A boy plays with a wooden puzzle with numbers. These types of sensory activities are often used in special education classrooms. (Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — Proposed mass layoffs at the U.S. Department of Education have raised concerns among disability advocates and Democratic lawmakers over the potential impact on millions of workers disabled students.
Advocates warn that the department cannot perform its legally authorized functions of special education and support services at the staffing levels proposed by President Donald Trump’s Reductions in Workforce (RIF) proposal.
The agency is also reportedly considering approx transfer of special education programs to another department.
“If we’ve learned anything this year, it’s that the fight is just beginning,” Rachel Gittleman, president of Local 252 of the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents Department of Education workers, told States Newsroom. “And we will do everything in our power to fight illegal layoffs and department closures, but this is just the beginning.”
Earlier this month, the Trump administration took another crack at the department amid the ongoing government shutdown, effectively eliminating key units serving students with disabilities. The offices concerned manage $15 billion in formulary and discretionary grant programs under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), provides guidance and support to families and states, and investigates complaints of disability discrimination, among other things.
Although a federal judge did temporarily blocked the administration from carrying out the dismissals, the ruling provides only short-term relief as the legal proceedings unfold.
The administration decided to make layoffs 465 department employeesincluding 121 at the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitation, or OSERS, 132 at the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, or OESE, and 137 at the Office of Civil Rights, or OCR.
The layoffs also affected the Secretary’s Office, the Communications Office and the Post-Secondary Education Office.
“You can’t look at it in a silo,” Gittleman said. “When you think specifically about special education, you also have to consider the fact that OESE, the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, also saw an almost full RIF.”
Gittleman called the Office for Civil Rights “a place that provides families a place to go to get help when students are denied access to an education because of their disabilities.”
“This was also almost completely destroyed,” she added. “So you’re undermining these programs in many ways because … children with disabilities benefit from OESE programs, OCR assistance, and OSERS programs.”
These three units has already been hit with a separate set of departmental exemptions earlier this year.
Parents as advocates
Katy Neas, CEO of The Arc of the United States, an advocacy group for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, said that while IDEA has not changed and the rights of children with disabilities remain in place, the government’s ability to enforce and implement those rights has deteriorated.
OSERS is responsible for managing and supporting IDEA, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary and guarantees free public education for students with disabilities. The OSERS umbrella unit includes the Office of the Deputy Secretary, the Office of Special Education Programs, and the Rehabilitation Services Administration.
“It’s taking knowledge away from U.S. Department of Education employees in the Office of Special Education Programs – the law is complex, the mix of federal law and state law is complex – you need a trusted source of accurate information, so I think that’s going to make it much more difficult to implement this law,” Neas told States Newsroom.
According to the IDEA Institute, 7.5 million students in the United States received services through IDEA in the 2022–2023 school year National Center for Education Statisticsfederal agency.
Neas encouraged parents to “know your rights” and “understand what the law does and does not do for your child and not take no for an answer.”
She said parents “really need to be well-versed in what the law requires schools to provide for their children” and “must insist that the law is applied faithfully because they are the ones who will be on the front lines trying to achieve this.”
‘Amazed’
Jacqueline Rodriguez, CEO of the National Center for Learning Disabilities, said RIFs would “prevent” the Office of Special Education Programs “from meeting its statutory requirements.”
Rodriguez, whose organization advocates for people with learning and attention difficulties, said: “We have hundreds of staff doing this type of work – the statutory requirements include monitoring, compliance, guidance and support – it’s not just about pressing a button and providing funding.”
She also noted that interest groups, including hers, are “baffled” by the mass layoffs of special education staff because of the contrast with Education Secretary Linda McMahon’s previous assurances to both Rodriguez and Congress about supporting students with disabilities.
“I’m not surprised that the administration tried to eliminate something that was required by law,” she said. “But I’m amazed that the secretary sat and testified in Congress during the confirmation hearing. She did it during the oversight hearing. She sat in front of me and said, ‘No, Jackie, this administration supports children with special needs.’ We will always be good supporters. You don’t have to worry. “
Just days after layoff notices were sent, McMahon took to social media downplay the consequences of downtime in her department.
Two weeks after schools closed, “millions of American students continue to attend school, teachers are paid, and schools continue to operate as normal,” McMahon wrote.
The Secretary added that she “affirms what the President has said: the federal Department of Education is unnecessary and we should return education to the states.”
McMahon also specified that “RIF has no impact on any education funding, including special education funding.”
Rodriguez said McMahon’s post shows the secretary believes “the status quo is completely reasonable – even though we know it is not – and deprives a disabled child of any opportunity to actually benefit from a legal education.”
“I cannot be polite and show professional respect because for the last 10 months no respect or respect has been shown to children with disabilities,” she added.
Groups advocating for students with disabilities are united in their opposition, Rodriguez continued.
“Organizations of disabled people across the country are united, we all talk to each other,” she said. “We are all working together and in agreement, step by step.”
Democrats in Congress fiercely oppose the cuts
Meanwhile, multiple Democratic lawmakers expressed outrage and concern about the department’s RIFs this month in two separate letters to the administration.
Reps. Lucy McBath of Georgia, Mark DeSaulnier and Lateefah Simon of California led dozens of others Democrats in the House of Representatives in an Oct. 17 letter to McMahon and White House Budget Director Russ Vought expressing their “strong opposition” to the layoffs and urging them to “immediately reverse course and rescind the notices of termination given to these employees.”
In another letter to McMahonThirty-one members of the Senate Democratic Caucus wrote Monday that “punitive, reckless actions like these latest firings demonstrate how President Trump and … Vought are gloating about the government shutdown they caused and treating students like political pawns,” adding: “It’s outrageous — and categorically unacceptable.”
The letter was led by Sen. Patty Murray of Washington state, the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, along with: Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York; Independent Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, ranking member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee; and Sen. Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, ranking member of the appropriations subcommittee that oversees funding for the Department of Education.
