TOLEDO – When President Donald Trump signed an executive order on March 20, effectively dismantling the Department of Education (DoE), he brought change to the U.S. education system as a whole.
The problem is that no one seems to know exactly how this cut will affect local schools throughout the United States, including Toledo Public Schools.
According to section one of Trump’s executive order: “Closing the Department of Education would provide children and their families the opportunity to escape a system that is failing them.”
While the idea is to return power to the states and the state education departments, the tasks have yet to be redistributed.
Another problem is that DoE is known largely for its role in providing funding to state schools.
Section two (a) of Trump’s executive order states: “The Secretary of Education shall, to the maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law, take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education 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.”
But what, exactly, does that mean? As of April 8, Toledo Public Schools (TPS) had received no information from the government about the effects on local schools or funding, according to TPS communications coordinator Robert Wiercinski.
Section 2 part (b) of the executive order has this to say about the effects to school funding: “The Secretary of Education shall ensure that the allocation of any Federal Department of Education funds is subject to rigorous compliance with Federal law and Administration policy, including the requirement that any program or activity receiving Federal assistance terminate illegal discrimination obscured under the label ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ or similar terms and programs promoting gender ideology.”
Despite the termination of funds to DEI programs, which primarily affects higher education, the order does not specifically mention how the tasks of the DoE will be redistributed or how schools will continue to receive their federal funding.
In the 2019-2020 school year, 7.6 percent of school funding came from the federal government, according to USA Facts, with the remaining 92.4 percent coming from state and local tax dollars.
While school funding has not yet been affected, Toledo Federation of Teachers (TFT) board member Dan Fray said it is a concern.
“We [TFT] are not really actively protesting anything as much as we’re just trying to get the message out that we need fair funding,” Fray said.
Fray has been a TPS teacher for the past 28 years and is in charge of member engagement, retention and development at TFT.
He explained that federal funding for Toledo schools typically goes to help with career tech and early childhood education programs.
“We’ve already had our kids be affected by some of the cuts from the federal administration early on,” Fray said. “Not too long after Inauguration Day, there was a lot of executive orders pausing funding for different programs.
“We had field trips that had to get cancelled because the organizations that were funding the field trips for the students thought they were losing their funding,” Fray said.
While the organizations later realized their funding was not actually lost, the panic surrounding the executive orders caused some students to miss the experience.
Fray also mentioned that federal funding helps TPS with Title One.
“Title One is a federal program that provides assistance to school districts and schools with a high percentage of low-income families, which Toledo does qualify,” Fray said.
If TPS funding were to be affected by the DoE cut, Fray worries that rather than just the federally funded programs being cut, the pool of money for all school programs will simply be diluted.
“My bigger concern is that all of them lose a little bit [of funding], such that all of them lose their effectiveness,” Fray said.
Regardless of what happens, Fray noted that TFT’s primary concern is for the students.
“Hopefully, if you’re a kid sitting in a second or third or eighth grade or high school classroom in Toledo, you never realize that this all happened. The school district and the Union and everybody, the community, all work together such that even if there is cuts, our students don’t notice it,” Fray said.
“That’s the end goal – just to make sure our kids go to school in a safe and rich learning environment, loved by their teachers and supported by the district and the community. And they don’t even realize that the Department of Education got cut,” Fray said.
