Department of Education Cuts

Fox News Radio's Tonya J. Powers joins us to discuss what all of these cuts to the Department of Education can mean for a variety of people. 

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is West Michigan's Morning News. Good morning schmidy and

(00:03):
for Steve Kelly, with Brett Pakita here and Adam Orochow
and the producer Booth. We are standing by for Tanya
Jay Powers calling in about the Department of edcutt some
more within this DOGE program to try and slim down
on government spending. We'll take a look right now. Good morning, Tanya.

(00:24):
How are you?

Speaker 2 (00:26):
Thanks good, How are you excellent?

Speaker 1 (00:27):
Live in New York with Fox News Radio. So let's start.
Almost half of the staff, it's been announced, will be
terminated with the Department of Education. Now it's a move
Education Secretary Linda mcman's is painful but necessary. Have those
already started?

Speaker 2 (00:45):
Yeah, no, it started on Tuesday. They began cutting about
thirteen hundred workers. So far since Trump took office, the
Department of Education has reduced staff by half to about
two thousand. I think the as before was about four thousand,
somewhere between four thousand and forty four hundred maybe now

(01:05):
it's down to about two thousand. The different workers that
have been cut to include half the staff in its
Office for Civil Rights, more than one hundred of workers
from the Institute of Education, Sciences just to give you
an idea of kind of practically because those found like
these big ambiguous things that people may not realize what

(01:27):
those areas do. To put it in a little bit
more of a plane term, the Institute of Education Sciences
administers the National Assessment of Educational Progress. That is what
we always refer to as the nation's report card every
year when that comes out in about a few weeks ago,
I just did a story on this. I've talked to

(01:48):
stations across the country about this. That test, the National
report Card, is what's given to a belief Fort's and
the eighth graders every so many years. It is the
only national test that compares student performance across fifty states.
Gives you a good snapshot of kind of where things
are nationally as as a country looks at the different states.

(02:09):
That test, by the way, is mandated by Congress. That
is what That's just one of the things the Institute
of Education Sciences does. There are as I mentioned about
the Office for Civil Rights, they lost about two hundred
and forty three not union eligible staff members. Don't know
how many supervisors they lost at this point. That department.

(02:32):
Those layoffs in that department mean there will be fewer
people to process federal investigations into allegations of civil rights violations.
They currently have about twelve thousand pending investigations. They had
about six hundred attorneys handling those complaints. Those complaints, you know,

(02:53):
include discrimination based on race, gender, disability, sexual orientations. About
half of those violations complaints are involved disability issues. Just
to kind of give you an idea of the things
that they handle, more than three hundred employees in the
Federal Student Aid Office were fired. That's the division that's
in charge of student loans, college tuition grants, those TEL grants.

(03:15):
A lot of us went to college on This is
the time of the year when students are filling out
their fasta you know, to get ready to apply for college,
you know, and get see what student aid they you know,
qualify for and things like that. That is, you know,
potentially going to cause some disruption there. A matter of fact,
the fastest sight yesterday was down for several hours. The

(03:39):
developers who are the ones who you know oversee that,
the IT guys and the developers and support staff who
worked on the fast form, they were some of the
people that were hard hit during those layoffs on Tuesday
as well, as you know with the staff buyouts and
the pro probationary employees that were already let go. So

(03:59):
that's you know, that's another another practical way we could
see some disruptions of some sort with some of these
things from these from these layoffs.

Speaker 1 (04:09):
Wow, that is actually a very very helpful breakdown. Dania J. Powers,
Fox News Radio in New York. We appreciate your time
this morning.

Speaker 2 (04:16):
Thank you, sure, thank you.