Workers inside Department of Education say Trump’s latest bid to dismantle agency ‘makes no sense’ | US education

Donald Trump’s attempt to gut the U.S. Department of Education “makes no sense,” according to employees within the federal agency who accuse the administration of trying to make their lives “as difficult and traumatic as possible.”

Three staffers within the department spoke to the Guardian and warned that morale had “completely disappeared” 10 months after Trump returned to the White House. Everyone asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation.

On Tuesday afternoon, education minister Linda McMahon held a meeting with all staff and announced plans to move forward with disbanding the department.

Key operations are planned to be transferred to a number of other agencies, including the departments of interior, health and human services, labor and state. While the move is technically temporary, the administration plans to seek approval from Congress to make the changes permanent.

“Not a single person applauded,” said an employee who attended the meeting. They added that morale was completely lost. “Staff are furious at the way we were treated.”

The administration moved quickly to disband the agency, which had more than 4,000 employees when Trump took office in January, and now about 2,700. Trump signed an executive order calling for the plant’s closure in March, and the high court approved the mass layoffs in July.

The President signaled that he would do this during the campaign and claimed that all authority and control over education should be given to the states. A second Trump administration right-wing manifesto, Project 2025, called for dismantling the department and eliminating most of its funds and programs.

“The Department of Education is a pretty terrible place to work right now,” said a second employee at the agency. “But what is being done to the systems that support children, students, families, adult learners, and the future of our country is worse than what they can do to us.”

The employee received a purported reduction-of-force notice during the shutdown, informing him of plans to eliminate his duties, which were later rescinded due to a court order.

A third employee, based outside Washington D.C., said they had not received any notifications since the government reopened and that their and others’ work accounts were locked.

“Our group has received absolutely no communication from the Department of Education since the government reopened. There has been no notice of cancellation, no explanation of our situation, and we have largely had no access to our accounts,” they said. “I waited to go back to work and called IT, but to no avail.”

They explained that it was “discouraging” to be brought back and work on cases again for several weeks, only to have the shutdown occur and then have their accounts locked. There’s a sense that “the administration is mad because they can’t get rid of the education department as easily as they’d like” and “so they’re making this as difficult and traumatic as possible for us.”

They added that the latest plan to delegate tasks to different federal agencies “makes no sense.” “This will only create more chaos and confusion, which is the opposite of efficiency. It will only provide a ‘back to the states’ and will only create more bureaucracy and cost to the American people.”

Labor said: “There has been zero transparency so no one knows what is actually being redistributed or shut down.”

They added that where operations are planned to be moved to different departments, “it is unclear whether staff will also be moved or just the work.” “If it’s just about work, who’s going to staff it? So while the technical details are unclear, the practical implication is that the work cannot and will not be done in the way that is necessary or required to serve the people.”

The union representing workers in the education department called the latest efforts “illegal” and harmful to U.S. students, educators and families.

“This latest move by the Trump administration to dismantle the congressionally created U.S. Department of Education is not only illegal, it is an insult to the tens of millions of students who rely on the agency to protect their access to a quality education,” said Rachel Gittleman, president of AFGE Local 252 and an employee at the institution. “Students, educators, and families rely on the department’s comprehensive support for schools, from early learning to graduate programs.

“This move comes at a time when the administration is trying to fire scores of career public servants in those offices and is now trying to shift critical jobs to institutions without education expertise. Breaking up the Department of Education and shifting its responsibilities elsewhere will only create more confusion for schools and colleges, deepen public distrust, and ultimately harm students and families.”

Angela Hanks, chief of policy programs at the Century Foundation, who served at the Labor Department under the Biden administration, questioned the logic of transferring the Title I program, which serves 26 million children by providing federal funding to schools in the United States, to a Labor Department program that serves 130,000 children.

“Linda McMahon said this move would ‘peel back the layers of federal bureaucracy,’ but the truth is this will, at best, create chaos in school districts and ultimately on our children,” Hanks wrote. on social media. “Trump and his allies aren’t giving states back education or taming the bureaucracy; they’re laying a bureaucratic mess at the feet of state and regional leaders.”

Teacher unions also condemned the administration’s latest moves. “Donald Trump and his administration chose American Education Week, a time when our nation celebrates students, public schools and educators, to announce their illegal plans to further abandon students by dismantling the Department of Education,” said Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association, which represents 3 million educators across the United States.

“This move is neither regulation nor reform; it is an abandonment and abandonment of America’s future,” said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers. to represent 1.8 million workers, including educators and other school-related personnel. “Instead of demonstrating leadership in helping all students achieve their potential, he shirks that responsibility.”

The White House deferred comment to the Education Department, which did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

The management said on social media: has been launched many times efforts to dismantle the department.

“We heard our Out of Office emails got some traction during the government shutdown. Time for an update,” one person said to mail By the official X account of the Ministry of Education.

The post included a screenshot of an email with the title “OOO: Hope he gets better soon.”