Education Department shutdown plans face a new hurdle

Congressional Democrats, optimistic about regaining a majority in the House or Senate following this year’s midterm elections, are outlining their plans to block the Trump administration from dismantling the Education Department. 

The Education Department laid off about a third of its employees last year, and shed about half of its total workforce after offering voluntary separation incentives and firing probationary employees.

The department is now in the process of reassigning its programs and personnel to other federal agencies. The Education Department has signed 14 interagency agreements to move its employees and programs to other agencies on a temporary basis. Last week, the Education Department began reassigning some of its employees to other agencies’ office buildings in the Washington, D.C. region. 

In a press conference with union officials on Tuesday, House and Senate Democrats outlined their plans to stop the Education Department from closing down. 

Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said his colleagues are trying to include language in a comprehensive 2027 spending bill that would prevent Secretary Linda McMahon “from using any of these funds to shut down the Department of Education.” 

“If we hear the right result from the voters, if the voters want a majority in the House and the Senate to protect public education – and I think they do – then we will be able to move forward on that front,” Van Hollen said. 

Democrats on the House Education and Workforce Committee offered several options to challenge the agency’s reorganization plans. 

Committee Ranking Member Bobby Scott, D-Va., said that if he becomes chairman, he will scrutinize Education’s interagency agreements, which he said have been “extremely inefficient and wasteful.” 

“The next Congress, when I chair the Education and Labor Committee, will get even more done. We'll conduct vigorous oversight into the Department of Education,” Scott said. 

Rep. Suzanne Bonamici, D-Ore., introduced articles of impeachment against McMahon in June. The House can impeach Cabinet members with a majority vote, but conviction and removal requires a two-thirds vote from the Senate. 

“If she continues to illegally dismantle the department and remove employees from their jobs, it is the duty of Congress to impeach her,” Bonamici said at Tuesday’s rally. 

Rep. Mark Takano, D-Calif., said he supports Bonamici’s articles of impeachment, “because Linda McMahon's cuts to the Department of Education are already having devastating impacts on the ground.” 

U.S. Rep. Jahana Hayes, D-Conn., said a Democratic majority would keep McMahon’s plans to dismantle the agency in check. 

“She is doing exactly what she was tasked with doing, with deliberate speed and intention, which is why I can't concern myself with what they are doing in this moment. I have to ask, ‘What are we going to do in response? What are we going to do when Democrats take back the majority to make sure that we stop what is happening at the Department of Education?’” Hayes said.  

McMahon acknowledged in April that some of the department’s staff cuts went too far. She told lawmakers that laid-off employees were asked to return to their jobs in the Office of Civil Rights and that the office is hiring more attorneys to deal with a backlog of cases. 

The Government Accountability Office found in February that the Education Department spent up to $38 million on nine months of paid leave for employees in its Office for Civil Rights before ultimately reinstating them to their positions. 

The Trump administration can’t close down the Education Department without approval from Congress. McMahon told employees last fall that implementing these interagency agreements would give the department a proof-of-concept to show to lawmakers and convince them that the department is no longer needed.

The department has met bipartisan resistance to its reorganization plans. 

The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee advanced legislation in July that would reverse more than a quarter of the Education Department’s interagency agreements. 

The bill would unwind the Education Department’s plans to move its Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services to the Health and Human Services Department, its Office of Postsecondary Education and Office of Elementary and Secondary Education to the Labor Department and its Office of Indian Education to the Interior Department. 

Everett Kelley, the national president of the American Federation of Government Employees, said the union is asking Congress to pass statutory language that “halts and reserves these transfers.” 

“You cannot sign an agreement that teaches the Department of Labor how to enforce a student's civil rights,” Kelley said. “You cannot repost a job and get back 30 years of knowing how the money actually reaches the classroom. That's expertise that walked out of the door.”

Meanwhile, AFGE Local 252, which represents Education Department employees, and three former Education secretaries from the Obama and Biden administrations are asking the department’s inspector general office to investigate the cost and impact of the agency’s mass layoffs. 

In a letter to acting IG Mark Priebe, AFGE Local 252 and the former education secretaries wrote that many of the positions the department has been advertising are “nearly identical to those of RIFed employees.” 

Because agencies conduct a RIF to eliminate positions, not people, they are supposed to give priority consideration to recently laid-off employees when they begin to hire again post-RIF.

AFGE Local 252 and the former Education secretaries wrote in a letter to the department’s IG that the agency “failed to provide adequate information” about signing up for its reemployment priority lists that “individuals did not always receive preference in hiring” based on their inclusion on these lists. 

A department spokesperson said in a statement that  its reduction in force “was implemented carefully and in compliance with all applicable regulations and laws.” 

AFGE Local 252 President Rachel Gittleman said the IG report is needed to get “a full picture of the fraud, waste, and abuse carried out by this administration.” 

Gittleman said the department has posted hundreds of new roles at the department “that were the exact jobs our fired members were doing.” She said one bargaining unit member has been rejected multiple times by the department for jobs that are identical to the one she had before.

The RIFed employee, she added, eventually took a job with a contractor “to do the exact same job she did at the department” for lower pay and without benefits. 

“She’s facing foreclosure on her home,” Gittleman said.