The Trump administration began demolishing the U.S. Department of Education by firing about half of the institution’s employees, throwing out billions of federal dollars, or billions of federal dollars, how California is distributed to underprivileged and disabled students, how university financial aid and student loans are managed, how they support civil rights enforcement, or whether they will throw billions of federal dollars.
In San Francisco, the Civil Rights Bureau’s local branch, which has already been repeated in the investigation of school-related discrimination, will be closed. This is one of the broader impacts of layoffs claiming to be sending trembling through the school system, including Los Angeles Unification.
“These reckless layoffs sow up chaos and disruption throughout our country’s public school system,” said Guillermo Mayer, president and CEO of Public Advocator, a California-based law firm and advocacy group. “Instead of enhancing learning outcomes, the immediate effects of these behaviors are extremely cruel. It makes millions of parents, especially those with disabilities, worry about whether their children will receive the services they need.”
“That scares me in the minds of tens of thousands of low-income people wondering what will happen to my financial aid. Can I afford a university?” Mayer said.
L.A. Board of Education member Kelly Ghontz sponsored a resolution on Tuesday on cutting federal education funding and worked on federal layoffs on Wednesday.
“We serve one of the most diverse populations in the country,” says Gonez. “We are proud to serve immigrant families, many students of colour, and students from low-income backgrounds. So it’s a direct attack on the students and families that make up the majority of our students, which is why the risk of potential harm is so high. We still value it, but these are very concerning about the steps we are looking at.”
LA Schools Supt. Alberto Carvalho said he is concerned about the future level of federal funding, as well as the potential policy changes to the way it distributes, including the district’s $460 million annual Title I money for academic support to offset the impact of poverty. California will receive $2 billion in Title I funds distributed to school districts.
Education Secretary Linda McMahon tried to dispel concerns by saying the administration would protect Congress’s funding proxy.
She said the layoffs reflect the department’s “commitment to efficiency, accountability and ensuring resources are directed to where students, parents and teachers are most important.”
According to the administration, when President Trump took office, the education sector had a workforce of 4,133 people. After the layoffs become effective, the number will be 2,183 workers, including those who have previously resigned, those who have agreed to the acquisition, or those who have been fired for being a trial employee.
“We wanted to keep all the right people, the good people, and make sure that outward programs (grants, spending coming from Congress) reached everything and never went through the cracks,” McMahon told Fox News.
The accelerated rewinding of the agency was expected to be caused by one of Trump’s executive orders. However, McMahon was clearly given the authority to act without delay.
It also revealed that the Trump administration’s effect on education is not conditioned on the existence of the Department of Education, which he pledged to close during the campaign and called the “big fraudulent job” that permeated “extremists, enthusiasts and Marxists.”
The administration took swift action to withhold funding for schools and universities based on ideological evidence. The risk of losing recent directed agencies or federal government money to end “discriminatory” diversity, equity and inclusion programs. Another transgender student as a group protected from discrimination.
Among the latest is the federal Trump administration granted to Columbia University because the government explains that the schools couldn’t stop anti-Semitism on campus. The cancellation warned against free speech defenders, despite Colombia establishing a new disciplinary committee and strengthening Israeli-criminal students and investigation into the war in Gaza.
On Sunday, Mahmoud Khalil is a prominent Palestinian activist and recent Colombian alumnus who holds a green card, and is touched by authorities in the legal battle for detention. The Trump administration has sought to deport him for his leadership role in pro-Palestinian protests at universities, prompting campus gatherings at UCLA, UCLA, Berkeley, California and other campuses, supporting Khalil, who has not been charged with crimes.
Trump has vowed to deport foreign students who he said were engaged in “pro-terrorist, anti-Semitism and anti-American activities.” Students say the administration is illegally attacking immigration and freedom of speech.
The University of California and USC are currently investigating the federal government’s allegations that they are not properly addressing anti-Semitism on campus.
Non-government democratically-led states and groups have appealed to stop several orders that they say are illegal and motivated by Trump’s hostility towards what he characterizes as a “awakening” indoctrination in education.
On March 6, California joined seven states over the cancellation of $250 million worth of grants for a teacher training program funded through the education sector. The administration said the program promotes inappropriate and “schised ideology” related to diversity, equity and inclusion known as DEI. A federal judge on Monday when he reviewed the case.
“Final Mission”
Even before she was confirmed as Education Secretary by the Senate last week, McMahon was ordered by Trump to “push herself out of work” by dismantling the department.
Shortly after confirmation, McMahon spoke about “the final mission of our department” and issued an ambiguous A for details. The division had a pre-Trump budget of around $80 billion this year. The department’s salary and benefits were set at approximately $917 million.
Before McMahon took over control, officials working with the government’s Efficiency Bureau, a White House advisory team led by billionaire Elon Musk, not federal agencies, had already broken the Institute for Educational Sciences, which collects data on the country’s academic progress and employee scores.
Sara Schapiro, executive director of The, is particularly concerned about these cuts. “States usually don’t have the ability to do such research and store data. They really rely on the federal government to publish and share research on gold standards that can be used afterwards.”
