Trump guts Education Department and special needs students pay the price: ‘I’m more heartbroken for the students’

Employees recently let go from the Department of Education amid Trump’s mass layoffs of federal workers warned that there is nobody left to oversee billions in funding and its special needs students across the U.S. who will pay the price.

“I'm more heartbroken for the students with disabilities than I am myself,” one employee told The Independent on the condition of anonymity to speak candidly. The employee said that the office had already set up for federal money to be dispersed for special education.

“There's no one to oversee billions of dollars of grants, so it just doesn't make sense,” they said. “So I'm like, why did they allow them to go out if they weren't–like, there's no one to oversee billions of dollars of grants.”

Over the weekend, ABC News and USA Today reported the Trump administration eliminated almost the entire staff at the Department of Education’s Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services. The move comes as the Trump administration began massive reductions in force amid the ongoing government shutdown as a means to convince Democrats to vote for a stopgap spending bill.

The office is specifically responsible for administering about $15.1 billion worth of money to ensure that students with disabilities receive a “free appropriate public education” as codified under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. On Wednesday, a federal judge in California temporarily halted the layoffs.

One employee who works in the Office of Special Education Programs said they found out they were laid off Saturday because they were not allowed to check their government laptops during a shutdown when she got the notice about her employment.

Students with disabilities have been entitled to a free appropriate public education until the age of 21 since President Gerald Ford passed the Education for Handicapped Children Act in 1975. The law was renamed the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act when President George H.W. Bush reauthorized it in 1990. Bush’s son, George W. Bush, reauthorized the legislation again in 2004.

A court filing from the American Federation of Government Employees filed late last week said that the Office of Management and Budget sent out reduction-in-force notices to 466 Department of Education Employees.

The Trump administration has tried to eliminate the Department of Education through executive order, which is against the law and would require an act of Congress. But now the department finds itself in Trump’s crosshairs as the government shutdown drags on. Trump threatened to lay off employees and followed through on those threats last week.

The Education Department’s press office sent an out-of-office email blaming Democrats for the government shutdown. The office later referred The Independent to a tweet from Education Secretary Linda McMahon when contacted.

“No education funding is impacted by the RIF, including funding for special education, and the clean CR supported by the Trump Administration will provide states and schools the funding they need to support all students,” she said.

The Independent has reached out to the American Federation of Government Employees about the layoffs.

Another employee in the Rehabilitative Services Administration, which focuses on helping people with disabilities find employment, also spoke anonymously to The Independent to speak candidly. The employee said that administration is one of the most fiscally complex grant programs within the federal government.

“The concern from, from, you know us civil servants, is that they seem to be glossing over the very complex nature of the program,” they said. “It takes most new fiscal staff a couple of years before they begin to feel very confident in how all the pieces work together.”

In addition, the employee said the fiscal unit chief was terminated.

“Without these controls, it's very easy for the program to potentially be, you know, taken advantage of,” they said. “It would be easy for first states to get away, or in certain situations, whether it be deliberate or by accident, for it not to actually result in the benefit that's intended for the recipients.”

The move is already causing fear among parents of children with disabilities. The employee who worked in the Office of Special Education Programs said gutting the agency would disproportionately hurt students in red states.

"If you look at the percentage of funding of special education in the red states, it's much higher than in blue states," they said. "So honestly, they're gonna hurt even more because they have higher federal funding for special education."

Anne Hayes, a Kansas mother of a child with dyslexia and another non-speaking autistic child, said she fears for the outcomes for her children.

"For my daughter, like, if she didn't have that in the early years of reading, I don't think she'd be successful in middle school," she told The Independent. "She just got straight A's, but if she didn't learn that, you know different approach, she wouldn't be successful."

Hayes said she also fears for her son, who requires a one-on-one paraprofessional teacher.

“If these things collapse, our life collapses, you know, we're gonna have to pay it out of pocket,” she said. “And states have never been good about prioritizing special education. This idea that we can just simply move it to the states without federal oversight is just, it's a lot.”