Why Should Delaware Care?
While President Donald Trump cannot unilaterally close the federal Department of Education, he can cripple it with cuts. Although Delaware — like many states — bases its education system on local control, dismantling the department could cause a backflow for the department’s Office for Civil Rights or encourage Congress to limit federal funding to certain programs.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday that seeks to dismantle the federal Department of Education, but its ramifications on public education in Delaware still remain to be seen.
The White House said the Department of Education has spent over $3 trillion since its creation, with “virtually nothing to show for it.”
The order states that the Trump administration is “returning education” back to the states, which the administration feels are “best positioned to administer effective programs and services that benefit their own unique populations and needs.”
“Closing the Department of Education would provide children and their families the opportunity to escape a system that is failing them. Today, American reading and math scores are near historical lows,” the order reads, referring to low proficiency scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress. “The Federal education bureaucracy is not working.”
However, the president cannot legally close a Cabinet department with only an executive order – that would require an action of Congress, which established the department in 1979 under then-President Jimmy Carter.
But Trump can work around that requirement by defunding the department or enacting mass firings, essentially crippling its work.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt has also told reporters that the Department of Education will be dramatically downsized by the executive order, but it will continue administering student loans and Pell grants, funding public school programs for high-poverty communities and students with disabilities, and enforcing some civil rights laws.
Despite that assertion, Delaware’s Democratic leaders were quick to criticize the president’s order.
“Let’s cut the bullshit, not education. Schools are already underfunded, teachers underpaid, and students underserved. As a former public school teacher, I know what’s at stake,” Gov. Matt Meyer, who has made turning around Delaware’s public schools a key part of his administration, said in a statement Thursday. “And I know this — Donald Trump and the Republican governors standing with him should be ashamed. If they think we’ll let them gut public education without a fight, they’re dead wrong. We will stand up, push back, and demand every dollar our students deserve.”
Stephanie Ingram, president of the state’s teachers union, the Delaware State Education Association, said it was a “dark day in our nation’s history.”
“Rather than fighting to strengthen our public schools and support our communities, billionaires Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and Linda McMahon are working to dismantle public education, strip vital resources away from Delaware families, and destroy programs that support vulnerable children here in the First State,” she said in a statement.
What steps have already been taken?
The executive order comes after the department cut its workforce nearly in half on March 11, which some state leaders say marked the first step toward eliminating the department.
Just two days later, Delaware Attorney General Kathy Jennings joined 20 other attorney generals in filing a lawsuit against the Trump administration that sought to stop the layoffs.
The suit claims that the cuts have effectively dismantled the department and have incapacitated some of its components – including the Office for Civil Rights’ location in Philadelphia, which the suit says has been closed down entirely. That office is in charge of ensuring students receive an opportunity for an equal education throughout the region, including Delaware.
Less than one week before the cuts began, Dwayne Bensing, the legal director of Delaware’s American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), told Spotlight Delaware that the Office for Civil Rights is already challenged by the limited capacity through congressional funding.
He also said the civil rights enforcement could go to the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division in their educational opportunity section.
“[The Department of Justice] is not set up to take on that kind of work,” Bensing said. “We’re talking about complaints that are filed daily, hundreds of complaints that each deserve an opportunity to be investigated by a civil rights expert to determine whether a school district has violated a student’s civil right and access to education.”
How would this affect education in Delaware?
Recent events have caused school officials nationwide to question the security of their federal education funds, despite federal funds only making up around 10% of most state departments of education budgets.
That funding is distributed by the Education Department and is non-discretionary, meaning they won’t disappear with the executive order, but Congress can influence which types of districts receive more or less funding.
But those dollars may already be in jeopardy after State Sen. Bryant Richardson (R-Seaford) and attorney Thomas Neuberger filed a Title IX complaint with the U.S. Department of Justice, requesting that it terminate federal education funding in Delaware unless school districts comply with President Donald Trump’s directive prohibiting transgender students participation in women’s sports that was issued last month.
It’s unclear how much of Delaware’s federal education funds could be at risk.
“The U.S. Department of Education helps to protect the civil rights of students and supports states — with these proposed actions we risk losing critical knowledge and research in education, the protection of our most vulnerable children, and essential funding that supports rural students, children with disabilities, and low-income families,” Paul Herdman, CEO of Rodel, a nonprofit that has studied education policy in Delaware for decades, wrote in a statement to Spotlight Delaware.
Some board of education leaders in Delaware have already started searching for outside funding options in case their federal funding is pulled.
Some members of Congress have already taken aim at programs supporting students, like the Community Eligibility Provision that allows districts and their schools in low-income areas to provide free school breakfasts and lunches to all students.
One proposal would make it harder for eligible families to apply for free or reduced-price school meals at non-CEP schools by raising the threshold for schools from 25% to 60% of students identified as receiving benefits.
If the threshold is raised, 129 schools in Delaware would no longer be able to provide free school meals through CEP and would need to reinstate meal applications, according to a March 2025 study by the Food Research & Action Center (FRAC), an organization that aims to improve the well-being of people struggling against poverty-related hunger.
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