Advocates sound alarm as Trump targets special education in massive DOE layoffs
WASHINGTON — Proposed mass layoffs at the U.S. Department of Education have raised alarm among disability advocates and Democratic lawmakers over the potential impact on millions of students with disabilities.
Advocates warn that the department cannot carry out its legally mandated functions for special education services and support at the staffing levels put forward by President Donald Trump’s proposed reduction in force, or RIF.
The agency is also reportedly weighing a transfer of special education programs to a different department.
“If we’ve learned anything this year, it’s that the fight is just beginning,” Rachel Gittleman, president of American Federation of Government Employees Local 252, which represents Education Department workers, told States Newsroom. “And we’re going to do everything we can to fight these illegal firings and the dismantling of the department, but it is just beginning.”
Trump’s administration took another axe to the department earlier this month amid the ongoing government shutdown, effectively gutting key units that serve students with disabilities. The affected offices administer $15 billion in formula and discretionary grant programs under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA, provide guidance and support to families and states and investigate disability-based discrimination complaints, among other responsibilities.
Though a federal judge has temporarily blocked the administration from carrying out the layoffs, the ruling provides only short-term relief as legal proceedings unfold.
The administration moved to lay off 465 department employees, including 121 at the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services, or OSERS, 132 in the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, or OESE, and 137 in the Office for Civil Rights, or OCR.
The layoffs also hit the Office of the Secretary, Office of Communications and Office of Postsecondary Education.
“You can’t look at any of this in a silo,” Gittleman said. “When you’re thinking about special education specifically, you also have to think about the fact that OESE, the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, also saw an almost full RIF as well.”
Gittleman called the civil rights office “the place that ensures families have a place to go for help when students are denied access for education based on their disability.”
“That was also almost entirely gutted,” she said. “So you’re debilitating these programs in multiple ways because … kids with disabilities benefit from OESE programs, OCR assistance and OSERS programs.”
Those three units had already been hit with a separate set of department layoffs earlier this year.
Parents as advocates
Katy Neas, CEO of The Arc of the United States, an advocacy group for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, said that while IDEA has not been changed and the rights of children with disabilities continue, the government’s ability to enforce and implement those rights has deteriorated.
OSERS is responsible for managing and supporting IDEA, which guarantees a free public education for students with disabilities and is in its 50th year. The umbrella unit OSERS includes the Office of the Assistant Secretary, Office of Special Education Programs and the Rehabilitation Services Administration.
“You take away the knowledge of the folks at the U.S. Department of Education at the Office of Special Education Programs — the law is complex, the combination of the federal law with state laws is complex — you need that trusted source of accurate information, and so, I think it’s going to make the implementation of this law that much more difficult,” Neas told States Newsroom.
During the 2022-2023 school year, 7.5 million students in the United States received services through IDEA, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, a federal agency.
Neas encouraged parents to “know your rights” and “understand what the law does and does not do for your child, and don’t take no for an answer.”
She said parents “really have to be well-versed in what the law requires schools to provide to their child,” and “have to be the ones that insist that the law is implemented with fidelity, because they’re the ones that are going to be on the front lines trying to make that happen.”
‘Flabbergasted’
Jacqueline Rodriguez, CEO at the National Center for Learning Disabilities, said the RIFs would make it “impossible” for the Office of Special Education Programs to “carry out its statutory requirements.”
Rodriguez, whose organization advocates for people with learning and attention issues, said “we had hundreds of staff doing this type of work — the statutory requirements are monitoring, compliance, guidance, support — it’s not just pressing a button and issuing funding.”
She also noted that advocacy groups, including hers, are “flabbergasted” regarding the sweeping layoffs of special education staff because of the contrast with previous assurances Education Secretary Linda McMahon has made to both Rodriguez and Congress about supporting students with disabilities.
“I am not stunned that the administration would try to dismantle something that was legally required in place,” she said. “But I am flabbergasted that the secretary would sit and give congressional testimony at her confirmation hearing. She did it at the oversight hearing. She sat in front of me and said, ‘No, Jackie, this administration supports kids with special needs. We will always be good advocates. You don’t have to worry.’”
Just days after the layoff notices were sent out, McMahon took to social media to downplay the consequences of the shutdown on her department.
Two weeks into the shutdown, “millions of American students are still going to school, teachers are getting paid, and schools are operating as normal,” McMahon wrote.
The secretary added that “it confirms what the President has said: the federal Department of Education is unnecessary, and we should return education to the states.”
McMahon also specified that “no education funding is impacted by the RIF, including funding for special education.”
Rodriguez said McMahon’s post indicates the secretary believes the “status quo is perfectly reasonable — when we know that’s not the case — and she dismantles every opportunity for a kid with a disability to actually have his or her legally-entitled education.”
“I am beyond being polite and providing professional deference because there has been no consideration or deference to kids with disabilities for the last 10 months,” she added.
The groups that advocate for students with disabilities are united in their opposition, Rodriguez continued.
“Disability organizations across the country are united, we are all talking to one another,” she said. “We all work collaboratively, and we are in concert, lock and step.”
Congressional Dems fiercely oppose cuts
Meanwhile, a slew of Democratic lawmakers expressed outrage and concern over the department RIFs in two separate letters to the administration this month.
Reps. Lucy McBath of Georgia, Mark DeSaulnier and Lateefah Simon of California, led dozens of fellow House Democrats in an Oct. 17 letter voicing to McMahon and White House budget director Russ Vought their “deep opposition” to the layoffs and urging them to “immediately reverse course and rescind the termination notices that were sent to these workers.”
In another letter to McMahon, 31 members of the Senate Democratic Caucus wrote Monday that “punitive, reckless actions like these latest firings demonstrate how President Trump and …Vought are relishing the government shutdown they caused — and are treating students as political pawns,” adding: “That is outrageous — and flatly unacceptable.”
Sen. Patty Murray of Washington state, the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, led the letter, along with: Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York; Vermont independent Sen. Bernie Sanders, ranking member of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions; and Sen. Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, ranking member of the Appropriations subcommittee overseeing Education Department funding.
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