In previous statements, McMahon and Trump spoke about returning state authority over education.
However, the state already funds most of its education spending, with policies being primarily made at the state and local school district level. Still, local officials believe federal funding contributions (approximately 7% to 20% of the budget) are important.
It is possible for the federal government to retreat, but that is a seemingly contradictory position for Trump. He has a simultaneous goal of withholding funds if the school system or university fails to comply with directives on how to interpret civil rights in terms of transgender students, and how to promote diversity among employees.
“There is a logical contradiction between these positions, but in some way the confusion throws this sector into chaos, forcing these institutions and schools to make a lot of time and effort to avoid legal backlash and reductions,” said Alex Hertel Fernandez, associate professor of international and public relations at Columbia University.
Eliminating the division is likely a heavy lift due to opposition among Democrats who appear to have enough votes to block such a move in the Senate. And it’s not clear that all Congressional Republicans will go together.
Discussion of division dismantling
John B. King Jr., the premier of New York State University and US Secretary of Education under President Obama, said the school and university environment is dangerous and uncertain.
“We face both threats: the threat of loss of funds for critical programs and the threat of weaponization,” King said. “The weaponization is about controlling what students do in the classroom every day.
Orange County Board of Education member Mali Burke said critics are unnecessarily wary as it relates to school districts serving students throughout the high school.
“I think sometimes there’s a little government,” Burke said. “If somehow, it could be a good thing if we could eliminate some of the inefficiencies and waste.”
Trump took a position that his enforcement power extends to authority over funds allocated by Congress. Using that contested legal premise, his Department of Education had already requested more than $1 billion in savings from cancelled education-related contracts and grants, in collaboration with mask cost-cutting strikers. Trump and Musk say they are not only targeting waste, fraud and abuse, but also trying to eradicate left-wing ideology.
Dennis Forte, president and CEO of Washington-based advocacy group Edtrust, said he saw no evidence of waste and fraud.
Rather, she said the new administration is looking for keywords and phrases such as program descriptions and website “DEI” and is cutting off programs that flag them that way without meaningful scrutiny.
“It’s not waste, fraud, abuse. It’s about undermining our students,” Forte said.
Student loans, civil rights
Rather than eliminating them, Trump and his team spoke to other agencies.
Student loan programs for higher education can be moved to the Small Business Administration, the Ministry of Finance, or the Ministry of Commerce. Such a move could disrupt services to the 43 million students and borrowers who borrow more than $1.5 trillion from the government. For example, about half of Cal State University students receive student loans, a portfolio of over $1 billion.
Trump has already taken action against one sector of student loans, signing executive order programs by disqualifying nonprofit workers deemed to be engaged in “inappropriate” activities, and appears to include organizations supporting undocumented immigration or DEI programs.
The Pell Grant program, which awards more than $120 billion to 13 million students each year, can help pay for higher education, but can also move. Approximately $1.5 billion is set aside for Pergrants for California students per year.
The Civil Rights Office – charged with investigating and taking steps to stop school-related discrimination – could move to the U.S. Department of Justice.
A spokesperson said the education sector will use a rapid process to carry out its obligation to enforce civil rights.
Katherine Ramon, who headed the Biden and Obama administration’s Civil Rights Office, said she confirmed with staff that regional offices in Dallas, Chicago, Cleveland, Boston, New York and Philadelphia have been closed. Offices in Seattle, Denver, Kansas City and Washington remain open, she said.
The San Francisco office employed around 50 people who worked on the California case.
“The people in these offices are experts and some have decades of experience,” Ramon said. “They assessed complaints and jurisdiction, requested documents, reviewed documents, went to campus, spoke with students, spoke with staff, interviewed witnesses about the facts of the alleged situation, considered the law and determined whether a violation occurred.”
She said the department is already understaffed as around 12,000 cases were pending when Trump took office.
Ken Marcus, who headed the department’s Civil Rights Office during Trump’s first term under President George W. Bush, said staff cuts would “have to see if employment increases in the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division or other parts of the federal government.”
Impact on California
California receives an estimated $16.3 billion per year in federal funding, or about $2,750 per student. The Los Angeles Unified School District (the second-largest school system in the United States) brings federal support to $1.26 billion annually.
Not all of these dollars pass through the Ministry of Education. A large amount of federal funding for early childhood education comes from the Department of Health and Human Services, and the huge student diet program is housed in the Department of Agriculture. La Unified Alone estimates that it will receive approximately $363 million to support students in low-income families.
Approximately 80% of LA Unified Students are eligible for Title I funding services, including personal instruction, small classes, after-school programs, teacher training, counseling, and family involvement. Another major area of funding is for students with disabilities.
Billions of research funding flows from federal sectors and institutions to the University of California each year. A significant portion comes from the National Institutes of Health. That’s $2.6 billion for the University of California alone in last year’s grade. Federal District judges have halted attempts by the Trump administration to cut key NIH grants while continuing cases, including cases filed by California.
