When department officials revealed the layoffs on Tuesday, there were concerns about the agency’s capacity to carry on with business as usual.
The agency’s workforce was already being reduced by the Trump Administration through buyout offers and probationary employee terminations. According to the agency, the number of employees in the Education Department will be around half of what it was before Tuesday’s layoffs.
In an effort to lessen the size of the federal government, Trump has ordered a major downsizing, which includes the layoffs. It is anticipated that the Social Security Administration, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and other organizations will lay off thousands of employees.
According to authorities, the agency is also ending building leases in places like Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, and New York.
According to department officials, the department will keep performing its core duties, which include managing student loans, overseeing Pell Grants, and allocating federal money to schools.
According to Education Secretary Linda McMahon, she arrived at the department with the intention of cutting bloat so that more funds could be sent to local education authorities.
“So many of the programs are really excellent, so we need to make sure the money goes to the states,” McMahon said in an interview Tuesday on Fox News.
On March 3, the day she was confirmed by the Senate, McMahon sent out a note warning staff to prepare for significant layoffs. She claimed that removing bureaucratic red tape and transferring agency power to states was the department’s “final mission.”
Employees were notified via email on Tuesday that the department’s regional offices and Washington headquarters would be closed on Wednesday and that access would be prohibited, before reopening on Thursday. Unspecified “security reasons” were the sole explanation provided for the closures.
Trump said that “radicals, zealots, and Marxists” had taken over the department, and he ran on a platform of closing it. While acknowledging that only Congress has the authority to dismantle the agency, McMahon stated at her confirmation hearing that it may be time for a restructure and budget reduction.
During her hearing, McMahon informed lawmakers that her goal is to increase the efficiency of essential programs rather than to cut funding for them.
The Education Department was one of the smallest Cabinet-level organizations even prior to the layoffs. According to a department website, it employed 3,100 individuals in Washington and another 1,100 at regional offices around the nation.
Since Trump took office, the department’s employees have been under growing pressure to leave, first through a deferred resignation program and then through a $25,000 buyout offer that ended on March 3.
The cuts were critical and required, according to Jeanne Allen of the Center for Education Reform, which supports the growth of charter schools.
Allen stated, “State and local leaders will have more time to create more opportunities to give schools and educators real flexibility and innovation to address the needs of students, wherever they are educated, if we stop the constant federal interference.”
Some supporters questioned the department’s assertion that the layoffs would not impact its operations.
Roxanne Garza, the former chief of staff in President Joe Biden’s Office of Postsecondary Education, stated, “I do not see at all how that can be true.”
According to Garza, who is currently the head of higher education policy at Education Trust, a research and advocacy group, a large portion of the department’s work is labor-intensive, such as looking into civil rights complaints and assisting families with financial aid applications. “I just do not see how those things will not be affected with far fewer staff.”