Will CT have to pick up the pieces of U.S. Dept. of Ed. ‘overhaul’?

When she took the helm of the U.S. Department of Education earlier this month, Linda McMahon sent an email to employees to “start thinking about our final mission at the department as an overhaul.”

That overhaul began in earnest Tuesday night with the announcement of mass layoffs to cut the workforce in half. McMahon described it as the “first step” to following through on President Donald Trump’s promise to disband the entire agency.

The long-term consequences are uncertain. States are bracing for potential interruptions or cuts to services that support early childhood education all the way up to college.

So far, Connecticut hasn’t seen any disruptions. But the future is foggy.

The immediate fallout will likely be felt the most in the federal offices hit hard by the directive — those that oversee student aid, civil rights complaints and education research and handle the enforcement of those programs.

Education programs mandated by law need to continue regardless of staffing levels. Outsourcing those responsibilities to other agencies or changing funding during congressional appropriations could create confusion and make them more vulnerable.

As part of his reasoning for wanting to shutter the department, Trump said he will end federal bureaucracy and shift education back to the states. If the U.S. Department of Education cedes some of its work and oversight responsibilities, Connecticut would likely need to fill in those gaps.

Connecticut’s federal funding makes up a small portion of the money it spends on education. The Education Department delivers much of that federal aid, while some money for states comes from other federal agencies supporting school meal programs and Head Start programs for low-income families with infants and kids under age 5.

While Connecticut as a whole does not get as much federal funding as some others, towns and cities with higher concentrations of low-income students rely more heavily on those grants. Cities like Waterbury, Hartford, New Haven and Bridgeport would be disproportionately affected by a slowdown or reduction to Title I funds.

Connecticut officials have signaled they are prepared to step in if needed.

“We are at the point where we want to make sure we protect everything that we got going right now, coming from the federal government, and making sure that’s going into the equation when the governor and the state legislature are talking together,” Leonard Lockhart, the president of the Connecticut Association of Boards of Education, said at a Wednesday press conference.

“So if we have to start funding things on our own in the short term, I’m trusting that the legislative and executive branches of this state are going to be working hand in hand and prepared to address those matters,” Lockhart added.

Still, the exact impact on Connecticut schools remains unclear as education officials say funding streams have not yet been changed so far in the Trump administration.

“Following their announcement about workforce reductions, the U.S. Department of Education stated they will continue to deliver on all statutory programs under their purview. To date, we have not had any funding interruptions for any of the federal programs administered by the federal Department of Education,” said Matthew Cerrone, a spokesperson for Connecticut’s Education Department.

Any changes to the federally administered programs created by statute would need congressional approval. And while Republicans control both chambers, some policy experts are skeptical that would happen because programs like Title I or special education have bipartisan appeal and are used in both red and blue states.

But Congress could decide to direct less money for education programs when it negotiates upcoming spending bills. From a staffing perspective, shrinking offices could leave holes in the management of programs and cause slowdowns.

For observers in Connecticut, that raises more concerns for the next school year.

“Today, it is not a problem. What does this look like two to three months down the road? There’s no question in my mind even if our dollar amount from the federal government is not changed, the expectation on the state department [of education] is going to increase,” Kate Dias, president of the Connecticut Education Association, said.

“That’s an inevitable consequence at some point,” she continued. “If you cut 50% of staff and these are federally mandated programs and you haven’t changed federal mandates, someone has to manage it.”

What CT gets from the feds, and what’s at risk

At a rally outside of the Education Department hours before the layoff announcement Tuesday, the worries of students, parents and educators were on display: concerns over the state of Pell Grants, the special education needs that go into an Individualized Education Program, or IEP, for students with disabilities. They worry the deep cuts within these offices will create challenges even for the functions that are part of federal statute.

The mass layoffs also sparked a lawsuit from nearly two dozen state attorneys general, including Connecticut’s William Tong, who argue the efforts to dismantle the Department of Education are “illegal and unconstitutional.”

The modern-day U.S. Department of Education was created in 1979 under President Jimmy Carter and is now responsible for things like providing grants to high-needs communities, including additional funding to schools with high concentrations of low-income students (Title I) and multilingual learners (Title III).

It is also responsible for collecting national, statewide and local data for research and overseeing protections for diverse student groups like students with disabilities (under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) and Title IX protections that prevent discrimination based on sex, though the latter has seen some changes under Trump.

Connecticut received about $553 million in federal funding for education during the 2023-2024 school year, according to School and State Finance Project. About half of that funding goes toward Title I and special education through the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, also know as IDEA.

Some experts argue that “most schools would not notice” some of the changes at the federal and agency level since most education issues are taken care of on a local level. Only 7% of the state’s total education funding comes from the federal government.

