President Trump ran his campaign on a list of promises to his base which range in their pragmatism and potential consequences, one of his most potentially consequential being his repeatedly asserting that he will close down the Department of Education. It is a plan defined in the now president’s Agenda 47, a collection of policies Trump planned to implement given he was elected, he wants to, “send all education work and needs back to the states”.
The U.S Department of Education was founded in 1979 during the presidency of Jimmy Carter, the department is tasked with, according to the Department of Education’s own government website, the DOE is the agency tasked with establishing policy, administering and coordinating most federal assistance to education. Throughout its tenure the Department of Education has been met with mixed responses from the American people and presidents.
In fact Trump isn’t the first president, let alone republican president, to call for the abolition of the department. As early as 1980 Reagan was quoted as saying, “By eliminating the Department of Education less than 2 years after it was created, we cannot only reduce the budget but ensure that local needs and preferences, rather than the wishes of Washington, determine the education of our children.” Even 40 years later the rhetoric from Trump is incredibly similar in both wording and motive. This shutting down of the department of Education aligns with many of Trump’s other policies which plan to give more decision making weight to individual state legislators. On issues like abortion we can see somewhat similar rhetoric from his running mate, vice president JD Vance. Which is strange as it blatantly contradicts much of what’s proposed in project 2025. Regardless, that aforementioned motive is misguided as it shows the degree to which Trump is ignoring the potential consequences.
The DOE’s closure would set several things in motion. According to the NCES, the National Center for Education Statistics, approximately 62% of public schools serve low income Title I eligible students.
The DOE provides these Title I federal funds, and its expulsion would be disastrous for lower income schools in the country. The educational opportunities of these students will be substantially hampered as well as their ability to even attend a college.
Federal DOE funding assists millions of students to attend college. The most obvious example of this is Pell Grants. Pell grants act as federal financial assistance to in need undergraduates. In California 33% of UC undergraduates were given pell grants in 2022 as of statistics from the University of California. Killing the DOE in the current system we have would devastate the educational opportunities of so many Americans.
But what does this really mean for paso students if anything at all? To find out very few in the community would be more credible than Nathan Williams. Nathan Williams is a Paso school board member, a proud parent of multiple former and current PRHS students, and has taken countless volunteer and coaching positions at paso’s youth art’s center and youth athletic departments. For Nathan, while Trump closing the department is feasible he implores people to think local. “A lot of times, we get caught up in what happens on the national level, and we may not see a lot of that trickle down to our level. And that’s where we have to focus more on what actually impacts us directly, as opposed to what’s happening in the bigger picture”. Williams is far more concerned about the direction of the school legislature becoming far too political, instead wanting legislators to prioritize tangible solutions. “ So I don’t tend to look at those issues and worry directly up front about whether or not they’re going to impact us until we start to see things come out. Because there’s always rhetoric out there. There’s always people talking. There’s always people trying to do something to stir up something. So until things actually happen. We need to continue to focus on what we can do locally and what we have our ability to do versus what we fear might or what we wish we could do somewhere else.”
