Austin public education advocates blast Trump’s order aiming to close Education Department

President Trump signed an executive order Thursday to phase out the U.S. Department of Education – an agency that provides loans and grants to college students, distributes federal funding to schools and is tasked with protecting students’ civil rights. The move follows significant layoffs at the department, including staff at a regional office in Dallas.

In the order, Trump directed Education Secretary Linda McMahon to take steps to close the department “to the maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law.” To close it entirely, Congress will need to sign off.

The long-anticipated executive order is getting mixed reactions in Texas, where the state’s public schools educate about one in 10 of all U.S. students.

The state’s top Republican leaders praised the move. Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Attorney General Ken Paxton were all on hand for the signing ceremony in Washington, D.C.

“Governor Abbott supports President Trump’s efforts to decrease federal bureaucracy and return control of education back to the states, where it should belong,” Andrew Mahaleris, Gov. Abbott’s press secretary, said.

The Texas Education Agency, which oversees public education in the state, had a similar response to the order.

“This executive order returns control of education back to the states,” an agency spokesperson wrote in an email. “TEA is prepared to implement any changes to better serve the students, school systems and taxpayers of Texas.”

In contrast, U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Austin, criticized Abbott for attending the ceremony.

“So appropriate that Governor Abbott has joined President Trump for this announcement, since both are undermining public education,” he said in an email.

Doggett added he is working to push back against Abbott’s effort to establish a program in Texas that would give families taxpayer money to pay for private schools, something Trump also supports.

Other advocates in Austin said the order is part of a troubling nationwide trend that seeks to undermine public education.

“I think anyone who’s paying attention sees that public education is under attack right now,” Austin ISD Board of Trustees President Lynn Boswell said. “And that hurts our students.”

Boswell said a key service the Department of Education has provided for schools nationwide is collecting data and conducting research to improve student outcomes.

“It’s really important to protect that research and to make sure that that great work isn’t lost,” Boswell said.

Ken Zarifis, president of Education Austin, a union representing Austin ISD teachers and staff, is concerned about how this order will affect students.

“We have a president that wants to really eliminate the safeguards in public education, wants to further privatize a public entity and really has little regard for the purpose of a public education system that provides opportunity for all children,” Zarifis said.

Another area of concern for advocates is what efforts to dismantle the Education Department will mean for funding that supports low-income students and students with disabilities, although Trump said during the ceremony that those sources of funding will be “fully preserved.”

While local property taxes and state dollars account for the vast majority of funding for Texas public schools, federal support still plays an important role.

Texas received more than $1.8 billion in federal funding to support low-income students during Fiscal Year 2025, according to an analysis by EdTrust. Of the state’s more than 5.5 million public school students, 62 percent are considered economically disadvantaged, according to a 2024 report from the Texas Education Agency.

The Department of Education also sent roughly $144 million in grants to Texas to help educate English learners: Nearly one in four students in the state is emergent bilingual. The state received another $1.3 billion to support students with disabilities.

Boswell said any loss of federal funding would be a challenge for school districts like Austin ISD, which is already facing budget shortfalls.

Austin ISD is one of the largest school districts in the state and has about a $110 million deficit. About 11 percent of the district’s funding, she said, is federal – though not all of that flows through the Department of Education. Funding for school meals, for example, comes from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

“Every single dollar matters. It matters to our student experience, it matters to our ability to take care of our staff and retain our staff, who our students depend on,” she said. “Every dollar, we will feel it, and that’s true in Austin – that’s true everywhere else.”

Zarifis said if public schools in Texas lose federal funding as a result of the dismantling of the Education Department, the Texas Legislature needs to make up the difference. The majority of public school districts in Texas have budget deficits, which school officials blame on state funding for public education not keeping up with inflation.

“Teachers and school employees are stretched to their limits, as it is right now,” Zarifis said. “They are underpaid and overworked on a daily basis. … This action, coupled with what our state is doing on not funding public ed, will bring people to a breaking point.”

Still, Zarifis said he believes there is opportunity within this adversity to fight back against attacks on public education.

“We can stand against it. We can fight against it. Are we willing to do that? Because we can’t wait for the state to save us and we can’t wait for the federal government to save us because they’re not intending to at this moment,” he said. “We have to save us.”

This story was produced as part of the Austin Monitor’s reporting partnership with KUT.

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