The Trump Administration’s attempts to dismantle the federal Department of Education accelerated this month when officials moved to lay off the dozens of staffers who oversee special education for the millions of American children with disabilities. The moves have alarmed advocates, families, and educators. It’s the latest attempt to fulfill a longstanding Republican desire to get rid of the department overseeing education at the federal level.
The terminations were halted in court this month, as the case proceeds to a final decision.
The Office of Special Education Programs, which suffered the brunt of the recent reductions, administers billions of dollars in grant funding to states and school districts to help them serve kids with disabilities and ensures schools are complying with the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which protects disabled students’ right to a free education that meets their needs. That can mean issuing guidance through “Dear Colleague” letters, carrying out investigations when families raise concerns, and offering training and professional development for educators.
Linda McMahon, the secretary of education, has been directed to shut the office down.
“Millions of American students are still going to school, teachers are getting paid, and schools are operating as normal,” she said earlier this month, adding that the shutdown “confirms what the president has said: the federal Department of Education is unnecessary, and we should return education to the states.”
Special education advocates say the idea that the department is unnecessary sends a dangerous message to the public.
“We’re talking about demolishing the only system in the country that actually makes it possible for children with disabilities to go to school,” said Anna Realini, an Oakland mom of two daughters with autism. “When children don’t go to school, we’re causing incredible harm to our most vulnerable students.”
One in six Oakland kids
About one in six Oakland Unified School District students have individualized education plans, or IEPs, which mandate the services a child’s school will provide to ensure the student can learn. OUSD’s special education budget for the 2025-2026 school year is $176 million, about three-quarters of which goes to salaries and benefits for teaching and support staff. The district is expecting about $10 million of that to come from federal grants, largely to cover the cost of paraeducators — the aides who support students with disabilities at school.
“Everybody is assuming that unless a federal judge were to order these employees back to work or somehow undo the reduction in force, that we should just brace ourselves for some significant delays in receiving our federal grants,” Jennifer Blake, OUSD’s executive director of special education, told The Oaklandside.
Blake added that her biggest concern is for families and children across the country who may live in areas that could roll back protections for children with disabilities if there’s no federal enforcement mechanism.
When IDEA was first enacted 50 years ago, it was Congress’ intent to fund 40% of the cost of special education — a target it has almost never met. Over the last few years, federal funding for special education in OUSD has remained mostly flat, while costs for salaries, benefits, and services have gone up, meaning the district has increasingly had to tap into its general fund to support special education, Blake said.
At the same time, OUSD is preparing to make upward of $100 million in cuts for the next school year, cuts that may come in great part from the district’s central office. While the special education office will still be obligated to provide services to students, that work could be spread across fewer staff, said Sonia Thacher, a veteran educator.
“I worry about trying to cut very necessary things, such as support from board-certified behavior analysts, who can help us make plans to help students with behavioral challenges succeed in general education classes,” Thacher told The Oaklandside. “Those things cost money and they don’t reduce class size. But they’re necessary. When we are forced to fight over crumbs and just keep the lights on, I worry that we’re not going to serve individual children well.”
A message about ‘who it’s okay to hurt’
Thacher, who has been teaching in OUSD for 24 years, spent many years as an elementary school special education teacher and recently started teaching preschoolers. Her concerns about the federal cuts to the special education department are compounded by the broader political context that surrounds them, including the loss of food stamps — the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program, or SNAP — that many disabled kids depend on and the “unfounded assertions” about the causes of autism by Health and Human Services secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr..
Realini, whose daughters attend Oakland High and Joaquin Miller Elementary, is concerned that with such pared down staffing in special education, parents won’t be able to get the services their children need.
“The only reason my kids have what they have now is because of hundreds of hours of advocacy, interventions, writing and begging and getting outside services,” Realini told The Oaklandside. “Oftentimes the only way parents can get anything is by suing and calling in the Office of Civil Rights and the Special Education Department.”
On Oct. 15, Judge Susan Illston, a U.S. district court judge for the Northern District of California, paused the layoffs until a civil suit filed by two public employee unions is adjudicated. The president’s plan to effectively close the Special Education Office still sends a harmful message, Thacher said.
“When we talk about cuts, it’s not just about the hundreds of specific little wounds the administration is inflicting, but the message being sent about who and what it’s OK to hurt,” she said. “I’m worried about the message it sends about whether there should be protections for children with disabilities.”
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