“The Department of Ed does not set curriculum [and] policy and doesn’t decide who you hire. It doesn’t decide how much you pay your teachers, how long hours of school you have in a day, whether you have chemistry class or not,” said Marguerite Roza, a Georgetown University research professor and director of the university’s ‘Edunomics Lab,’ which is a research center focused on education finance policy.

“If you want to change education or you’re not happy with education, you go to your district and your governor,” Roza added. “That’s who controls education.”

While education is mostly controlled at the state and local level, certain municipalities would feel the strain of federal changes or cuts more than others. Connecticut’s biggest cities rely much more heavily on those dollars. For Waterbury, 22% of its school funding comes from the federal government, with much of it geared toward Title I.

Other school districts, such as Bolton and Avon, get theirs overwhelmingly through local funding. The federal investments for both school districts make up less than 2%.

“Those types of places will have an easier time weathering the federal issues. It’s not going to create the crisis it will for Waterbury, Hartford, New Haven,” Dias of CEA said.

At her confirmation hearing, McMahon, the World Wrestling Entertainment co-founder who lives in Greenwich, was pressed by Democrats and some Republicans on title funding and special education. Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine asked her how the “administration and oversight” of these programs would continue without the Education Department.

McMahon responded that “defunding is not the goal here” and suggested some of them could go under a different umbrella. But the funding streams would ultimately be at the whims of Congress, which is considering a wide range of spending cuts so Republicans can enact a sweeping tax reform package.

Title I funding helps schools hire tutors, social workers, family counselors and additional teachers to help with reading and math proficiency. Federal law stipulates that those funds are meant to “supplement not supplant,” meaning states and local districts cannot contribute less to their education systems because of the federal commitment.

But, as Dias pointed out, states and localities are not under a legal obligation to accept and use Title I funding.

The special education law, IDEA, is a much different story.

That law guarantees students with disabilities will have access to “free and appropriate public education.” The funding under that law helps schools hire paraprofessionals, social workers, counselors and additional special education teachers.

Casey Cobb, an education policy professor at the University of Connecticut, is skeptical about cuts to federal funding streams to low-income schools or special education.

“It’s hard to tell if those grant programs, like Title I, will be significantly hit, and the reason is, I don’t think it’s politically palatable,” Cobb said. “There’s a lot of poor, rural towns that are in Republican-dominated areas, and those politicians realize that’s an important resource for their communities.”

How the Trump administration has started to ‘reorient’ the agency

The White House cannot unilaterally shutter a department created under federal law, but it can eviscerate it.

A reduction in force, or RIF, ordered on Tuesday will hit every office within the agency and wipe out half the workforce. Those affected will be placed on leave March 21 and receive pay and benefits until June 9. 

Any immediate changes at the Department of Education would not have a direct impact on the day-to-day operations of schools in Connecticut, but the cuts could create backlogs to processing financial aid and civil rights complaints, and they could limit research.

“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. “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.”

Even with the staffing cuts, the department said it would continue fulfilling its statutory requirements — formula funding, student loans, Pell Grants and funding for special education.

But the sweeping layoffs have prompted other concerns for how certain offices will continue to deliver. The Federal Student Aid Office, the Office of Civil Rights and the Institute of Education Sciences took some of the biggest hits.

Seven of the department’s 12 regional offices for civil rights were shut down Wednesday. Among them was the Boston bureau, which covers most of New England, including Connecticut. All of the attorneys at the Boston office have been laid off, according to Connecticut’s Center for Children’s Advocacy.

Sarah Eagan, the state’s former child’s advocate and new executive director for the Center for Children’s Advocacy, said the Office of Civil Rights has been particularly useful to her in both capacities when it comes to handling disability, sex or racial discrimination complaints. 

Eagan called on the state legislature to strengthen its resources for the state Department of Education and look into the “capacity of our local and state systems to do some of that work.”

The workforce reductions in the civil rights office could even hurt the Trump administration’s own efforts regarding new investigations and complaints seeking to crack down on higher education institutions over alleged discrimination.

Michael Morton, the deputy executive director for communications and operations at the School and State Finance Project, also raised concerns about access to services for high-needs students under Trump.

“When the department is not playing an active role, there’s always a chance for malfeasance and abuse and for students to be left behind. That’s not a left or right issue,” Morton said. “That happens in every state in the union, whether you’re conservative or liberal, but I could see that being a far more realistic threat to education than the funding component.”

A restructuring of programs currently housed under the Education Department is also on the table.

At her confirmation hearing last month, McMahon suggested special education programs under IDEA could go back to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. And Trump floated moving the student loan program over to either the Small Business Administration, the Treasury Department or the Commerce Department.

Some would be better suited and a more natural fit in taking on a new initiative from the Education Department. But others could be hobbled by the loss of expertise on a subject.

“If we create a fragmentation of services … on the one hand, some programs will continue to be performed,” said Kenneth Wong, an education policy professor for Brown University. “On the other hand, the quality, the commitment related to those, the relationship between policy, function, the clients and the parents, will be changed in a significant way.”

