WASHINGTON (AP) — A new round of layoffs at the Education Department is depleting an agency that was hit hard in the Trump administration’s previous mass firings, threatening new disruption to the nation’s students and schools in areas from special education to civil rights enforcement to after-school programs.
The Trump administration started laying off 466 Education Department staffers on Friday amid mass firings across the government meant to pressure Democratic lawmakers over the federal shutdown. The layoffs would cut the agency’s workforce by nearly a fifth and leave it reduced to less than half its size when President Donald Trump took office on Jan. 20.
The cuts play into Trump’s broader plan to shut down the Education Department and parcel its operations to other agencies. Over the summer, the department started handing off its adult education and workforce programs to the Labor Department, and it previously said it was negotiating an agreement to pass its $1.6 trillion student loan portfolio to the Treasury Department.
Department officials have not released details on the layoffs and did not immediately respond to a request for comment. American Federation of Government Employees Local 252, a union that represents more than 2,700 department workers, said information from employees indicates cuts will decimate many offices within the agency.
All but a handful of top officials are being fired at the office that implements the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, a federal law that ensures millions of students with disabilities get support from their schools, the union said. Unknown numbers are being fired at the Office for Civil Rights, which investigates complaints of discrimination at the nation's schools and universities.
Programs that oversee federal money lose staff
The layoffs would eliminate teams that oversee the flow of grant money to schools across the nation, the union said. It hits the office that oversees Title I funding for the country’s low-income schools along with the team that manages 21st Century Community Learning Centers, the primary federal funding source for after-school and summer learning programs.
Without staff overseeing funding for high-poverty schools or special education, schools may face delays in receiving reimbursement from the federal government, said Sasha Pudelski, director of advocacy for the American Association of School Administrators.
“We’re talking about the people who worked on the beating heart of our federal public school programs,” Pudelski said.
The layoffs will also eliminate teams that oversee TRIO, a set of programs that help low-income students pursue college, and another that oversees federal funding for historically Black colleges and universities.
In a statement, union president Rachel Gittleman said the new reductions, on top of previous layoffs, will “double down on the harm to K-12 students, students with disabilities, first generation college students, low-income students, teachers and local education boards.”
The Education Department had about 4,100 employees when Trump took office. After the new layoffs, it would be down to fewer than 2,000. Earlier layoffs in March had roughly halved the department, but some employees were hired back after officials decided they had cut too deep.
Advocates question how US will fulfill obligations on special education
The new layoffs drew condemnation from a range of education organizations. Although states design their own competitions to distribute federal funding for after-school programs, a small team of federal officials provided guidance and support “that is absolutely essential,” said Jodi Grant, executive director of the Afterschool Alliance.
“Firing that team is shocking, devastating, utterly without any basis, and it threatens to cause lasting harm,” Grant said in a statement.
If upheld, the cuts will make it impossible for the government to fulfill its duties carrying out special education laws, according to a statement from the National Association of State Directors of Special Education.
The layoffs will reduce the department's special education office from roughly 200 workers to about five, said Katy Neas, CEO of The Arc of the United States, which advocates for people with disabilities. Neas, who helped lead the office under former President Joe Biden, said families rely on those teams to make sure states and schools are following complex disability laws.
One prominent example dates to Trump's first term, when the special education office determined that Texas had illegally placed a cap on the number of students who could receive special education services in each district. Under pressure from the U.S. Education Department, Texas lawmakers lifted the cap in 2017.
“As a result, tens of thousands of children in Texas now can access the education support that they need, whereas before they couldn’t,” Neas said.
The government’s latest layoffs are being challenged in court by the American Federation of Government Employees and other national labor unions. Their suit, filed in San Francisco, said the government’s budgeting and personnel offices overstepped their authority by ordering agencies to carry out layoffs in response to the shutdown.
In a court filing, the Trump administration said the executive branch has wide discretion to reduce the federal workforce. It said the unions could not prove they were harmed by the layoffs because employees would not actually be separated for another 30 to 60 days after receiving notice. ___
AP Education Writer Annie Ma contributed to this report.
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