'There is nothing efficient about making our public schools poorer,' Rep. Greg Casar (D-Austin) tells the crowd during a press conference at the Texas Capitol on March 24. (Photo by Matt Hennie)
President Donald Trump and Elon Musk are “moving fast and breaking things” as they fire thousands of people and close regional offices, says a Texas civil rights attorney snared in the layoffs.
The Trump administration’s push to eliminate the US Education Department not only jeopardizes billions in federal dollars for Texas schools, it’s tampering with the livelihoods of students, teachers, and federal workers throughout the state.
Funding from the federal agency supports over 5.6 million students across 9,000 K-12 schools in Texas, including $1.8 billion for schools that serve low-income families — which serve over 3.6 million students — and $1.3 billion for 700,000 students who receive help like speech services, according to the American Federation of Teachers, which is a labor union for educators.
“ Trump and Musk talk about efficiency, but there is nothing efficient about making our public schools poorer,” Rep. Greg Casar (D-Austin) said during a press conference at the Texas Capitol on March 24.
“There is nothing efficient about failing to give a great education to the next generation. Trump and Musk see this money that’s supposed to be for kids, and they see it as a bucket of money for themselves,” he added.
Trump announced massive layoffs — roughly 1,300 out of the 4,133 workers at the Education Department — on March 12, including closing the regional Office for Civil Rights in Dallas. The office handled civil rights complaints, ensured equal educational opportunities, and addressed issues such as disability rights.
On March 20, the president signed an executive order directing Education Secretary Linda McMahon to take all necessary steps to shrink the DOE. Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, and Attorney General Ken Paxton were in attendance.
“ It’s embarrassing, it’s maddening, and it’s saddening,” said Zeph Capo, president of the Texas AFT. “This a wholesale divestment from the promise we’ve made to our next generation. A divestment from families, a divestment from students, and it’s undercutting some of the basic tenants of individual constitutional rights that should be upheld.”
“Closing the Office for Civil Rights in Dallas, the work that they did every day was often the last line of defense for families of students with disabilities or special needs that often weren’t being treated the way that they should have been by their school district or by the state,” Capo added.
Before the March 12 cuts, the Education Department and Office for Civil Rights had operations in Washington DC, Dallas, San Francisco, New York, Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Atlanta, Denver, Kansas City, and Seattle. Now only five offices remain.
And one attorney who was fired in the Dallas layoffs is concerned that the remaining offices won’t be able to process all of the cases that were left behind.
“We already had a backlog,” said the former OCR attorney, who requested anonymity over fears of retaliation. “We had the highest number of cases we’ve ever received last year with the lowest number of staff that we’ve ever had.”
The attorney said the layoffs and closing regional offices will impact students. Besides investigating cases, attorneys in the office also provided technical assistance to families and educators, the attorney said.
“A lot of kids are going to be hurt by this, I don’t know who’s going to help those kids now,” the attorney added. “ We were a highly productive office that helped thousands of people.”
“There’s still people that need help, but they closed our entire office. There’s not a lot of agencies that do what we do,” the attorney said.
‘They don’t care about what happens to kids’
Zeph Capo, president of the Texas AFT, speaks during a press conference on the dismantling of the US Education Department at the Texas Capitol on March 24. (Photo by Matt Hennie)
The Dallas OCR office handled Title 1 funding — a federal program that provides funding to schools with high concentrations of low-income students to improve educational outcomes.
“ They don’t care about what happens to kids who are left behind in the public school system after they’ve gutted it, and I think that’s disgusting,” the attorney said. “These are rural communities. These are red states that oftentimes are receiving Title 1 funding. (Trump) is going after the kids of his own voters. I’m hoping that people wake up and see what’s happening.”
In addition to funding, OCR enforced laws that prohibited discrimination on the basis of race, national origin, sex, and disability.
The vast majority of the cases the Dallas OCR office received regarded disabilities, and involved students who received special education or special services that could now go unaddressed, according to the attorney.
“There was a time before the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, and if you had a kid in a wheelchair and you tried to register them at the public school you’re trying to go to, they could just turn you away,” the attorney said. “I’m aware of at least one school district already in North Texas that is not accepting kids with disabilities. That’s already happening, and it’s extremely troubling to me. That’s what we worked to ensure wasn’t happening.”
The Education Department also aimed to address the teacher shortage in Texas.
Texas teachers are paid about $9,000 less than the national average. Around $21 million in federal funding went toward hiring more teachers and support staff, according to AFT.
“These cuts are going to create an entirely new level of uncertainty,” Capo said. “Uncertainty for special education teachers, or teachers that are funded by Title 1 in lower socioeconomic schools who are wondering if they’re gonna have a job next year because nobody’s actually giving them a plan or reassuring them what’s gonna happen. Texas currently has the worst teacher retention rates in its history, and we are now adding another layer of uncertainty to that.”
School districts, education advocacy groups, and unions have sued to try and stop Trump’s dismantling of the Education Department, claiming his executive order violates the Constitution and federal law. Closing the agency requires action by Congress, they argued.
But opponents of closing the Education Department need help, according to Capo.
“You’re going to have to go get someone else angry,” Capo said. “Get your neighbors angry, get their brothers and sisters angry. Don’t let anybody say their voice doesn’t count. Because without having every one of those voices, billionaire voices from out of state are gonna win.”
Texas students, advocates, and lawmakers, including former civil rights attorney Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Dallas), have also urged the Education Department to reverse its decision to close the Dallas office.
“ I don’t know what’s going to happen next,” the attorney said. “They’re moving fast and breaking things and they have no plan for what comes next. It’s going to hurt a lot of people, and if we wait until they’ve broken everything, it’ll be too late.”
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