This story was updated on Wednesday, March 26, 2025, at 8:20 p.m.
Following President Donald Trump’s executive order to begin dismantling the U.S. Department of Education, teacher and student organizations in Georgia are figuring out how to move forward.
The president’s March 20 order called on Secretary of Education Linda McMahon to move toward closing the department and “return authority over education to the States and local communities while ensuring the effective and uninterrupted delivery of services, programs, and benefits on which Americans rely.”
The next day, Trump added that the Small Business Administration, headed by former Georgia U.S. Sen. Kelly Loeffler, would take over the department’s student loan portfolio and that Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. would take over special education.
Fully shuttering the department, however, would require an act of Congress.
The Department of Education ensures that schools are abiding by federal discrimination laws and facilitates funding for students with disabilities, financial aid programs, Title I funding for high-poverty schools, and more. In Georgia, 71.3% of public schools are Title I schools, according to the 2024 College and Career Ready Performance Index.
“There’s such a range of students that need these services and funds that it actually impacts a much broader swath of students than I think most people realize.”
Aarti Sharma, vice president of policy and strategy at redefinED atlanta
Margaret Ciccarelli, director of legislative services of the Professional Association of Georgia Educators, said the executive order and Trump’s comments haven’t provided much information about how exactly the many services provided by the Department of Education will be relegated.
“It doesn’t provide a lot of additional guidance to educators about what the future may bring and how that can inform how they do their jobs,” Ciccarelli said. “But at the end of the day, that’s what we’re seeking for Georgia educators, is clarity about who will perform these functions if USED closes, and how we will all be accountable for Georgia students.”
PAGE is collecting questions from Georgia teachers about the recent executive order and sharing those responses with the state’s congressional delegation to get answers.
“I’ve heard both negative and positive, but most of what we’ve heard is questions, and most of those questions are about the future of special education service delivery,” Ciccarelli said.
That’s a concern for organizations like redefinED atlanta, which aims to help disadvantaged students access high-quality public education.
Aarti Sharma, vice president of policy and strategy at redefinED atlanta, said many Atlanta students benefit from federal funding under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and the McKinney-Vento Act, which helps homeless students access educational resources and health services.
In FY 2025, Georgia received more than $380 million under IDEA to support students with disabilities and special needs and $3 million in funds under the McKinney-Vento Act. More than 10,000 homeless students in metro Atlanta are enrolled in the Education for Homeless Children and Youth program as of the 2022-2023 school year, according to EDFacts, the department’s data collection initiative.
“These funds impact students who are experiencing homelessness, which unfortunately is a large amount of students in the metro Atlanta area,” Sharma said.
“We’re talking about students with disabilities, and disabilities range, right? It could be a student who has speech needs, or it could be severe emotional behavioral needs, or it could be even more moderate disability needs,” Sharma added. “There’s such a range of students that need these services and funds that it actually impacts a much broader swath of students than I think most people realize.”
In fact, addressing education inequities was part of the reason why former Georgia governor and President Jimmy Carter pushed to establish the Department of Education in 1979.
“He founded it because there were students across the country, primarily lower-income, disenfranchised students, Black and Brown students, students who were disabled in a variety of ways that were not getting access to a public education as we know it today,” Sharma said.
Moreover, potential impacts to federal support would further burden Georgia teachers, said Georgia Federation of Teachers President Verdaillia Turner.
“Georgia teachers would just have to do more with less, and we have a teacher shortage and we’re gonna lose more teachers,” she said.
Turner added that teachers are often responsible for their students’ well-being beyond academics, and impacts to federal funding and support could jeopardize their ability to help their kids.
“We usually think of schools just taking care of reading, writing, arithmetic, social studies, history etc. We do far more than that,” she said. “We provide social services and support services for families. So this disruption in income is a disruption to Georgia, period.”
The American Federation of Teachers, the parent organization of GFT, joined a lawsuit against Trump, McMahon and the Education Department to stop the elimination of the department.
It’s unlikely the Education Department will be closed completely, Sharma said. But with recent layoffs of nearly half of the department’s employees, staffing issues may affect delivery of services.
“I do think what will happen is that the department will be so understaffed and underfunded that the critical work that we rely on from the Department of Education won’t actually be happening in a timely manner, which will detrimentally impact students who need this work the most,” she said.
Correction: A previous version of this article did not have the correct spelling and/or capitalization for redefinED atlanta and Aarti Sharma. It has now been corrected.
