MTA leadership: Trump's mass firing of DOE staff is part of an 'ongoing, lawless and cruel attack'
MTA leadership: Trump's mass firing of DOE staff is part of an 'ongoing, lawless and cruel attack'
The DOE provides Massachusetts with more than $515 million that directly supports students and families in preK-12 schools.
Massachusetts Teachers Association President Max Page and Vice President Deb McCarthy released the following statement in response to President Donald Trump’s mass layoffs of staff at the federal Department of Education:
The Trump administration’s mass firing of staff members at the federal Department of Education is part of an ongoing, lawless and cruel attack on students, families and communities.
Eliminating half of the department’s staff is in keeping with President Trump’s stated desire to shutter the federal Department of Education. Most of the funding provided by the department supports students in poor communities and students with disabilities. It also allows our young people to access higher education.
The plan to dismantle the department threatens that funding and how it will be allocated.
The Department of Education does not set curriculum or mandate how schools operate. Public schools in Massachusetts have a great deal of autonomy and receive most of their guidance from the state.
Because only Congress can eliminate the Department of Education, we urge lawmakers to protect the Department of Education and its work.
But the federal department does provide Massachusetts with more than $515 million that directly supports students and families in preK-12 schools. This money is crucial to providing special education services and meals in schools and ensuring that all students have equitable access to a high-quality public education. If positions supported by federal funds are cut, class sizes will likely grow for all students.
The department also is responsible for grants and loans – such as the Pell Grant – that encourage low- and middle-income students to attend college. The Healey administration estimates that Massachusetts could lose up to $2 billion in federal funds for education if the U.S. Department of Education is dismantled. That will result in mass layoffs and stagnate economic activity and social mobility in our state and across the country.
No one should believe that the Trump administration is simply shifting funding for education programs to other federal agencies or departments. Trump and his new Secretary of Education, Linda McMahon, have made clear that the intent is to undermine public education through cuts and through privatization – taking money from public schools and giving it to private schools. With the potential for cuts in federal support for Medicaid threatening school-based services for many children and the funding turmoil underway at public colleges and universities, the Trump administration is revealing its contempt for public education, and by extension its contempt for families and communities.
“The Trump administration is revealing its contempt for public education, and by extension its contempt for families and communities.”
The use of federal grants and vouchers for private schools will undermine the integrity of public education systems, and since more than 90 percent of the students in Massachusetts attend a public school, it is crucial that we maintain a strong, statewide public school system that local communities can tailor to their needs.
Our state has demonstrated the success of a balanced approach to having strong, statewide academic standards and local, community-based control. Disrupting the revenue source that supports some of our state’s most vulnerable students and jeopardizing the federal grants that now help tens of thousands of Massachusetts residents pay for college are an injustice.
We cannot allow this to happen.