With the government shutdown over, staff at the U.S. Department of Education return with fear for what lies ahead.
Before the election, I assumed that Trump could not shutter the Department because he would never get Congress’s approval. Some Republicans would stop him. That’s why he never sought Congressional endorsement.
But it never occurred to me that he could fire almost all its employees.
At some point, the ED building will have only a handful of people: wrestling entrepreneur Linda McMahon; her secretary or two; her speechwriter or two; and one person to clean her office at night. Oh, and Lindsay Burke, Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy and Programs. Lindsay is McMahon’s brain. She wrote the education chapter of Project 2025. As a fellow at the rightwing Heritage Foundation, Lindsay has been an avid proponent of closing the Department of Education for a long time. Lindsay has the wacky idea that the Department is responsible for raising test scores and it hasn’t.
Cutting the Department from 4500 employees to fewer than 10 is a feather in McMahon’s cap for those who want to abandon any federal reponsibilty for low-income kids and kids with special needs or enforcement of civil rights.
The reopening of the federal government promises to return hundreds of laid-off U.S. Department of Education staff to work—but employees fear that’s no guarantee they’ll return to business as usual.
The sprawling bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday and signed by President Donald Trump concludes the longest government shutdown in history and funds the federal government through Jan. 30. It also contains a provision reversing the early October layoffs of thousands of federal workers across numerous agencies, and preventing further federal layoffs until the bill’s expiration.
At the Education Department, that means 465 staff members given reduction-in-force notices in early October are due to be reinstated to their positions. (A court order had temporarily blocked the department and other agencies from firing those employees.)
But Education Department staff—who have been a repeated target of the Trump administration’s efforts to wind down the agency and shrink the federal workforce overall—are skeptical that they’ll be able to return to work as usual. The department has been resistant to reinstating employees when ordered to do so over the past year, and has instead kept staff on paid administrative leave—at times paying out millions of dollars each week to employees who aren’t working.
“The continuing resolution language doesn’t do enough to protect public servants. The Trump administration has shown us repeatedly that they want to illegally dismantle our congressionally created federal agency,” said Rachel Gittleman, the president of the union that represents Education Department staff. “We have no confidence that the U.S. Education Department will follow the terms of the continuing resolution or allow the employees named in October firings to return—or even keep their jobs past January.”
Department officials did not respond to a request for comment. With the shutdown concluded, the department posted on X, “Government shutdown is over, and we’re baaackkkkk! But let’s be honest: did you really miss us at all?”
The laid-off workers come from six of the department’s 17 primary offices and include virtually the entire staff who work on key formula grant programs, including Title I for low-income students and Individuals with Disabilities Education Act grant programs.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Thanks, Diane! You quote from Brooke Schultz’s really helpful Education Week piece that answers all the questions I’ve had for the past couple of days, and the questions we all should have had if we are thinking seriously about the future of the Dept. of Ed. Despite the end of the shutdown, things still look pretty shaky. Thanks for getting this around promptly at the end of the week when the shutdown was ended.
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Thank you, Jan.
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“has instead kept staff on paid administrative leave—at times paying out millions of dollars each week to employees who aren’t working.”
And when a federal employee is on administrative leave, they can’t access their departmental portal or email—i.e., they can’t work from home unpaid or even keep abreast of what’s going on.
Yet they’re paid full salary. That proves these excessive layoffs (or soon to be layoffs) in targeted depts are not about saving $ under pretext of eliminating DEI/ waste/ fraud/ abuse. That applies only to the majority of agencies making up the average 10%-15% DOGE goal for cuts to total fed employment. For targeted agencies, it’s about ensuring that they cannot perform their Congressionally- authorized duties.
There are multiple lawsuits against the excessive cuts to Dept of Ed employees winding their way through the courts. Some courts have initially blocked the layoffs, but subsequent rulings, including those from SCOTUS, have allowed some of the firings to proceed. Those on paid administrative leave are presumably those layoffs that were blocked and SCOTUS did not overturn– as well as perhaps some allowed to be laid off by SCOTUS for the time being, where admin legal staff estimates winning their case is iffy so they’ll wait it out.
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Trump wants to disassemble the federal government. He’s not saving money. He is destroying entire agencies.
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…and they’re not getting any $10,000 bonus, either.
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