Education Secretary Linda McMahon said Wednesday the federal shutdown is proof that her department should be eliminated, as the Trump administration is trying to do.
“The Democrat government shutdown has forced agencies to evaluate what federal responsibilities are truly critical for the American people. Two weeks in, millions of American students are still going to school, teachers are getting paid, and schools are operating as normal. It confirms what the President has said: the federal Department of Education is unnecessary, and we should return education to the states,” McMahon posted on the social platform X.
While schools have said they are fine in the short term in the shutdown, a longer-term government closure raises concerns for administrators about where funding will come from and whom to contact for certain issues or questions.
Schools on tax-exempt land such as military bases or Native American reservations had their Impact Aid immediately affected. While many of these institutions have some reserves, it won’t last forever.
And the 95 percent of furloughed staff at the department is delaying certain programs such as investigations at the Office for Civil Rights.
Even when the shutdown ends, the recent reduction in force laying off 466 more workers at the federal agency raises even bigger questions about what the department will look like in the coming weeks as the agency goes from more than 4,000 employees at the start of President Trump’s term to less than 2,000.
But McMahon argues the reductions will not burden schools or students and that these initiatives should be the responsibility of the states.
“The Department has taken additional steps to better reach American students and families and root out the education bureaucracy that has burdened states and educators with unnecessary oversight,” she said. “No education funding is impacted by the RIF, including funding for special education, and the clean CR supported by the Trump Administration will provide states and schools the funding they need to support all students.”
