Department of Education layoffs stall civil rights investigations in schools: ‘I fear that it’s only just begun’
Interviews with former U.S. secretary of education, John King, and former DOE civil rights attorney, Sheria Smith, reveal that racial minorities, low-income students, and students with disabilities could be negatively affected by DOE cuts.
The gutting of 1,300 employees from the U.S. Department of Education has sent shockwaves across the education industry, with increased worry about how day-to-day functions will be impacted.
Of the four main areas that the DOE focused its work on– Title I funding, student loans, data and research, and civil rights enforcement–each one intersects deeply with the needs of students of color and other groups like students with disabilities or those who belong to religious minorities.
The Associated Press reports that of the 1,300 employees laid off from the DOE, 240 were from the Office for Civil Rights.
“We know that discrimination based on race continues to be a problem in America, and now when students and parents file a complaint about discrimination in their school district, they are much less likely to get attention and support, given the huge cuts to the Office for Civil Rights at the department,” said John King, chancellor of the State University of New York (SUNY) and the former Secretary of Education under the Obama administration, in an interview with theGrio.
DOE staff in the Office for Civil Rights were reviewing thousands of cases, including a school where a young Black boy’s request for additional disability services was denied as he faced increased bullying.
Secretary of Education, Linda McMahon, confirmed in the immediate aftermath of the layoffs, that they were first steps in closing down the DOE–a promise President Donald Trump made while on the campaign trail.
“His directive to me clearly is to shut down the Department of Education,” McMahon, told FOX News.
McMahon insisted that cuts would not impact the day-to-day functions of the department that help students.
“We wanted to make sure that we kept all of the right people, the good people, to make sure that the outward-facing programs, the grants, the appropriations that come from Congress, all of that are being met and none of that’s going to fall through the cracks,” she said.
However, King points out that Title I funding goes toward under resourced schools, which are often in predominantly Black neighborhoods, student loan programs like Pell Grants disproportionately serve Black students seeking higher education, and data and research is often used to track progress toward a more equitable school system.
“We will have less information about how students are doing, and it will be harder for civil rights organizations [and] advocacy organizations to determine whether or not districts and states are doing right by their students,” King told theGrio.
For King, who once oversaw the entire Department of Education staff, seeing the firing of 1,300 employees, the majority of whom live in D.C., Virginia and Maryland, was both jarring and sad.
“It’s extremely distressing and disheartening,” King told theGrio. “I’m heartbroken for the dedicated career civil servants at the department, many of whom are former teachers and principals who joined the department because they want to make a positive difference on behalf of their country. And I’m very worried about the impact on students and families.”
One of the career servants who has lost their job is Sheria Smith, a Harvard-educated civil rights attorney in the DOE’s Office of Civil Rights and a former teacher, who also serves as president of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 252, the union representing DOE workers.
Smith found out she was terminated after she was instructed last Tuesday not to return to her office on Wednesday. She received notice along with 970 other employees because the agency had “decided to restructure.” Smith called the layoffs improper from a union perspective, as any restructuring should have been bargained.
Smith also confirms the fear that the gutting of the DOE’s staff will impede the protection of student’s civil rights.
“One of the first things the agency did was pause us from doing any work, including the Title VI work…which is the protection of students against discrimination based on race,” she told theGrio. “So all that work has slowed.”
Having been a recipient of Pell Grants when she was in college, the very financial support that DOE gives out, Smith knows all too well the impact of the cuts on students’ prospects, especially Black students looking to pave career paths of service.
“I was able to go to Harvard because I was a Pell Grant recipient,” Smith told theGrio. “I was able to take a job only making $30,000 instead of the Wall Street jobs my classmates were making triple as much because I knew I was going to be eligible for public service loan forgiveness.”
“Currently, because of the decimation at the U.S. Department of Education, people applying for college– Black people applying for college who likely will need financial aid–won’t know if they’re going to have the Pell Grants to even obtain the degrees they need to be teachers or to do really anything else that requires a degree.”
King and Smith highlight the pipeline that is education in America. In the best case scenario, education can open doors for a child to ascend to working in the highest branch of government despite challenges they faced financially or otherwise, putting them in positions to open doors for others.
But in the worst cases, children may never get to realize their potential in the first place.
Both of them worry that the latest round of cuts will mean more students will be in a position of not knowing what they don’t know–or what resources they could’ve had to help them, had they not been taken away.
“I think there are a lot of things that are alarming and concerning that are happening,” said Smith.
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