In the United States, the federal Department of Education announced a mass firing of more than 1300 workers on March 11, effectively hollowing out the agency.
When Donald Trump began his presidency, the Department of Education (DOE) employed 4133 workers. After Tuesday’s layoffs and the reduction of the workforce after nearly 600 employees accepted the Trump administration’s voluntary resignation opportunities including buyout offers, the number of employees in the Department stands at roughly 2183.
Sheria Smith, the president of American Federation of Government Employees Local 252, which represents DOE workers, vowed to fight these layoffs. The Trump administration has “no respect for the thousands of workers who have dedicated their careers to serve their fellow Americans,” Smith told the New York Times. “We will not stand idly by while this regime pulls the wool over the eyes of the American people,” Smith said.
The DOE’s Office of Civil Rights took particularly steep cuts, with the office’s locations in Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Dallas, New York, Philadelphia and San Francisco being shuttered. Only five offices will remain open — in Atlanta, Denver, Kansas City, Seattle and Washington DC.
Trump and his administration have stated many times their intention to completely dismantle the DOE. Last month, Trump said that he had told his appointed DOE Secretary, billionaire Linda McMahon: “‘Linda, I hope you do a great job in putting yourself out of a job.’”
Reports from last week indicated that Trump was preparing to sign an executive order that would eliminate the department entirely, although this did not end up happening, with White House Press Secretary dubbing the reports “fake news”.
Following the layoffs, McMahon released a statement saying, “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.”
Trump defended his decision to fire the 1300 DOE workers, telling reporters on March 12, during a meeting with Irish Prime Minister Michael Martin, “We have a dream. And you know what the dream is? We’re going to move the Department of Education.”
“We’re going to move education into the states, so that the states — instead of bureaucrats working in Washington — can run education,” Trump continued.
“The Trump administration is not only co-opting, but really bastardising the language of the civil rights revolution,” said JD Davis, who for five years has been a teacher in the Boston Public Schools system, teaching Ethnic Studies and African American Studies. Davis is referring to Trump potentially quoting from Martin Luther King jnr’s famous speech during the height of the Civil Rights movement, in which King declares that he has “a dream” of a racial equality.
“As someone who is committed to teaching real history, real Black history, the fact of the matter is the Trump administration does not want our young people and by extension, our communities, to know the true history of this country.”
Gutting public education
Moving education “into the states” is a thinly veiled strategy to gut public education, argues Amrita Dani, who has been teaching in Boston Public Schools for a decade. “What they’re really trying to do is have states able to decide how that money is used, which means they could use it to put into place voucher programs that essentially take money out of the public school system and put them in the hands of private schools,” Dani argues.
“One of the key things that the Department of Education does is disburse funding that’s meant to address, for example, economic inequality and poverty,” Dani outlines. “They distribute funds that are designed to ensure that districts can meet the needs of students with special needs, students with disabilities, and English language learners.”
But according to Dani, “the reality is that the funding that’s provided is insufficient.” As she describes, “Because public education funds are primarily raised at the local level, and then the state kicks in, and then the federal funding kicks in, in some districts and cities billionaires have been able to avoid having their money go into public education.”
“The Democratic Party is just as guilty of the faltering public education system as the Republicans are, long before Trump,” argues JD Davis, who references a lack of basic needs for children in his school, including healthy meals.
“What I ask all my students is, if you don’t take away anything else from my class, take away the reality that workers will always fight back against their oppression in a myriad of ways,” Davis continued. “We will continue to fight back against what’s happening now, just like we fought back against the first Trump administration, just like we fought back under Biden and under Obama.”
[Abridged from Peoples Dispatch.]