Quick Take
While Santa Cruz County education leaders anticipated President Donald Trump's executive order to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education, it's nonetheless a major cause of concern for them.
Santa Cruz County school leaders say they’re deeply concerned about President Donald Trump’s efforts to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education, warning the changes could harm the country’s most vulnerable populations.
Mountain Elementary School District Superintendent Megan Tresham told Lookout that she’s hesitant to say with certainty how her district will be affected.
“Generally, I’m concerned and yet there is so much unknown that I hesitate to speculate about what it all means – mostly because I don’t want to raise the concern level in my staff and community who are already VERY worried,” she wrote via email, adding that she’s trying to stay focused on supporting her students and the wider Santa Cruz County school community.
In a letter to community members Friday, County Superintendent of Schools Faris Sabbah said Trump’s order is concerning but “does not come as a surprise.”
“In yesterday’s order, the federal administration stated it would ensure the ‘effective and uninterrupted’ services provided by the DOE,” he wrote. “Given the scale of staffing reductions and office closures we have already seen, along with cuts to programs that support school nutrition, there is good reason to doubt this commitment.”
Sabbah told Lookout earlier this week that local officials are also very concerned about the closure of the DOE’s Office for Civil Rights in San Francisco, which processes complaints filed in California. A total of 772 cases were still pending in the California office as of January.
“We feel like the U.S. Department of Education, and its Office for Civil Rights, play an extremely important role in protecting the needs of our students,” Sabbah said. “There are hundreds of cases that are currently being worked on right now, and to our understanding, that process is currently being disrupted.”
The Trump administration started purging the federal education department last week and has already laid off about half of its workforce. On Thursday, the president signed an executive order directing Education Secretary Linda McMahon to start dismantling the department.
As the executive order states, Congress created the department in 1979, and as many critics of the order argue, the dismantling of the department also requires congressional action. Several Democratic state attorneys general filed a March 13 lawsuit against the administration to halt the closure of the department.
In anticipation of the executive order, Sabbah and 16 Santa Cruz County schools superintendents wrote a March 14 letter to families pointing out the limits to the order’s authority while emphasizing the real effects some of Trump’s actions have on local schools. For example, his administration ended a program that brought about $200,000 annually to Santa Cruz County districts so they could purchase food from local farms.
The U.S. Department of Education disperses funds to schools for special education and for students living in poverty, manages and administers federal student aid like loans and conducts research and collects data to determine best practices, such as how to best teach math to students.
McMahon, the department’s secretary, wrote in a Friday opinion piece on Fox News that dismantling the department will take time. She added that the core functions of the department – which include special education funding and administering student loans – will be moved to other agencies and to the states.
“Abolishing the department will not happen tomorrow,” she wrote.
Trump announced Friday that he wants the Small Business Administration to assume responsibility for student loans and he wants special needs funding to go to the Department of Health and Human Services. Both agencies have also undergone significant layoffs.
In their letter, the Santa Cruz County superintendents wrote that despite efforts to block the order and the congressional approval needed to shutter the department, “we must anticipate that the extent of ongoing staff reductions and shifting priorities at the DOE will have inevitable impacts on its ability to continue providing programs and services.”
“We will continue to closely monitor developments and will ensure families are informed of any potential impacts,” the superintendents wrote. “Regardless of what happens in Washington, here in Santa Cruz County, we remain unwavering in our commitment to educating and uplifting every student.”
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