One of the bigger concerns related to the layoffs is over the processing of student loan payments and applications.

With less staff in the Federal Student Aid Office, some are more fearful about ensuring the implementation of the student loan program and making sure the repayment process is running smoothly.

The even more drastic reductions at the Institute of Education Sciences also pose major hurdles for data gathering and research as well as technical assistance provided to states and local districts.

IES’ regional center, focused on the northeast, Puerto Rico and U.S. Virgin Islands, provides support for local stakeholders and policymakers to help with learning strategies, professional development for teachers and other needs.

“That’s not data that we use necessarily to run schools — it’s more data that we use to study schools,” said Roza of Georgetown University. “There’s the Institute of Education Sciences, which does research on K-12 education, and people can argue about whether or not that research has produced important changes for schools, but that’s some of the research that surfaced the Science of Reading stuff that we now know works better with kids.”

Other changes under the Trump admin

Aside from the layoffs, Trump has already enacted a number of executive orders that have reshaped the Department of Education, whether on Title IX guidance or diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.

Those Title IX protections were extended under the Biden administration to students who identity within the LGBTQ community as well as protections for transgender students. But Trump reverted back to the 2020 guidance during his first administration. Under the new rules, the Education Department will enforce Title IX protections “on the basis of biological sex in schools and on campuses.”

With the executive orders, McMahon’s Education Department has ramped up its scrutiny on higher education institutions, especially over their handling of protests over the Israel-Gaza war.

Yale University is among dozens of other colleges around the country under investigation by the Trump administration under Title VI. They were sent letters about “potential enforcement actions” if the school does not “protect Jewish students on campus.” Yale did not respond to a request for comment about whether it received that letter. A few days later, the university became part of another Title VI investigation “to end the use of racial preferences” as the White House cracks down on DEI initiatives.

There could also be big changes to public education nationally as Trump and McMahon pursue school choice through a voucher program where public dollars could go to private schools.

The issue of school choice has long split political lines in Connecticut, but it means something slightly different than conversations at the national level.

In Connecticut, school choice has particularly been in regard to the expansion of charter schools rather than private school vouchers, which have been heavily pushed and supported by the Trump campaign and several Republican-led states. 

“Nowhere in Connecticut am I hearing rumblings about private school choice or vouchers. There’s no energy for that in Connecticut in any organized way, but what there is energy for … is under-investment,” said Steven Hernández, the executive director of ConnCAN.

Hernández doubled down on his organization’s support of school choice, stating that several education stakeholders are “unified under the notion that parent engagement, modernizing our schools, and having the best available in our public education system for our kids is really what’s going to make us a better state.”

“We commit to public education, and in a lot of ways, I think we’re going to tell the story of the future of choice in the state as it relates to public education,” Hernández said. “We are a parent engagement state, and that makes a difference when it comes to our understanding and our people’s understanding of what choice really means.”

Connecticut’s response

If the federal government takes a less active role and Trump follows through on giving more control to the states, is Connecticut up for the challenge?

Earlier this month, Gov. Ned Lamont hinted that the state’s $4.3 billion rainy day fund could support local education systems if there are cuts in federal funding or a government shutdown.

“If there are 3,500 employees who often get paid or subsidized for the feds, I’m not laying them off,” Lamont said at a March 3 press conference. “We’ve got $4.3 billion, so if they cut off a lot on education in the next couple of weeks, we can wrap that up as well.”

That buoyed representatives from local school boards who said, despite uncertainty on the federal level, that Lamont and the state legislature would protect the quality of Connecticut’s education system.

At a March 5 state board of education meeting, Commissioner Charlene Russell-Tucker said the state education department has all of its grants “in one place” and has remained in contact with the governor’s office as things continue to change on the federal level.  

“The new Secretary of Education — I listened to her — and she said that they’re not looking to cut any of those funds,” Russell-Tucker said. “But again, we don’t know, so we’re really just preparing as best we can for all of that.”

Shifting responsibilities from the federal government to the states, especially without any specifics from the White House, would be a significant undertaking.

And some, like Dias of the CEA, worry that the Lamont administration’s hiring slowdown at state agencies could pose challenges if Connecticut needs to ramp up its work on the education front as well as bulk up on staffing. She also noted the understaffing at the state’s own Education Department.

“Can Connecticut even grab enough staff and funding to do that work ourselves? We’re going to have to understand that’s going to require staffing and a financial obligation on the state,” Dias said.

Still, those in charge of overseeing the state’s school system feel like they are equipped to rise to the occasion if needed.

“We understand that there will probably be some impacts on programs,” Lockhart of the Connecticut Association of Boards of Education said. “But I believe with our state Department of Education, as well as the state legislature that we have here, that we are very responsible in what we do, how we do, and I believe that we are well prepared.”