Secretary of Education Linda McMahon announced Tuesday that as part of the Department of Education’s “final mission” it would cut its workforce by half.
“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. “I appreciate the work of the dedicated public servants and their contributions to the Department. This is a significant step toward restoring the greatness of the United States education system.”
Affected employees will be placed on administrative leave beginning March 21.
McMahon said the department would “continue to deliver on all statutory programs that fall under the agency’s purview, including formula funding, student loans, Pell Grants, funding for special needs students, and competitive grantmaking.”
When Trump took office in January, the Department of Education had about 4,133 workers.
After Tuesday’s reduction in force, the department’s workforce will total about 2,183 workers.
Included in the reduction in force are nearly 600 employees who accepted voluntary resignation opportunities and retirement over the last seven weeks, including: 259 employees accepted the deferred resignation program and 313 employees accepted the Voluntary Separation Incentive Payment, according to the department.
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The Department of Education oversees education policy for schools that receive federal funding, enforces Title IX rules, manages FAFSA, and administers Pell Grants and about 10% of public school funding, among other things.
President Donald Trump has long planned to reduce the department’s workforce and potentially dismantle it entirely, returning control of education entirely to the state and local level.
National Education Association President Becky Pringle, who leads the largest education union, said Trump was destroying education in the U.S.
“Donald Trump and Elon Musk have aimed their wrecking ball at public schools and the futures of the 50 million students in rural, suburban, and urban communities across America by dismantling public education to pay for tax handouts for billionaires,” she said in a statement. “The real victims will be our most vulnerable students. Gutting the Department of Education will send class sizes soaring, cut job training programs, make higher education more expensive and out of reach for middle-class families, take away special education services for students with disabilities, and gut student civil rights protections.”
Former President Ronald Reagan wanted to eliminate the Department of Education shortly after it took its modern form as a Cabinet agency in 1980. The department is primarily responsible for providing grants to public school districts and aid to college students.
The Congressional Budget Office’s primer on eliminating Cabinet-level departments said savings from closing any such department would depend on multiple factors.
“Eliminating a department could result in considerable budgetary savings to the federal government if some or all of the programs operated by that department were also terminated,” according to the CBO. “The amount of savings would eventually be equal to the department’s full budget for the canceled programs, minus any income that the department had received through its operation of those programs. Initially, however, the government could incur one-time costs for terminating programs or activities, such as paying the cost of accrued annual leave and unemployment benefits to federal employees whose jobs had been eliminated or paying penalties for canceling leases for office space.”
The CBO also noted that many decisions would have to be made along the way to closure.
“In deciding whether to eliminate one or more of the current departments and whether to terminate, move, or reorganize its programs and activities, lawmakers would confront a variety of questions about the appropriate role of the federal government,” according to the CBO. “In particular, lawmakers would face decisions about whether the activities of a department should be carried out by the public sector at all, and if so, whether the federal government was the most effective level of government to conduct them. Even if lawmakers concluded that state and local governments were best positioned to operate a program or activity, they would still have to decide whether the federal government should coordinate particular activities that crossed state borders and whether programs administered by different states should meet national standards. In addition, lawmakers would face choices about how to organize most efficiently the activities of the federal government.”
Syndicated with permission from The Center Square.
