability to maintain its obligations under the law,» said Denise S. Marshall, CEO of the Board of Lawyers and Lawyers of Mothers, or Copaa, a non -profit organization that advocates for the rights of students with disabilities and their families. «Our children deserve better and take any necessary action to protect their right to quality education.»
(Updated: March 12, 2025 at 12:05 pm et)
