A new round of layoffs at the Education Department is depleting an agency that was hit hard in the Trump administration’s previous mass firings, threatening new disruption to the nation’s students and schools in areas from special education to civil rights enforcement and after-school programs.
The Trump administration started laying off 466 Education Department staffers on Friday amid mass firings across the government meant to pressure Democratic lawmakers over the federal shutdown. The layoffs would cut the agency’s workforce by nearly a fifth and leave it reduced by more than half its size when President Donald Trump took office on Jan. 20.
The cuts play into Trump’s broader plan to shut down the Education Department and parcel its operations to other agencies. Over the summer, the department started handing off its adult education and workforce programs to the Department of Labor, and it previously said it was negotiating an agreement to pass its $1.6 trillion student loan portfolio to the Treasury Department.
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