I remember the days when school was about to begin for another year. Kids went to the Five-and-Dime store to buy new pencil holders, good erasers, and tablets, before carefully covering their new schoolbooks with brown paper bags from the grocery store. Sometimes we got new saddle shoes too. It was exciting, and thankfully our parents didn’t have to worry about funding cuts that would affect our school district.
What a far cry from now, when deep and damaging cuts to essential school-based programs that would affect millions of people. The recently proposed cuts were unimaginable and cruel, but not surprising given this administration’s priorities and policies.
The pending crisis in education became obvious when Mr. Trump appointed Linda Marie McMahon as Secretary of Education, with Congressional approval. A former professional wrestling promoter with a bachelor’s degree in teaching French, McMahon has no relevant experience that qualified her for a job running a massive organization that requires management, fiscal, organizational, and policymaking expertise. She has none of those skills and appears to have no interest in education and less interest in the people who need and benefit from educational objectives, programs, and sufficiently prioritized budgets.
The trouble started when the Trump administration took steps to dramatically reduce the size of the Department of Education by firing DOE employees. When a federal judge tried to have the fired employees returned to their jobs, the Supreme Court majority blocked the order with a temporary pause.
Justice Sonia Sotomayer was joined in a 19-page opinion by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. In it they called the court’s decision “indefensible” and wrote that it “hands the Executive the power to repeal statutes by firing all those necessary to carry them out. The majority is either willfully blind to the implications of its ruling or naïve, but either way the threat to our Constitution’s separation of power is "grave.”
In June the Trump administration announced a seven billion dollar cut to state and local schools. Sixteen state attorneys general reacted to that cut by suing the administration for “unconstitutionally” ending over a billion dollars in mental health related grants created to help after mass school shootings.
The $7 billion in federal spending cuts for education included five important grants that fund summer and after-school programs serving millions of students nationwide. Other impacted programs included almost $4 million for migrant education, over $2 billion for professional development, almost $9 million for English-learner services, and over a billion dollars for before-and.-afterschool programs.
National education Association president Becky Pringle reacted with shock. “Withholding billions in promised federal education funding that students need, and states had planned to use to support children in their states, is a cruel betrayal of students, especially those who rely on critical support services,” adding that “Schools are already grappling with severe teacher shortages, burnout, and under-resourced classrooms.” The fact that teachers would be expected to fill the gaps in teacher shortages and classroom supplies and would be denied training is an outrage.
To put a human face on these cuts, imagine being a migrant child who has been in school for years and now wants to graduate from high school but can’t pass the necessary academic standards. How would you like to be an educator who wants to help student achievement by furthering your training, but you are denied that opportunity. Wouldn’t you like your child’s school to have upgraded technologies like computers? How about having literacy and other educational services available during non-school hours via after school or summer programs, particularly if you live in a rural area where schools have low performance records. These educational benefits, and necessities, help kids reach their potential and shape their futures.
Keeping children safe and cared for outside of routine school or summer hours is another benefit derived from educational programs. It’s not hyperbole to say that investing in educational opportunities and programs make a ton of difference for families, communities, and this country’s future.
Interestingly, the Education Department released $1.3 million in previously held grant money for after-school programs just days after ten Republican senators sent a letter begging the Trump administration to allow frozen money to be sent to states. Withholding those funds would have meant some school districts and nonprofit organizations would have had to close or drastically scale back their educational programs this fall.
In addition to the released funds paying for programs before and after the summer the release of those funds will provide childcare for low income working parents or provide childcare options in rural areas. Beyond that, children can receive help with reading and math, as well as in science and art.
In July the remaining $5.5 billion cut was restored due to growing pressure on the administration from the public and professionals. Let’s hope that continuing pressure by parents, teachers, education administrators, and others will impact the administration, and Linda McMahon, enough to care about our kids, and realize that education in all forms is critical for all of us.
On this and other urgent matters, we need to keep the pressure up. It obviously works!