US Department of Education Continues to Lay Off Employees, Report Says

The U.S. Department of Education fired nearly everyone in the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services in a wave of new layoffs that began Friday, according to the union representing the agency's employees, USA Today reported.

Without an official estimate from the agency, it wasn't immediately clear how many people in the division were fired. Yet based on reports from staff and their managers, most employees below the leadership level were part of the workforce reduction, Rachel Gittleman, the president of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 252 told the newspaper. 

Separately, employees involved in the college access program known as TRIO, which serves and assists low-income individuals, first-generation college students and individuals with disabilities to progress through the academic pipeline from middle school to postbaccalaureate programs, were also let go, she said.

In addition, employees in the Education Department's Office for Civil Rights, many of whom work to protect students with disabilities from discrimination, also were laid off, the union told the newspaper.

The layoffs created widespread trepidation over the future of federal oversight of special education programs, as well as the billions of dollars in funding that states and schools are entitled to receive, the newspaper said.

Although federal funds for the current academic year have already been disseminated to the state, the personnel that helped state officials troubleshoot issues are now gone, the paper said. 

The job eliminations were not officially announced by the DOE or Linda McMahon, the Education Secretary, as the federal government shutdown enters its third week. 

President Donald Trump on Tuesday said his administration is using the shutdown to permanently end federal programs championed by Democrats, and will release a list of those on the chopping block on Friday, CNN reported.

“The Democrats are getting killed on the shutdown, because we’re closing up programs that are Democrat programs that we were opposed to … and they’re never going to come back in many cases,” Trump said. “So we’re being able to do things that we were unable to do before. So we’re closing up programs that are Democrat programs that we wanted to close up or that we never wanted to happen, and now we’re closing them up, and we’re not going to let them come back.”