State officials wait and see how layoffs at federal education agency will affect Oklahoma

Yahoo

13-03-2025

Dismantling the U.S. Department of Education will provide flexibility to states regarding education spending, Gov. Kevin Stitt said the day after an announcement that roughly half of the federal agency's workforce will be cut by President Donald Trump's administration.
Just 2,183 agency employees of the 4,133 workers who worked for the federal agency when Trump began his second term in January will remain, according to administration officials. NBC News reported that the agency's regional office in Dallas, which oversees Oklahoma, will be eliminated as part of the national cuts.
On Wednesday, Trump praised U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon for the cuts.
More: OU president Joseph Harroz comfortable with plan, despite federal upheaval from DOGE
"What we want to do is always school choice, but we're going to do school choice, and we're doing it, but we want education to be moved back where the states run education, where the parents of the children will be running education, when governors that are doing a very good job will be running education," Trump said.
Also Wednesday, Stitt spoke at the Greater Oklahoma City Chamber's State Spotlight event. Stitt said he spoke with McMahon the day before as part of a National Governors Association event. Stitt said the Trump administration believes in turning education "back over to the states."
"They're still going to push the same amount [of money] to the states," Stitt said. "The idea is more flexibility, right? Every state looks different."
The cuts to the federal Education Department come as Trump considers an executive order attempting to dismantle the agency entirely — although the agency could not close unless Congress decides to take that action.
Oklahoma state schools Superintendent Ryan Walters — who seemed to be campaigning a few months ago for the job that eventually went to McMahon — has persistently pushed on social media for the closing of the federal agency. He's made more than 30 posts on X about the subject.
"Time to Make Education Great Again!" Walters said on social media Tuesday evening. "Return education back where it belongs: The states and parents."
But should the agency close — what then? The agency's closure would affect more than just K-12 education in Oklahoma. It also would affect the state's higher education institutions overseen by the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education, and the Oklahoma CareerTech system, among others. How would federal money that now passes through the federal Education Department be distributed by the states if the federal agency no longer exists?
State Sen. Adam Pugh, R-Edmond, thinks that's a pertinent question. Pugh is the chair of the Senate's Education Committee and its education budget subcommittee. He said state legislators are consistently asking questions of Oklahoma's congressional delegation, trying to sort truth from rumor.
"On education, I'm asking questions of everybody that I can," Pugh told The Oklahoman last week. "I don't think we're currently prepared to just have all that stuff stop. Number one, we're not financially prepared, but also just our infrastructure — and I mean infrastructure like the government organizations that would be charged with block grants, or picking up or receiving funding and building out those programs, the accountability systems that have to be wrapped around them, the metrics of knowing what we're doing and how we're doing it. I don't think currently we're prepared to do that."
"We're talking about it, for sure. Nobody has brought me a plan. I say nobody — I mean nobody from the executive branch, or the state Department (of Education), from the regents. I think they're all in the same wait and see mode that we're probably all in right now, trying to figure it out.'
Under the Oklahoma Constitution, the Legislature controls the state's purse strings. Pugh suggested the framework used by the Legislature to distribute federal pandemic-era relief funds that came to the state through the American Rescue Plan Act might be a good place to start, should the state begin receiving education block grants from the federal government.
More: Oklahoma City Public Schools Board of Education reviews finances after Tulsa schools audit
"When we received those federal stimulus dollars, at first they float directly to the governor, and then the Legislature said, 'We're the appropriators,' whether it's federal money or state revenue," Pugh said. "We're the ones who are constitutionally responsible to appropriate. So then we took that money in house, we created a process. Though it took a little while to get the process right, I think we created a very open process that was transparent, and I think we've done some really good things with those ARPA dollars."That ARPA structure was bicameral, it was bipartisan — it was a very good process. It was all done in public light. Everybody could hear our discussions and see what we were prioritizing.'
But without the U.S. Education Department, who will oversee how federal funds comply with federal law? Specifically, who will oversee how recipients use federal dollars meant for students with disabilities in Oklahoma and across the nation?
This is Joy Turner's concern. She's the Oklahoma Disability Law Center's director of investigation and monitoring.
In 2023, Oklahoma received about $182 million in funding through the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). The law governs how states and public agencies provide early intervention, special education and related services to students with disabilities.
Under the Education Department, the Office of Special Education Programs conducts compliance reviews of state agencies, Turner said. Without the federal agency, it's unclear who would perform that function.
The federal education agency is also responsible for investigating allegations of disability discrimination in public schools through its Office of Civil Rights. With the layoffs announced Tuesday, the office's locations in Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Dallas, New York, Philadelphia and San Francisco are being shuttered, ProPublica reported.
Offices will remain in Atlanta, Denver, Kansas City, Seattle and Washington, D.C., but adding onto one regional office's load will cause delays, Turner said.
"They look at all of those indicators of success for a state and how they implement IDEA, and if you don't have oversight of that, those things can slip through the cracks," Turner said. "That directly impacts students with disabilities."
This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Oklahoma officials weigh in on mass federal education agency layoffs